Vantaggi
Big and well funded brands. People rotate brands every few years or so - Associate Product Managers rotate every 12-18months, Product Managers and higher rotate less frequently. Lots of opportunities to take ownership of your brand early on. Nice work environment. Fun people. Great benefits (free merck prescription drugs), profit sharing, bonuses. Free product in product closets. On-site gym with low membership costs.
Svantaggi
The brands are big and well-funded, but there aren't many of them and they aren't particularly diverse. A lot of the brands are regulated by the FDA because they are used to treat different things (allergies, fungus, warts, foot pain etc). Navigating the legal review process (for marketing assets) at Merck has to be one of the most frustrating things that i've ever dealt with in life. The legal review team is much smaller than it needs to be and some of the people on the team are not as good at their jobs as they need to be. Very frustrating - especially when you're working with time sensitive projects (need to get coupon out the door yesterday, legal review team is booked solid for the next 3 weeks). Promotion from Associate to full Product Manager takes longer than it does at other CPGs. Expect to be an APM for 3 years before getting promoted. Some people get promoted faster, but as promotions are a function of business need and not entitlements for a job well done, you're gonna wait. Saw a few people get blindsided by negative feedback and let go. That sucked. These were nice people who worked hard, not slackers. Seems like some people got the short end of the political stick. Don't assume that everything is going well just because they appear to be. Ask for feedback on an ongoing basis. The Consumer Care/OTC division of merck is very small when compared with other parts of the business. This doesn't mean that Merck doesn't invest in the consumer division, but it means that other parts of the business are much larger and they make a much larger contribution to the bottom line. When it comes to Merck making investments for growth, Consumer Care won't get as much attention as the Rx business. Summit is not easily accessible by mass transit if you want to live in NYC. There is a shuttle that leaves from Newark and goes to Summit - a good number of people take this. Driving to NJ by car in the morning isn't that bad, driving back to NYC in the afternoon/evening can be very frustrating because of the unpredictability of the traffic (sometimes terrible, sometimes really terrible).