Pros
This was my first employer out of college. I gained many skills and exposure to projects outside of my immediate job description in addition to developing skills in my professional area. Good compensation Great use of social media to share technical and business practice information, which improves morale and connectivity between isolated groups across sites, states, the world. Has many employees who like an intellectual challenge and desire to support the mission of improving human health, (although there are many who like paychecks and supporting their large suburban mini-mansion mortgages more). Access to online resources for personal development.
Cons
Emotionally charged, competitive environment. Especially in 2013 and going into 2014, this is a sad, stressful place. How to manage the bitterness if hard times keep coming. Keeping an eye on the opportunity of 'a new Merck' will be your only carrot unless you have that rare excellent manager who is able to both handle his/her 1,000 responsibilities AND be a superhero mentor and coach. Lower level staff are more commonly competitive among each other instead of supportive. The thinning of management levels and reduction of support organizations led to a lot of stress, and likely not any improvement in efficiency/productivity. Poorly executed third party outsourcing with people unskilled in the continuous management of the newly developed business processes that were put in place once the initiation project team disappeared. Merck is (though shrinking) such a large organization. Its nearly impossible to steer the ship. So many fragmentation of lines of responsibility. There is a well planned process for moving a molecule from research/discovery through development and commercialization. All other interfaces and business processes in support of this primary process remain ad hoc, poorly developed, having been subject to too many changes over the years and not well respected or understood by those who identify themselves to be directly in the process of 'supporting the pipeline'. Still waiting on C-levels to understand this. In the West Point and possibly New Jersey sites, some longterm (15 years+) employees cant be brought to stop mourning the 'good old days.' They demonstrate this with great love of their old bureaucratic ways and resistance to any improvement. I get it that there has been great change, and that regulated groups in particular need to have some rigidity in their processes to ensure compliance. However, an attitude of being closed minded to gathering and addressing staff/partner group pain-points and answering proposals with "well, back in 1980..." is completely insufferable, and was entirely too common even in early 2013. I wonder if Merck's big employee cuts 2013-2014 has addressed this. Too many poorly educated, uncertified quality (regulatory) and safety staff. Bad rewards and competition program completely out of alignment with what is needed to support collaboration, courage, and candor.