Merck Reviews

I worked at CROs for over 10 years and decided to try pharma as Merck was builiding its own oncology clinical teams and I believed that it would be an exiting time to join the company. Merck is new to oncology and the middle managers don't understand the complexity of oncology trials. I was assigned to so many sites and different protocols, that it was hard to keep up, even if with working 60-80 hours a week. I worried about the quality of the research, as systems were very old and the way of conducting the research was old as well. Sites I took over from other CRAs had huge data backlog. Instead of managing the sites and doing quality research, I was reviewing data from the past months and was resolving old issues. I brought this to the attention of my manager, and what bothered me the most was indifference. The supervisor of the managers had the same attitude and during the calls was more concerned about keeping the agenda than answering questions from the CRAs. This is the company where the CRAs were treated with the least respect. I left the company in less than a year. Quality of the research was my main concern.

I have only worked in the scientific area of Merck Research Labs (MRL), so my experiences cannot necessarily be extrapolated to marketing, manufacturing, human health, etc. Merck is recognized internally (though some will deny that) and externally as having a “pigeon-hole” mentality. (Recruiters will tell you that right off the bat.) This means several things. Jobs are highly specialized; no one wears many hats so you don’t get diversified experience. One tends to get locked into a “track”, and hiring managers are unlikely to welcome someone who doesn’t have direct experience. You’re not an engineer? Then we can’t use you in the fermentation or purification group, no matter how smart and accomplished and well-reputed a scientist you are. No sales experience? Forget moving into marketing. Degree-consciousness is pervasive. Non-PhDs are looked down upon in the scientific area. No matter how experienced, how qualified, how much you’ve proven yourself, you will not be given the same amount of responsibility as a PhD, even he or she is fresh from school. The regulatory department used to hire only MDs, and only recently began hiring PhDs. This is not the case at other companies where you’ll even find Regulatory VPs without doctoral degrees. At Merck it seems like you just can’t prove yourself enough. OTOH, you can earn yourself a PhD for free (if you do your research in 2 years, that is). See benefits above. You hear so much about career development, but no one is willing to give anyone a chance to expand beyond their own narrow little scope. There is often talk about intra-departmental rotations, and practically everyone has that on their Employee Development Plan (EDP), but you’re lucky if there are four opportunities a year, at least in my department of 200+. So much for the idea of cross-training. And as for the EDP, a lot of managers just give it lip service. As a result, you have people who are in the same job for 10, 15 years. Entry level is Grade 9, they make it to a Grade 7 in ~5 years, and then just stay there for the rest of their careers because Grade 6 nearly always requires a PhD. Especially now, when there has to be a “business need” for a promotion from 7 to 6. They’ve taken away all hope of advancement for the underlings, people are totally apathetic, and leaving is their only option of bettering their careers. And the message we’ve gotten from senior management is, in essence, “If you don’t like it, don’t bother complaining, just leave. Attrition isn’t a bad thing; it means we’ll need to fire fewer people in the end.” (IAccording to a co-worker, the concept of career development IS different in the Global Human Health division, though. There is support and emphasis on it, and people change jobs every ~2 years. If you aren’t looking for a new job after 2 years, they’re wondering what’s wrong with you. Kudos to Global Human Health!) In my department, apathy is pervasive in the world of the underlings. There has been so much change that it all washes over everyone and people say, “Just leave me along and let me do my job.” And the recent tag has been, “If I can figure out what it is after this last re-org.” Merck has a formal plan for employee recognition--awards of varying amounts, from $20 to thousands--but it’s up to managers to implement the awards. Some do it better than others, but a little recognition goes a long way, because there’s not much else to boost lagging morale. There has been a division of scientific leadership and management leadership. This has lead to some weird reporting relationships that are driven by org charts. It doesn’t always make sense. The idea is that scientists should focus on the science and managers should focus on the managing, or something like that. This change did improve the managing, because some scientists were terrible at it (or just didn’t really do it at all). But there really should be some flexibility in the system so that you can do what makes SENSE and not be forced into an artificial situation. On paper it flattens the management structure, but whether it does that in actuality and gives us “lean flexibility” is another matter. The most important thing is that the managers continue to get management training and proper feedback and do a good job of actually managing their people. This has not yet come to fruition despite several years of having this structure in place.