VERY VERY bureaucratic. Not sure why senior management thinks that the solution to every problem is to create a new system with a complex approval process. And this bureaucratic culture is not just related to regulatory compliance (where bureaucracy is a given) . In at least one case there is a business approval process you need to follow before you are allowed to move on and then follow the compliance approval process (which includes another business approval). The bureaucracy permeates every aspect of live at Merck.
A very conservative company. The first , second, and third instincts are to do it the way we've always done it. I don't think Merck is a place to go if you want to trail blaze. In most aspects of science and technology, Merck is 5-10 years behind. For example we just figured out monoclonal antibodies a few years ago (while everyone else was adopting them in the 90's).
Very silo-ed company. Different organizations are evaluated against very different criteria. Different departments all have their own agendas. It makes forming truly collaborative and cross functional teams difficult.
Work-life balance is not always great. I listed this as a pro too as it very's by department. I've had 4 distinct rolls at the company. 2 were predominantly low stress with roughly 40hr work weeks. The other 2 were much worse. Under 50hrs was a good week, 60+ was frequent. Pressure from management can become intense, and when projects are managed badly the first thing to get sacrificed is always the private lives and well being of those at the bottom of the org structure. The sacrifice is not always rewarded either.
There is a bit of perverse incentive in the way the company handles it's best employees. When you are identified as an ambitions and talented employee you are usually sent off to work on projects that have fallen behind - the idea being you can ride over the hill on a white horse and save the project. The problem is that those projects usually fall behind because they have bad management and bad cultures (i.e. not because of problems one person can step in fix no matter how talented they are), or just because they're "behind" goals that were never realistic in the first place. Being sent off to those projects is not exactly a reward worth working hard for.
Top down decision making, thus decision makers are out of touch with the the actual consequences of their decision (a problem that I'm sure most large companies have)
Health benefits are a little below average
