Pros
Novartis dedicates a lot of time, money, and effort into training their employees. I had a total of seven weeks of professional sales and product training that were all done away from home. I hired right out of college and given a company car, a corporate credit card, a fantastic salary for a 22 year old, and excellent benefits. Novartis even paid for 5 sessions of counseling when I was going through some personal trouble. I saw and did things while working a Novartis that I wouldn't have been able to do any where else. My first day on the job I was flown to Vegas for a large meeting. I went to Vegas twice, met the cast from Organ County Choppers, met Joe Montana, met another famous basketball player, and got a picture and an autograph from all three.
Cons
Becuase Novartis is such a large company it is easily for employees to get lost in the machine. Your personal sales bonus was determined by how hard your coworkers work more than your own. In other words, eight of us had to work to reach a certain sales goal so that we could get our sales bonus. But if three people were not working at all of if they quit and there were vacancies in the team, we would still be held to the same sales goals. Novartis applied a "one size fits all" sales model all over the US. We was frustrating because if something worked well in Dallas it must work well in Seattle, even if it clearly didn't. When this was brought to upper managements attention nothing was done about it. Additionally Novartis expected you to do about 10 to 15 hours of administrative clerical work a week, but you were not allowed to do the work between the hours of 8 and 5 because at that time you were supposed to be in the field making sales calls. On top of that you were expected to do approximately five late night dinner programs a month on your own time, This crushed any work/life balance. I left Novartis by choice. I was not fired or pushed out so none of what I said comes from unresolved bitterness. These are the reasons why I chose to leave.