Vantaggi
The field of pharmaceutical research is a rewarding one. Covance employees really feel the meaning of "Bringing the miracles of medicine to market." For most of my time there, the company was a wonderful place to work. I left a little more than a year ago because that was no longer the case. Since then there have been facility closings and layoffs, many of which made no sense. They will be detrimental to the services that Covance will be able to offer its clients.
Svantaggi
The company became totally headquarters-centric. Most important decisions were taken from the business leaders who had successfully operated business units for years and put in the hands of highly-paid Princeton executives who had very little connection to the business and services. They went through a phase of trying to be just like GE -- hiring GE leaders wherever they could find them. That phase ended and now they are trying to be like Pfizer...which is not the business they are in. The spirit of teamwork and collaboration evaporated and it is now just a mean place to work.