Went from good, to bad, to ugly.
Pros
Short commute. Decent salary. Good benefits. I keep hearing how great the culture is for production staff. Nothing could be further from the truth when it comes to I.T. where I worked. Based on many meetings with I.T. management, we adopted the motto "Sit down and shut up." because that's all we ever heard from them. They kept referring to us as "hands and feet". No brain. No mouth. Just hands and feet. Like a robot.
Cons
Upper mgmt in Brazil used the 2008 financial crisis as an excuse to "re-organize" the I.T. dept. (translation: fire a whole bunch of good, long term people and replace them with contractors or Brazilians). IBM Brazil was brought in to assimilate the U.S. and Canadian I.T. operations. They are worse than inept. They make huge, enterprise wide changes without telling anyone. No problem. Except that said changes break working systems more often than they fix anything, incurring production downtime. And yet, no one in Brazil seems to care. Why? Because IBM Brazil is cheap. That is the only factor by which they run their I.T. dept now. Gerdau Ameristeel I.T. used to be cutting edge - the envy of competitors. Now it's run like a Brazilian dollar store. I.T. careers go to Gerdau to die. I'm glad I'm out.
