Novartis reviews

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.

The lack of integrity is blatant: towards patients first and this is also reflected in relationships between colleagues. The word “accountability” is completely unknown. I noticed inappropriate behavior from several Global directors, including: the use of a condescending tone, sexist and/or age-related comments, and homophobic “jokes.” Examples: one who mentions his genitals, another who says “If you don’t call me [nickname], it’s because we haven’t spent the night together yet”. I highly recommend seeking help outside the company first before contacting Speak Up, the department officially responsible for investigating and acting on violations of the internal Code of Ethics and/or the law. From what I've seen, Local teams are more competent than Global teams. Some people talk, hide their ignorance behind their arrogance and enjoy giving orders while others do the work. The Global strategy is unclear, without vision – although this probably varies by therapeutic area. Advancing a project that is important to patients and defined as a priority is a feat. A new organizational change is underway, which is surprising considering the one that happened only a few months ago. Employees fear for their place, that’s understandable. This makes ego problems worse. There's nothing worse than coworkers projecting their insecurities onto you.