TLDR - Pay, development, job satisfaction and retention; all issues the company has suffered with over my 7 years.
Pay
Reviews happen yearly and dept. depending, are measured against 3 areas - how the company (as a whole) fares, your division (there are 3 -life science, healthcare, electronics) and your personal or team achievements. That is company x div x personal. That in practice means that if 1 area does not fare well, such as due to macro-economics or any other unseen issue that can happen, this then impacts your pay even if you have performed exemplary. In figures for me, this saw approx. 1.7k (after tax) difference in my bonus, despite my div and my rating being in the top brackets. All the while the div leader got a 1.5Mil bonus. The company is not open or encouraging to colleagues requesting pay reviews and has side-lined every attempt to ask for them during town halls or public forums. The matrix of pay mixing and your personal benefit choices are the rebuttal the company will use. While they are not mandatory to take, when you ask for a review the company notes that "well the benefits you have are not afforded many people". This is the first line of defence to a pay review request and is an immovable counter. I trust the incoming EU pay transparency review regulations coming in 2025/2026 will be applied throughout the company.
Development
I have been with the company 5+ years and any development until now was lacklustre at best. The company does not enable meaningful growth, it actively inhibits it. I have the very real feeling I am to turn up, do my job and go home. For example. after suggesting, drawing up and presenting plans on areas to develop, or processes to improve where a grievance or waste of time or energy for us or the customer has been noted, there was a perfunctory review and the decision taken to not push it further. Growth and development is for the lucky few. For example, there have been numerous learning and growth platforms which included LinkedIn learning (glorified YouTube videos), mandatory E-learnings on compliance and regulatory issues which are gamified and over-produced. Anything meaningful that takes one out of the inbox, or costs money, is aggressively targeted and denied. When I joined, the "Merck University" was proudly talked about. When I asked about being sponsored through it, I was told this was only for senior management - contrary to my onboarding interview. Currently there is a development initiative ongoing, 2 weeks of curated guests talking on all and sundry. Some colleagues have found great use for these talks (wellbeing, women in leadership, project management), others have noted they were a waste of time as they paid lip service to the guests' publications or were taken-over by high performing management. This comes at a time when the company has launched its yearly survey, a coincidence I think not. Particularly as development has been globally admonished in every survey I have seen. The notion this has not gone unnoticed is frankly insulting as once these weeks are over it will return to the previous state. The company has launched an AI-backed programme to help with this internally. This has been reviewed poorly and is not very user-friendly.
Job Satisfaction
This is a tricky one to quantify as this is personal to all and ymmv. As stated above, the company has had a huge hand in COVID, it also does wonderful work for Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, raspatory issues and other diseases. If altruism is important to you, then you may see a benefit working here. An area to improve on is celebrating and communicating such milestones. Instead, the company is demanding more and more and providing fewer and fewer resources to achieve these goals. For example, our travel budget (to visit the customer in person) is laughably small. We have no options to gather with other global team members - a sensible notion regards emissions and environmental impact, however it has a massive morale impact. Christmas/holiday gatherings are becoming rare. This may be to the geographical location, but this seeps into the teams and their BAU engagement (or lack of) with each other. There are teams around that try to work on this, but their impact is negligible and only seems to be a band-aid the company can use to retort and critique.
Retention
The company haemorrhages talent. It does not train proactively, it is all reactive. It does not create stepping stone positions, out of fear that extra responsibility would require more (deserved) pay. We have constant emails about vacancies for technicians, scientists and high level management positions. As noted before, this is a pay-review issue. A close personal friend joined the company before I did and worked in the laboratories. He mentioned the pay was way below competition and moved before a year was out. A suggestion would be deputy leaders/2ic of a team. That way new starters and long standing performers have something to aim for and the company addresses redundancy should leadership be absent for whatever reason.
Conclusion
While ymmv with the above, and altruism may be something of a salve, the company is best suited to those not looking to build capital or launch their career. It is worth revisiting when you are established in your area of expertise, but if you start here you will be treated like an input goblin and thought of as such.
