Wyeth Reviews in Boston, MA Area

Pros

Compensation is fine. Level of collaboration across the organization has increased in recent years and the company is beginning to truly take advantage of its size and breadth. The biotech side is one of the best in the business.

Cons

Uncertainty over the Pfizer deal. Continued prospect of headcount reductions. Continued pressure to move operations off-shore.

Advice to Senior Management

Governance systems are beyond broken. Senior Mgmt layers are actually populated by many decent and deserving individuals. They just don't know how to work together to make decisions and communicate decisions effectively.

Pros

compensation, benefits, perks, exercise room, cafeteria

Cons

respect for people, bureaucracy, lack of transparency at the top

Pros

Good work/life balance. Decent pay. Nice facilities, parking, work environment. Exposure to a wealth of industry experience through current employees.

Cons

Current employees are in all of the power positions, and not leaving anytime soon. Limited growth potential. Just got bought by Pfizer

Advice to Senior Management

Promote the on site employees to give them a reason to stay. Replace the employees that left. Morale is low and in need of repair.

Pros

The People are good to work with and try very hard under stressful times of acquisition, Salary is ok , challenge, Parking is free and garage in the winter. Have high standards

Cons

Benefits, medical out of pocket too much as well as rx drugs, raises are horrible does not keep up with cost of living. Get a bonus very little. Stock doesn't do very much. stressful under short time frmae to complete work. Documentation bogs down progress.

Advice to Senior Management

All the good people are gone try to tratian what is left

Pros

Good benefits, respect of work/life balance. Company does a good job of hiring people who are pleasant to work with and capable, for the most part. Generous tuition reimbursement. Facilities are pleasant, up to date and well maintained. The company gives employees time off at Christmas, usually a week or more, unless you're unfortunate enough to be essential personnel, then you'll have to work some of it.

Cons

Uncertainty due to potential merger with Pfizer. The possibility of layoffs is distracting and stress-inducing, not to mention the great unknown of what will happen after the merger. Recent cost-cutting initiatives cause departments to lose people to attrition and then not replace them, creating a more stressful working environment due to overwork..

Advice to Senior Management

People are your most valuable asset. In your attempts to cut costs, please remember that what may be good for the budget may not be good for the employees.

Pros

The employees at Wyeth, Andover are very proud of their compliance record. Everyone is committed to making products that are safe for human injection. There is a strong committment to the company core values.

Cons

The downside of working at Wyeth is that they are currently decreasing staff for this site and company wide. It's still a good place to work, but most people have a feeling of looking over their shoulder, and don't want to make any mistakes because of the layoffs earlier in 2008, and they know more layoffs are a real possibility.

Advice to Senior Management

Senior management at Andover needs to find more creative ways to increase the site's value to the Wyeth corporation. Manufacturing products internationally has enourmous tax advantages. The site needs to focus more on doing things that may be more difficult in foreign nations.

Pros

3 weeks starting vacation plus a week off at Christmas. The therapeutic research areas all have good projects to work on, and generally have a balance of high risk innovative targets and lower risk targets.

Cons

lack of career development. lack of communication opportunities with Sr. management. lack of decision making skills by sr. management and lack of delegation of decision making to jr. staff. Performance ratings and promotions for some Ph.D. staff are dependent on publications in basic science, which is overall a good thing for long term development, however, the daily responsibilities of moving drug projects forward does not allow the resources or time necessary to carry out these experiments. Hence, it is extremely difficult to to both of these objectives and greatly limits opportunity for advancement past a Jr. Ph.D. staff level.

Advice to Senior Management

develop staff so that they can be empowered to make scientific decisions about projects and Sr. management can focus on future needs for drug development and project areas to tackle.

Pros

Flexible work schedules and respect for family life

Cons

Difficult to advance "up the ladder"

Advice to Senior Management

Don't over hype performance. Be honest about failures and future growth prospects

Pros

Direct management is very understanding with work / home balance

Cons

Currently - moral is at an all time low

Advice to Senior Management

To listen to workers under their direct reports. They just may have something valuable to add

Pros

There is a good pipeline in R&D and Wyeth appears to be well positioned for the shift from small molecule to large molecule medicines.

Cons

The biggest issue is forced ranking of employees into a bell curve. This totally kills moral and the desire to work hard. Too many people have been told that they did a great job for the year but they have to get a lower rating so that the person who is way behind in grade level or salary can get a promotion.

Lot's of talk about empowering the employees and yet there is an incredible number of layers of management.

Most jobs are being consolidated to Collegeville so there is limited (if any) opportunity if you're at a remote site.

Advice to Senior Management

Stop telling us that we need to cut costs to be more competive and we can't give raises that keep up with inflation and yet you give yourselves huge bonuses.