I'm halfway to grad school.  I have rejected a very generous offer from IBM in favor of pursuing a PhD.  While I'm somewhat relieved the decision has been made, I regret that I had to turn them down.  They had a very cool project with a nice team housed in an awesome city.

Next stop: Rice to turn in my application.

They ain't so bad to work for.

Of course it only has a sample size of one. I'll have to see what some of my former students say, when I finally get ahold of them.

Since I just rejected a job offer, I'm going to avoid publicly lambasting them.  I will say that I got a terrible sinking feeling when I finally cut it off.  They made me a very attractive offer that was hard to turn down.

What's attractive?  Well, the money was decent, but that's not really the issue.  I was going to work on a very high profile product with a team whose members I really liked.  The problems I'd have tackled were compelling and would most likely have kept me busy for years if I wanted them to.  I had the opportunity to live in a very cool city with climbing within the city limits and two more major areas within an hour or two's drive.

I don't regret my decision, but I probably will if I don't get into Rice.  Ceteris paribus, I have a single-digit percent chance (or worse) of getting in.  Let's hope that assumption doesn't hold.  The bad climbing situation and money aside, everything looks as good or better there with more potential down the road.

Oh, and that doesn't mean you can't say what you (or your former students) want about IBM, isax.

Because in any major corporation, you're going to move around.  It just happens.  Projects get canned, management changes, priorities change, and moreso, you change.  It's happened to three projects I've worked on at Microsoft so far.  And I know many people at other companies, as well as people here who have worked at other companies, and apparently it happens even more out there.  IBM is especially known for stupid organizational changes that alienate its engineers.  This has to do with its management incentive program that promotes churn.