Pros
Genuinely nice people trying to do their best to help patients and advance science. It's a good spot if you're early career with generous vacation allowance and opportunity to learn as long as you don't get sucked up in the politics and bureaucracy. The closer you get to the EDs and VPs, the more it stinks.
Kontras
Share price is in the toilet and the sales are down so even though the pipeline is strong, it's going to be a tough 3-5yrs as they try to get sales back up to replace Keytruda revenue. Massive cost cutting efforts ongoing and stealth offshoring of IT jobs is the current activity to appease the markets. There's real issues with burnout as the senior leaders turn the screw for productivity and there's no support other than words and stupid initiatives that only bring more work to do. Merck are leaking talent at mid to senior level because they are fed up with being unsupported meanwhile the divisional leaders are all slapping themselves on the back because they did something pointless with AI (the data 'lake' is still a putrid swamp). Too many of the leadership have been there too long and seem to be rewarded for mediocrity and boot licking. Recent promotions are the wrong ones and seem to be developing a 'bro' culture. Very unappealing but we all know DEI is not taken seriously these days so I'm not expecting any action there. Overall, the leadership is out of touch, ineffective and totally unable to set a direction and stick to it.