Novartis is a great place to work if you are in the right department. If not it can be hell.
Pros
Personally, I had a great experience, a chance to interact with people across the organization, support of management, great impact. I felt appreciated and have been rewarded with cash and stock bonuses. This can be a fantastic place to work in the right department with the right managers.
Cons
In spite of great potential, Novartis has too many sociopathic managers who only consider their own careers and those of their sycophants. I personally did not suffer from this unduly but watched as other extremely talented people were crushed by this culture. Too many of the middle managers are terrible people managers with no value add to the company apart from deep "personal loyalty" (ie. a$$kissers ) to their superiors. The illusion of agreement with a superior is valued much more highly than plain speaking and the pointing out of problems, issues etc. For me, in spite of success, promotion was a long time coming and caused me to keep an eye out for new possibilities, mainly because I was considered "too negative" because I raised issues rather than just toeing the management line. Speak up culture is virtually non-existent in spite of a lot of lip service to the contrary. People are even afraid to fill out anonymous surveys honestly. Novartis has an IT organization which is disfunctional at best and totally incompetent at worst which makes it difficult to do the job. Furthermore, IT is becoming more and more sensitive to criticism of any kind.
