Difficult personnel navigation - Anonymous employee MSD Employee Review

2.0
Mar 31, 2022
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Employees and managers are generally friendly people that want to try to help. The work environment really was nice on a personal level, and management seems to want to perpetuate that culture.

Cons

Apparently pretty typical of this kind or workplace, the divide between unionized and non-unionized personnel is cumbersome. Any issues with personnel, workload, role shifts, or schedule changes are extremely difficult to navigate because of employee restrictions in place and interpretations of the union contracts. Because of this, every personnel related issue becomes a negotiation to navigate, even though both sides of the divide usually sincerely want to help. Group managers are forced to be bosses rather than leaders and just have to wait for peaceful pushback from their employees, or support from their own managers or HR, about any decisions made. Employees aren't necessarily difficult, but rather, the lines drawn are difficult to manage. The systems in place are outdated and convoluted. Systems used for ordering supplies, data management, SOP authoring and revision, error investigations, etc… are outdated or convoluted compared to peer companies. For a site as big as it is, IT and HR are completely understaffed and absolutely cannot support the site's needs.

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5.0
Jun 4, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Great team to work and grow with, also good learning enviroment

Cons

My entry time was not the best timing, during the middle of the war wirh Iran, so work was slow and over 200 people from that site were let go, including myself

1.0
Jun 13, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Benefits package is good, looks good on a resume. That's about it.

Cons

I worked at Merck for a few years. While it wasn't the worst job I've ever had, it's pretty high up on the list. The company culture is best described as corporate hell. Everything is also extremely political. If you aren't someone who really buys into that and is willing to play the game, then you probably won't be happy there. My team also had an extremely toxic dynamic. One senior member was a notorious bully, we even had contractors quit because of them, and mgmt did nothing. Instead, they fired other team members, who all happened to be targets of this person. It was very odd/suspicious. Our senior managers were a group of bitter older women in their 50s and 60s who behaved like high school mean girls, while the C suite was just incompetent. They wasted many millions of dollars attempting to develop an AI tool that turned out be a total flop, and then announced that 10% of the company was going to be laid off. Which of course just lowered morale even further. While Merck does look good on a resume, the actual job experience isn't that great because everything is very siloed so you don't have the opportunity to really develop new skills. Work life balance is also very poor. I will say that the pay and benefits package was good. I took the job as I had some financial goals to meet, and I was able to meet them thanks to the bonus, stock units, pension, etc offered by Merck. As soon as I hit my savings goal I gave notice. I've moved on to a new job that is low drama and values my contributions, and I feel extremely blessed to no longer work at Merck!

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