I can't speak specifically to IBM as a whole, but in my experience, there are parts of IBM that are old and stodgy (professional services around finance and gov

I can't speak specifically to IBM as a whole, but in my experience, there are parts of IBM that are old and stodgy (professional services around finance and government that I interacted with when I worked in those industries). There are other parts (around security and research that I worked with in other roles) that are pretty cool and innovative that are much more approachable and fun to work with. IBM (and Microsoft, and Google, and others) are huge and it makes sense that there are pockets of awesome and awful distributed throughout them.