Merck Reviews in Philadelphia, PA Area

Pros

Good overall to work for in this bad economy.

Cons

Sometimes the stressful culture can get to you.

Advice to Senior Management

Please hire some talented people with common sense. Degree is not enough.

Pros

The environment is one of learning, collaboration, and challenging projects. It is the most flexible environment I have ver had the opportunity to work in. While the integration activities have made it stressful, I am privileged to work with committed, driven professionals.

Cons

The hierarchical review system can be stifling to creating new solutions for complex problems. However, this is recognized, and many leadrs work earnestly to remove those barriers.

Advice to Senior Management

An honest assessment of the variance within different functions feels overdue.

Pros

Good sceintific work; collegues could be helpful; able to learn new stuff and technologies at work; people are accountable. Not bad for a person fresh out of school.

Cons

Lack sufficient transparency in the ways of management; compeition is high among colleagues of the same level. Could be stressful if not an aggressive person.

Advice to Senior Management

Can not offer much feedback or advice. Drug discovery is difficult enough already. Please do not dump the stress to the scientists if the drug industry as general loses its engine.

Pros

Good work life balance
Use of newer technologies
Educated workforce
Good pay

Cons

Lack of leadership; Mismanagement
Matrix organizational structure with no leadership leads to chaos on projects; no one is in charge so many try to take charge and workers are pulled in many different, conflicting directions
Lack of communication
Inability to effectively manage or implement change; goals are only the goals of senior management, not emplooyees. Management is ineffective in obtaining buy-in from employees.
Lack of cooperation among staff; limited sharing of information
Lack of shared vision (and lack of communication/promotion of corporate goals)
Functions at each step of system life cycle are centralized but workers receive no training
Very limited sharing of information among workers; contractors are constantly brought in but are not given background information required to do their jobs. Workers are afraid of being laid off so they hold onto information in an effort to become indispensable.

Advice to Senior Management

Improve communication from senior management to employees
Foster common goals
Provide management training to managers and project leaders

Pros

The company does provide opportunities to grow, and many managers support rotations throughout different parts of the organization. Merck pays well.

Cons

1) I can't say roles and responsibilities are always clear -- too many people trying to create busy work; Merck is definitely over resourced in some areas.
2) Management, especially middle management, is not well experience, seasoned, nor mature. They create a lot of overhead to justify their roles in the system.
3) Direction from management is never clear. Initiaitives from management will make their way down through the system, and they middle management spin to understand how to deliver a product of value. Perhaps point 2 contributes to the problem again.

Advice to Senior Management

Provide clear direction to your employees; top-down guidance is critical for large initiatives (long range planning, budgeting) and for smaller projects. Clearly define the objective of the initiative and what the end state should look like.

Pros

Company is flexible with family / working from home. Pretty generous with vacation and flexible if you need a day off for having worked longer hours on a tough project. Lots of smart folks work there, but it's not too portentous a place. Good health benefits, and benefits in general.

Cons

No in place promotions?

In the past few years, times have been tougher and they've been skimping on training...as an IT professional staying up to date on what's current is crucial. Getting management to send developers to training / conferences on new development technologies is like pulling teeth. Management doesn't want people developing applications for scientists, rather they want to buy global solutions for nearly every possible situation, which is a recipe for disaster.

For scientific research software development that is done in house, there's no emphasis on code reviews / writing good code / applying any development methodologies as a team; a lot of code for lab and science-specific apps gets done by single individuals (this might not be the case for teams writing clinical applications or company infrastructure applications, like internal websites). Be careful about what you're getting yourself into if you're into writing software. I'm not saying that all positions at Merck are bad for IT, just be careful to ask questions about the position before hand about working with a group or possibilities for development-specific training if you're into software development.

More politics and in-fighting than you could ever believe. Place is rife with bureaucrats at all levels; some folks seem more interested in playing games than getting their job done, although this is probably typical of many large companies.

Advice to Senior Management

Listen more to your employees! Ask them what works and doesn't work in their positions. Also ask WHO works and doesn't work more frequently and at many levels. Don't just ask a direct report about his manager, but about his manager's manager. You have hired good, smart people you should trust, but there seems to be a definite lack of communication upward.

Have more respect for your software developers - be more open minded about adopting open source technology and bringing more development in house for scientists - having a talented, core team of developers would be a boon to your scientists in this age of sifting through mounds of information. Adopt Agile Methodology and acquire less talkers, more technical doers.

Pros

Merck has a great deal of pull to hire bright people, and to be selective about new hires. Management is well intentioned and personal integrity is valued. Compensation is generally better than average for the industry.

Cons

Merck seems to be more interested in gaining maximum short term output rather than looking forward toward long-term personnel development. Consequently, many employees have a short-term horizon on their employment at Merck.

Advice to Senior Management

Re-invest in employees to promote retention, and use incentives for employee performance rather than mandates. Implement more robust systems so that the organization does not become less effective as individuals leave their positions.

Pros

Salary, Benefits, Flexible Work Schedule

Cons

Division between PhD and non-PhD scientists does not foster trustful relationships, Poor communication by senior management on vision and direction, inability to pursue true novel targets

Advice to Senior Management

There is a need to foster a culture of trust and empowerment with employees at all levels

Pros

It was a good place to work 10 yrs ago- the nicest and most professional staff - now too much work without enough employees - the best people left or were displaced leaving a team of Mediocrity - morale at a all time low

Cons

no vision to diversify - major brain drain in organization with downsizing - no new products in the pipeline to get excited about.

Advice to Senior Management

get new blood into senior positions - same old senior management rotates jobs - need to downsize senior management by at least 33%

Pros

Science based company, attempts to do the right thing

Cons

Lack of products, Lack of relationships

Advice to Senior Management

Make decisions more quickly