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How people got jobs at IBM
What 141 people did before they joined IBM: where they worked, what they studied, which role they came in through, and how long it took.
141
people in our data got there
53%
had a graduate degree first (of those listing one)
5
typical years since first job
- The most common step right before: from other companies (60%).
- The most common way in was Research (22% joined in that kind of role).
- Of those who list their education, 53% had a graduate degree before arriving and 18% a PhD.
- The typical person arrived about 5 years after their first job.
How IBM compares
- 18% had a PhD, above the 11% across other banks & Fortune 500 companies, the 3rd-highest of the 15 in our data.
- People arrived about 5 years earlier in their careers than at the typical one of the other banks & Fortune 500 companies (5 vs 10 years since their first job).
Among people who list their education; places with at least 10 such people.
Show as a table
| People listing education | Share | |
|---|---|---|
| Qualcomm | 36 | 69% |
| Morgan Stanley | 16 | 62% |
| Intel Corporation | 49 | 61% |
| Hewlett Packard Enterprise | 36 | 61% |
| Micron Technology | 25 | 60% |
| JPMorgan Chase & Co. | 20 | 55% |
| AMD | 26 | 54% |
| Dell Technologies | 30 | 53% |
| IBM (this page) | 60 | 53% |
| Goldman Sachs | 20 | 50% |
| Citi | 16 | 50% |
| Cisco | 43 | 49% |
| NextEra Energy, Inc. | 41 | 49% |
| Deutsche Bank | 16 | 38% |
| Schneider Electric | 28 | 32% |
Show as a table
| Median years | ||
|---|---|---|
| AMD | 20 yrs | |
| NextEra Energy, Inc. | 19 yrs | |
| Micron Technology | 16 yrs | |
| Hewlett Packard Enterprise | 15 yrs | |
| Cisco | 13 yrs | |
| Qualcomm | 11 yrs | |
| Schneider Electric | 11 yrs | |
| Dell Technologies | 9 yrs | |
| Intel Corporation | 8 yrs | |
| Citi | 7 yrs | |
| JPMorgan Chase & Co. | 6 yrs | |
| Morgan Stanley | 5 yrs | |
| IBM (this page) | 5 yrs | |
| Deutsche Bank | 5 yrs | |
| Goldman Sachs | 4 yrs |
Which role they joined in
Kinds of role with fewer than 5 people are combined into "All other roles".
Show as a table
| People | Share | |
|---|---|---|
| Research | 31 | 22% |
| Software engineering | 29 | 21% |
| All other roles | 27 | 19% |
| Strategy consulting | 15 | 11% |
| IT & infrastructure | 13 | 9% |
| Sales & business development | 11 | 8% |
| Business & operations | 9 | 6% |
| Data science & ML | 6 | 4% |
Show as a table
| People | Share | |
|---|---|---|
| Research | 9 | 6% |
What they did right before
Show as a table
| People | Share | |
|---|---|---|
| From other companies | 85 | 60% |
| This was their first listed step | 31 | 22% |
| From banks & Fortune 500 | 8 | 6% |
| Straight from a degree | 7 | 5% |
| Publishing research | 6 | 4% |
| Other | 4 | 3% |
Education
Among the 60 of 141 people who list their education.
Show as a table
| People | Share | |
|---|---|---|
| Bachelor's | 28 | 47% |
| Master's | 17 | 28% |
| MBA | 4 | 7% |
| PhD | 11 | 18% |
How much experience they had
Among the 104 of 141 people with an earlier job listed.
Show as a table
| People | Share | |
|---|---|---|
| Under 1 year | 6 | 6% |
| 1-3 years | 24 | 23% |
| 3-5 years | 19 | 18% |
| 5-8 years | 18 | 17% |
| 8-12 years | 17 | 16% |
| 12+ years | 20 | 19% |
Where would your path lead?
Paste your LinkedIn or resume and see the ladders people like you climbed to IBM, and how each step changes your chances.
Plan my path to IBM →
Paste your LinkedIn or resume and see the ladders people like you climbed to IBM, and how each step changes your chances.
Plan my path to IBM →
Related
How these numbers are made. From 3k+ public career histories collected for careerladder.fyi (dated jobs, degrees and publications). The collection was built around particular employers, so people who reached well-known tech, AI and finance employers are over-represented: read shares as "among people in this dataset", not as hiring odds. Names are shown only when at least 5 people are behind them; smaller groups are combined into "Other". No individual profile is shown. Updated November 2026.