this company is truly a mess

[Anonymous]

this place is a house of cards that is propped up by mega-cash for the exec team and board of directors to keep winning...

not too good a deal for anyone else...a paycheck yeah, but a big time road to no where...

i doubt this industry will attract "the best and the brightest" anymore...through the social engineering, and dumbing down of the industry, who would want to start this as a career, aside from the youngest, dumbest, most naive, most desperate out there?

 

[Anonymous]

You are probably right. I can't tell about other areas, but in R&D, the leadership is so bad you want to cry. Many good scientists are being led by a bunch of arrogant despotic leaders who would make Ghadafi proud. Sometimes I wish they were smarter, but now I am convinced they are plain dumb and can't manage the discovery process. Amazingly, within their tight knit circles you can hear the constant snickering and belittling of the poor legacy Schering-Plough dudes, not to mention the back stabbing to get rid of them. Why did they want to buy SP in the first place, to get into this mess with Vorapaxar and Remicade arbitration? Legacy Merck had troubles with the pipeline, now the twice as large new Merck have even worse pipeline problems.

Who's going to save us now. I have very little faith in Clark and Frazier, They seem to be oblivious to what's going on in R&D and want to pour more money into that black hole. I can see the day when Fred Hasan is going to come back to clean up the new Merck and package it for sale to...Hmmm...who?... may the Chinese?

 

[Anonymous]

Not the Chinese.
But maybe JNJ?

 

[Anonymous]

Look at it this way. Throughout the company you have leaders that don't know shit about the basics of running this business. How they got into their positions only God knows. But then they go compound their inadequacy by demanding alignment of their organizations to their various stupidities. Be proud that you are part of an organization that is a world-class demonstration of how little progress 90,000 people can make!

 

[Anonymous]

Not the Chinese.
But maybe JNJ?

That's is what I've been thinking. I just have this feeling that something is up over at JNJ.

 

[Anonymous]

This farce is not sustainable. Perhaps it crashes down when we finally extract all of the money from little old ladies who ultimately pay the executives' salaries.

 

[Anonymous]

This farce is not sustainable. Perhaps it crashes down when we finally extract all of the money from little old ladies who ultimately pay the executives' salaries.

you are so right...this truly is the fleecing of America's seniors...(and everyone else for that matter)

 

[Anonymous]

This farce is not sustainable. Perhaps it crashes down when we finally extract all of the money from little old ladies who ultimately pay the executives' salaries.

"We try to remember that medicine is for the patient. We try never to forget that medicine is for the people. It is not for the profits. The profits follow, and if we have remembered that, they have never failed to appear. The better we have remembered it, the larger they have been.“

Is the New Merck "We try to remember that medicine is all about profits. And we better rememebr only that"?

 

[Anonymous]

"We pretend that medicine is for patients. If we convince others that we believe this, the profits will follow."

 

[Anonymous]

"We try to remember that medicine is for the patient. We try never to forget that medicine is for the people. It is not for the profits. The profits follow, and if we have remembered that, they have never failed to appear. The better we have remembered it, the larger they have been.“

Is the New Merck "We try to remember that medicine is all about profits. And we better rememebr only that"?

yeah that quote was taken off the newsletter several years ago and not by accident. it's the only non-hypocritical thing merck has done lately. merck is not for the patients or the people and it's beggining to look like it's not even for the profits. It's certainly not for the employees.when you put the lawyers in charge, well you can begin to see the end.

 

[Anonymous]

Corporate Doublespeak. We have that famous quote splashed all over, especially when reporters come knocking to write an article about George Merck. Then we have the real Merck.

 

[Anonymous]

Not the Chinese.
But maybe JNJ?

Not J&J! They are way too smart to buy into this mess. Their business model is radically different from Merck. No Research at J&J, they buy from outside and develop the products for sales.

Merck is only good for the dogs because of the high level of incompetence in R&D for the last 10 years, appalling return on investment. The leadership is narrow minded, greedy, cronyism is rampant, only interested in power consolidation at the expense of innovation.

They have been wasting money on buying a string of useless companies to shore up their incompetence. The take over of Schering-Plough was the ultimate in stupidity, destroying both legacy Merck and legacy Schering-Plough.

The R&D leadership must be replaced, they must leave now.

 

[Anonymous]

I couldn't agree more. If we are to become anything like we once were, major changes in MRL are required. There is no obviously little accountability, just battles for power and cronyism.

 

[Anonymous]

yeah that quote was taken off the newsletter several years ago and not by accident. it's the only non-hypocritical thing merck has done lately. merck is not for the patients or the people and it's beggining to look like it's not even for the profits. It's certainly not for the employees.when you put the lawyers in charge, well you can begin to see the end.

When sharing best practices and/or mentioning product names on MVX to district mates became forbidden, that's when I knew shit was coming out of the brains of those on top. We were now supposed to CALL every F'en one to speak live. Yeah right. Merck has been dead before Vioxx. It's just taking a while for the pulse to stop.

 

[Anonymous]

I couldn't agree more. If we are to become anything like we once were, major changes in MRL are required. There is no obviously little accountability, just battles for power and cronyism.

The absolute proof of this is when marketing and management destroyed Vioxx with awful decisions then they established a golden parachute for themselves to payoff if anything happened to them! Field sales had to suffer for their bad decisions and they got a gift at the end of the rainbow! It's about that time that savy investors flew the coop!

 

[Anonymous]

Merck may one of the best examples of what happens when you allow your enterprise to be directed exclusively by lawyers and MBAs and those technocrats that think like wannabe lawyers and MBAs. They will convert any dynamic technical organization into a massive bureaucracy ultimately serving their own personal financial security. Bigger means more unlikely to be wiped out within their famous 5 year planning horizons. Bureaucratic means that they need not worry about being overwhelmed by internal talent. Terrific scientific talent is replaced by toadies with skill at presentations and jargon; skillful sales professionals, using real scientific results, are replaced by armies of "delivery reps" that spend their hours populating spreadsheets with their "bot" activities; manufacturing screw-ups that were shockingly intolerable 25 years ago are countered with "cutting-edge-lean-improvement-look-at-me" initiatives. Evidence that the company is convinced that experience and depth of knowledge is value-less is shown by the experience and depth of knowledge of those that it places in charge. These leaders actually know surprisingly little about what the company actually "does" but know a hell of a lot about how to climb corporate ladders. These lawyer/MBA geniuses are smug in their conviction that they are on the right track when all they are doing is recycling, in "monkey-see, monkey-do" fashion, the ideas of similarly confused lawyers and MBAs running other (failing) firms similar to theirs. These so-called leaders are the ultimate parasites. Any company and any industry that is led by these characters is dying and on its way to being dead, dead, dead.

 

[Anonymous]

Merck may one of the best examples of what happens when you allow your enterprise to be directed exclusively by lawyers and MBAs and those technocrats that think like wannabe lawyers and MBAs. They will convert any dynamic technical organization into a massive bureaucracy ultimately serving their own personal financial security. Bigger means more unlikely to be wiped out within their famous 5 year planning horizons. Bureaucratic means that they need not worry about being overwhelmed by internal talent. Terrific scientific talent is replaced by toadies with skill at presentations and jargon; skillful sales professionals, using real scientific results, are replaced by armies of "delivery reps" that spend their hours populating spreadsheets with their "bot" activities; manufacturing screw-ups that were shockingly intolerable 25 years ago are countered with "cutting-edge-lean-improvement-look-at-me" initiatives. Evidence that the company is convinced that experience and depth of knowledge is value-less is shown by the experience and depth of knowledge of those that it places in charge. These leaders actually know surprisingly little about what the company actually "does" but know a hell of a lot about how to climb corporate ladders. These lawyer/MBA geniuses are smug in their conviction that they are on the right track when all they are doing is recycling, in "monkey-see, monkey-do" fashion, the ideas of similarly confused lawyers and MBAs running other (failing) firms similar to theirs. These so-called leaders are the ultimate parasites. Any company and any industry that is led by these characters is dying and on its way to being dead, dead, dead.

This is spot on and I might like to add that our recent 1S meeting was a perfect example of a multi-million dollar waste exclusively to watch them all glad-hand each other endlessly over and over and spin the 'package' to the sales team like we were about to win the lottery. While are new leadership wants us to make billions by 2015 in growth, our middle management would like us to find out what our customers think about pay for performance and the recent (and to come) healthcare initiatives. I have news for those idiots that put this mess togther: If I spend my time talking in circles about healthcare, reform and P4P, I am NOT selling a damn thing. And, to try and fit P4P in some spin on why client X should use more of my product for patient B will truly piss them off. Good going. I want my 3 days back.

 

[Anonymous]

Merck may one of the best examples of what happens when you allow your enterprise to be directed exclusively by lawyers and MBAs and those technocrats that think like wannabe lawyers and MBAs. They will convert any dynamic technical organization into a massive bureaucracy ultimately serving their own personal financial security. Bigger means more unlikely to be wiped out within their famous 5 year planning horizons. Bureaucratic means that they need not worry about being overwhelmed by internal talent. Terrific scientific talent is replaced by toadies with skill at presentations and jargon; skillful sales professionals, using real scientific results, are replaced by armies of "delivery reps" that spend their hours populating spreadsheets with their "bot" activities; manufacturing screw-ups that were shockingly intolerable 25 years ago are countered with "cutting-edge-lean-improvement-look-at-me" initiatives. Evidence that the company is convinced that experience and depth of knowledge is value-less is shown by the experience and depth of knowledge of those that it places in charge. These leaders actually know surprisingly little about what the company actually "does" but know a hell of a lot about how to climb corporate ladders. These lawyer/MBA geniuses are smug in their conviction that they are on the right track when all they are doing is recycling, in "monkey-see, monkey-do" fashion, the ideas of similarly confused lawyers and MBAs running other (failing) firms similar to theirs. These so-called leaders are the ultimate parasites. Any company and any industry that is led by these characters is dying and on its way to being dead, dead, dead.

there it is. anyone asking now or in the near future: "whatever happened to merck?" need go no further than this post which should, in turn, be inscribed in granite and placed in whitehouse station or west point or were ever. this is the crux but is it fixable? sadly i say "no." along the lines of the old joke about bureaucrats and lightbulbs needing change, but they have to WANT to change.

 

[Anonymous]

Merck may one of the best examples of what happens when you allow your enterprise to be directed exclusively by lawyers and MBAs and those technocrats that think like wannabe lawyers and MBAs. They will convert any dynamic technical organization into a massive bureaucracy ultimately serving their own personal financial security. Bigger means more unlikely to be wiped out within their famous 5 year planning horizons. Bureaucratic means that they need not worry about being overwhelmed by internal talent. Terrific scientific talent is replaced by toadies with skill at presentations and jargon; skillful sales professionals, using real scientific results, are replaced by armies of "delivery reps" that spend their hours populating spreadsheets with their "bot" activities; manufacturing screw-ups that were shockingly intolerable 25 years ago are countered with "cutting-edge-lean-improvement-look-at-me" initiatives. Evidence that the company is convinced that experience and depth of knowledge is value-less is shown by the experience and depth of knowledge of those that it places in charge. These leaders actually know surprisingly little about what the company actually "does" but know a hell of a lot about how to climb corporate ladders. These lawyer/MBA geniuses are smug in their conviction that they are on the right track when all they are doing is recycling, in "monkey-see, monkey-do" fashion, the ideas of similarly confused lawyers and MBAs running other (failing) firms similar to theirs. These so-called leaders are the ultimate parasites. Any company and any industry that is led by these characters is dying and on its way to being dead, dead, dead.

This is pretty spot-on brilliant. Its truth is manifested by the performance of our government, largely populated by...you guessed it! Merck's demise is a given. Don't we dare put anything in writing or on digital messages, be they in writing or oral form, lest we expose ourselves to needless liability. Hell, let's do away with the damn MVX and computers then. I remember performing quite profitably when we didn't have "benefit" of them.

 

[Anonymous]

It is deeply discouraging and sad to listen to all of you with 25+ years. You all regret what Merck has become and can't wait for your retirement ticket out. I guess in a way I'm lucky not to have your perspectives or else I would probably also be losing my mind over the way things are now.