Merck reviews

Merck provides great career development and opportunities for advancement. The company is large (with 7k+ emloyees) so this is a great place for young professionals to start their careers in the pharmaceutical field. Many opportunities to take work-related leadership classes as well as graduate work are available depending on department and pay grade. Employees are highly motivated and talented, making a great environment to be innovative and productive in a competitive industry.

Merck is full of extremely talented people (which became even more evident to me after I left), and this will help to raise your own personal performance. In my department, promotions were handed out based on a combination of seniority and performance, though for higher level promotions, seniority rarely played a role. I felt that decisions on promotions were fair and highly transparent (got passed up once and got promoted another time); politics wasn't much of a factor. I believe that the pay and benefits at Merck were comparable to other large pharmaceutical companies and may have been slightly better than in most industries. Employees in my area were generally quite proud to work at Merck, though this had been declining in recent years. Perhaps the main reason that I stayed as long as I did was the fact that I was friends with so many of my coworkers. When I started out of college, there were 15-20 of my peers in my department close to my age. In my experience, it is very common for people at Merck to socialize outside of work. Not every company is like this.