Career growth/Promotion at Merck - Associate Director Merck Employee Review

3.0
Jan 28, 2015
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Excellent research; Great quality of work; Very organized; Excellent SOPs and training; Admirable colleagues; Great institution feels like going to an Ivy league college every day and learning and contributing! Am truly proud to be part of Merck.

Cons

Lack of recognition; No possibility for promotion for older experienced employees despite excellent job; Very difficult for minority women to break the glass ceiling.

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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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