Good Money But Hard To Advance Career, Super Bureaucratic - Associate Principal Scientist Merck Employee Review

3.0
Sep 22, 2022
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Very competitive salary for the area and still offer a pension plan which is very rare these days. On top of that job security is great relative to so many companies in the area where job cuts can come swiftly. There is a lot of opportunities to learn and grow technically in the organization and most of the management I have seen openly support pet projects

Cons

incredibly bureaucratic it can be hard to get work done, a lot of departments are also surprisingly understaffed even though its such a large company making burn out common. You can easily become encumbered with both real project work and nonsense busy work that is a result of poor inefficient systems that have been in place for years. There is also very little upward mobility expect promotions to come every 5 years. There is also little opportunity to gain leadership experience as only the most senior scientists and directors will have direct reports.

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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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