Schering-Plough Reviews

Pros

Flexible Schedule and Family Oriented. You have the abiliy to manage your own territory while working with 2-4 co-workers. A lot of room for career advancement, whether you want to move into management or to another department in the company.

Cons

Your happiness depends on your manager. If you have a good manager who trusts you and you work hard, you will have a good job and good career. If you take advantage of the job and do not work, it is obvious to your manager and to your co-workers and you will be micro-managed.

Advice to Senior Management

Managers should learn to trust the employees who work and go after the ones who do not. We all know it is hard to figure out who really works and who doesn't, but there are many ways to find out.

Pros

Collegial atmosphere (excepting a few bad apples), easy access to management

Cons

You need to negotiate your salary/perks/grade while joining. Once you are in, moving up is not easy. Feedback and things to do to get to the next step, from management, are hard to come by.

Advice to Senior Management

More clarity on integration

Pros

Products are solid. Managed care access is good in my area. District managers are generally good and do not micro manage.

Cons

Company does not give field sales reps enough "useful" resources to effectively promote prescription products. They are very conservative and would rather let our competition run around with OUR trials while we get one-sided power-point presentations which makes it impossible to stay credible in front of our customers.

Advice to Senior Management

It doesnt really matter now because we have been bought by Merck. Hopefully the culture at Merck is better but I dont think it will be.

Pros

Excellent pay
Holiday Shut Down
Decent learning experience
Tuition Reimbursment - they paid for my masters degree.
Good people to work with
Strong desire to succeed part of culture

Cons

Pressure to succeed extremely high
Expectation of being available at all hours of the day and night.
Work life balance - near impossible to raise a family

Advice to Senior Management

Slow it down a little bit. The job can still get done without working at 2 am from home. It's not worth risking family and health

Pros

Great compensation, benefits, the majority of middle management are highly professional, pipeline is very strong for the US and ex-US (the latter being the growth driver for the company). Merck acquisition will right-size the back-stabbing, shoot-from-the-hip mentality at SGP.

Cons

Senior management is ingrained with the Fred Hassan mentality of take-no-prisoners, push forward without regard for professionalism and treating employees fairly and honestly. However, every executive mgmt leader is gone through the merger .. except one. SGP management absolutely demolished Organon employee morale and good standing.

Advice to Senior Management

Advice to Merck: beware of SGP upper mgmt who thinks they know better than a slow-moving, bureaucratic, over-analytical parent company.

Pros

Very flexible in terms of work home balance. Management dedicated to providing constructive feedback to help develope employees.

Cons

There are no dress down Fridays. Summer hours are not comparable to peer pharmaceuticals. A skeleton staff is required.

Advice to Senior Management

Too much red tape sometimes slows things down needlessly.

Pros

Great company with wonderful products. The management varies depending on which division you are in and the geography.

Cons

currently being bought by Merck and unsure of the future.

Advice to Senior Management

The leadership is strong at Schering-Plough and they are in a tough situation. At the moment, the only advice I have is to fight for the team you have currently during this merger/acquisition.

Pros

This company is a great place to work. I enjoyed the team atmosphere and I felt that I had a lto of opportunities to grow.

Cons

The workload at this company was sometimes hard to manage. At times I would find myself working from home every night and weekend.

Advice to Senior Management

The managers at your company need to focus more on training. They also need to spend mroe one on one tim eiwth each employee.

Pros

Remuneration - Salary compensation (as part of the pharmaceutical industry) is above average. People looking to increase their compensation should consider positions within pharma.

Cons

Combative environment - Due to some difficult events about six years ago, the culture of Schering Plough has changed. Unfortunately, these changes have had a negative influence on the culture, however has allowed the company (in revenue terms) to prosper.

Advice to Senior Management

Sell the company and allow people to make decisions about moving on.

Pros

Compensation is higher than industry average.

There is very little chance of termination for incompetence

It is nearly impossible to be uniquesly responsible for failure.

Work hours are not excessive

Cons

Very little overall technical competence

Demonstrated excellence is largely ignored

The decision-making process is ridiculous

It is an unispiring environment

Advice to Senior Management

Show some ownershipand value those that do show it. Stop celebrating simple execution of job responsibilities and start creating some challenges.