Long story short, AbbVie is supposedly a great company to work for, but it is an absolute mess of a place once you get in the door. You'll think you're going crazy, because surely such a well know company can't be that toxic on a basic level. Nothin egregious, but the things the company should be doing or could be doing that they choose not to because it's easier not to.
Optics are most important - AbbVie cares most about how things look, not if something is the right thing to do. It's a culture of giving awards, oftentimes for projects that look good on the surface but actually caused more problems than they solved in the long run....They say patient is the north star, but all you hear about is profits...
Lack of transparency - company only tells you what they think employees need to know, which means as an employee you waste a lot of time tracking down things, even basic HR policies.
Very top down - company is a "Do as I say, not as I do" type organization. Orders come top down, but there is never any follow through. They put high expectations on the employee but fail to provide processes and resources to get the job down.
Mediocre benefits for the industry - AbbVie has taken away things like pension, summer Fridays, EOY shutdown. All things that are pretty common in Pharma. While other top companies were rolling out mental health days and increasing time off during and after COVID lockdowns, AbbVie went in the other direction. Sure, they pay well, but so do other Pharma companies. What is the perk here and why are they benchmarking against smaller pharma companies when they say they have similar (note: not better) benefits?
Old school approach - AbbVie split from Abbott relatively recently and seems to have been relying on profits from their best selling brand to carry them through. They haven't taken care like other Pharma companies to develop internal processes and capabilities to truly compete. It's a story of Too Big to Fail, not an innovate forward looking organization.
AbbVie is very hierarchal - it's bloated organizational bureaucracy at a level I've never seen before. Manager -led policies open the door for unbalanced treatment and unconscious bias.
Lack of diversity - AbbVie does not appear to be making any true efforts or noticeable strides to have a more diverse leadership team. Sure, there are Diversity and Inclusion groups, but those seem to be more about affinity groups in Chicago than plans to drive any measurable change. They don't even reach out to new employees with information. I never saw anything shared that showed AbbVie accountability or true (not just optics) progress on this glaring issue.
All Roads Lead to Chicago - Given AbbVie's old school reasoning that collaboration needs to happen in person, it should be no surprise that opportunities for promotion and recognition are much higher if you work in Chicago or heavily with people in Chicago. I cannot confirm, but I also heard there are discrepancies in pay. There certainly were discrepancy in benefits, where new employees not in Chicago were offered Legacy Allergan benefits and then told they would never have access to the pension plan which was later phased out, even though it was available when they joined.
3 days in the office - AbbVie has doubled down on wanting people in the office 3 days a week, and it's a strange official but not pulled through policy. Teams are supposed to designate 3 specific days a week, but it's the wild west with teams doing whatever and nothing official being documented. You're expected to be in 3 days + important meetings of course. If that means you're in 5 days one week, don't expect any leeway to come in 1-2 days the next week without it being questioned. It's the type of company where people will go into the office for the sake of being in the office, even if it was a particularly bad day to drive in and they ended up sitting at their desk without much in person reaction anyway. It's also a place where people tend to work while sick instead of feeling it is okay to take sick days.
