Congrats and good luck as you finish up. Like any large company, especially in senior management of a 100+ person department, there were the usual politics and aversion to risk-taking, which could be annoying, but I think what the vast majority of employees really liked was the sense of camaraderie and working towards a common goal of making medicines to improve health for society.
The George Merck ethos which was drilled into every employee's head still captures that spirit: "We make medicine for the people - 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." Sure, there were a few Company missteps, like the Vioxx scandal (although it was still the best pain medication ever created, as per the huge number of docs who complained when it was taken off the market), but that ethos was invoked regularly whenever there was a question of doing the best thing for our patients and future patients.
Made a lot of great friends there (several of whom I count among my best friends and still see regularly - including at last night's Whiskey Myers/Blackberry Smoke show at the Stone Pony) and still play in the softball league and get asked to come back and DJ my old department's parties a few years after retiring. I don't miss the daily grind of work (it's a very competitive place), but I miss working with highly motivated teams to solve complex technical problems and drive important projects to fruition.
And T must be on vacation, lol.
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