Vantaggi
French style work atmosphere, you work at your own pace as long as you get the job done. Excellent benefits and perks. The campus was wonderful: great gym, excellent cafeteria, well designed, no parking issues ever. Projects were exciting and I enjoyed working on them. The pay was higher than most companies.
Svantaggi
They don't offer a lot of incentives to take classes or develop your skills within the company. This is perhaps why mobility within the company is soo limited. People are often promoted just based on default reasons, rather than actual skills. As a result you had a lot of very under-qualified people in high level positions, while some of the best and brightest worked as contractors. My boss was an excellent manager, however some of the other managers we worked with were unbelievably incompetent. Not to downplay someone who doesn't have a college education, however I noticed a large percentage of people in very respectable positions didn't even graduate college. Also, its a decentralized company, which is good in some ways, however it prevents the employee from gaining important skills relevant towards the changing global market place. The future of the pharmaceutical industry is in specific emerging economies, I would have really preferred to gain some relevant experience in dealing with these countries.