Novartis reviews

4.0

80% would recommend to a friend

(9,041 total reviews)
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Vas Narasimhan

86% approve of CEO

70% positive business outlook

Novartis has an employee rating of 4.0 out of 5 stars, based on 9,041 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have a good working experience there. The Novartis employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Pharmaceutique et biotechnologie industry (3.7 stars).

Reviews by job title

9K reviews
3.0
Jan 25, 2012
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Personally, I had a great experience, a chance to interact with people across the organization, support of management, great impact. I felt appreciated and have been rewarded with cash and stock bonuses. This can be a fantastic place to work in the right department with the right managers.

Cons

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.

1.0
Dec 3, 2023
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The campus is pleasant with many amenities. Flexibility of working from home. The salary is ok. IT is responsive and useful. Some colleagues care about patients. These are the same people who are competent, helpful and have integrity.

Cons

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.

1.0
Oct 14, 2021
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Good peers and good company benefits

Cons

Blue culture is just a name that gets stepped over every time an employee has been bullied by management. There is no system of bottom-up feedback that ensures the company culture is respected. In Dublin, I got to witness how nearly 20 colleagues quit/were let go (before they could talk to HR) with no follow-up from Novartis of such a high turnover of the staff in only one year for that team. I witnessed groups filed complaints to specific managers and how the same complaints were about to happen from different locations for the same managers and how those were silenced across. I saw how as soon as an employee had had enough and was about to talk, managers would quickly portrait him/her in reports with poor performance (that wasn´t true) so as soon as the case got high enough the employee´s version was discredited. I witnessed in meetings management saying "we will hire in India because they are cheap" in front of Indian colleagues who deserved much more than that type of treatment.

Viewing 70 - 72 of 9,041 Reviews

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