Great name, good employees, lousy culture - Anonymous employee Merck Employee Review

3.0
Jun 3, 2009
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

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.

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5.0
Jun 30, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Excellent company to work with.

Cons

No cons encountered so far

4.0
Jun 30, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Great benefits like medical/dentist/vision, pension, stock option, 401k match. Co workers are excellent, pretty good on site symposiums, lot of diversity clubs/activities. Innovation is extremely welcomed. Diversity in research portfolio. AI/ML is heavily invested to make databases more efficient.

Cons

Micro managing, especially within the biologics department, potentially others. Promotions are limited, and pay bump is poor. Company invests too much in buying companies rather than keeping talent - lay offs let go of great talented people. Merck is afraid of investing into exploratory biology and doesn’t take risk - they even admit they would rather see other companies clinical data or R&D data rather than taking a risk. Although it’s slow going in building new software, current databases are slow and needs much improvement. Extremely poor work/life balance.

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