Pfizer – “Until the Merger's Over...”

Pros

If you want to just show up every day, do your 8 or 9, and go home, this is the job for you. "All-nighters" are few and far between and happen at fairly predictable times of the year. The medical benefits can't be beat.

Cons

It's starting to feel like the ex-Soviet Union around here. Every few years, our division re-organizes from top to bottom in some grand scheme that's supposed to miraculously save us all and bring us back to the "good old days." Of course, we can't get there without "doing more with less" and sacrificing, which will of course be eventually rewarded once we accomplish our near-impossible goals and beat impossible obstacles. Challenging the wisdom of any of this is strongly frowned upon. Constant cheerleading and jingoism replace any real strategy that may actually change anything. And, just when we thought we were out of the woods after the LAST reorganization, the Wyeth merger comes along. This means more reasons to keep everyone looking over their shoulder, looking busy, and looking out for the knife in the back. The newest motivational phrase around Pfizer is "shut up and be happy that you still have a job." The end result is that the people who are the backbones of their departments--the people who get work done--are kept in their positions with no hope of promotion. Anyone really good either leaves the company or the truly lucky switch departments, but vertical movement within divisions is a thing of the past. Against all of this, Pfizer seems to be churning consultants through jobs every 6 months as opposed to investing in the employees that they already have, or hiring permanent staff.

Advice to Senior Management

Time to start self-culling, guys. Pushing vested people around just to avoid having to pay out packages means that people are being put in charge of departments that they barely understand. It also prevents fresh blood from entering the upper levels of management. In the meantime, otherwise deserving people are being passed up. Also, the ratings review system seems rigged to prevent meaningful raises or promotions.