Is IBM really all that bad?

I've been following the message boards here and on Vault.com about IBM Consulting, and it seems to get a very bad press. Does anyone have any hard facts to prove / disprove this ? I mean is their attrition rate much higher than the competition ? What is the days training budget per employee ? How many women / ethnic minorities are there at senior level ?

To answer some of my own question: I picked the following up off Yahoo Finance which shows the senior board have been heavy net sellers of IBM stock for many years now: http://finance.yahoo.com/q/it?s=IBM

I currently work for PA, and we get hoards of ex-PwC staff applying. One of them commented to me recently that in their Financial Management practice in consulting, staff turnover was running in excess of 40%, so they are recruiting heavily just to stand still. Seemingly, staff had an average of 2 days training, compared to a minimum of 7 days in PA. Easy to see why people are leaving…

I am an IBM consultant, but won't be for much longer now.

Yes it is bad. No training (banned). No travel (banned). No mobile phone calls (banned). People are working well out of position to be billable. Pay rises and promotions have been postponed or talked about as potentially not going to happen.

All because the IBM management are worried about the effect that another 'not on target' quarter might have to the share price. So, motivation is down - right down - and lots of my colleagues are leaving, usually those with the best and most marketable skills.