Great benefits but very top heavy organization - Senior CRA AbbVie Employee Review

3.0
7 Aug 2021
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

The benefits are hard to beat. Great people. If you don’t like travel that’s great because they are getting away from travel for CRAs (and I mean in normal, non-COVID times). Trip report writing is barely existent.

Cons

Very low pay for this industry. Very disorganized- there are too many systems that no one really knows how to use, are redundant, yet you are expected to use. Monitoring is a low priority - even though that’s your job title. Being a good monitor is not truly recognized when it comes to performance review, only “initiatives”, like being on round tables etc. There are a tremendous amount of calls just to have calls. Communication is a challenge, as everything must be said in the correct way and to the correct person (no talking to someone not in your escalation chain.) When it comes to oncology, upper management is far too involved in what CRAs do and they refuse to listen to input from experienced CRAs. They create business “solutions” that do not work well in the medical field. The quality of sites are not important as long as you get sites that promise to give you patients. Everything is about enrollment and query numbers. What actually happens once patients are on study gets far less attention.

avatar
AbbVie Response
4y
Thank you for sharing your feedback regarding your experience working at AbbVie. Extensive policies and procedures are put in place at AbbVie to ensure safety and quality for our patients and our employees. We encourage employees to provide feedback to their managers and other leaders so we can continue to improve. Please reach out to HR Connect to discuss your feedback in more detail. Concerns can be reported anonymously.

Explore other reviews about AbbVie

5.0
18 Jun 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

love the culture at AbbVie and they have great benefit packages.

Cons

Huge Territories and long hours

1.0
3 Jul 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Big Pharma Name Recognition: Having Allergan/AbbVie on your resume provides industry visibility.

Cons

Extreme Governance & Bureaucracy: Allergan is paralyzed by red tape. There are far too many governance layers just to get basic regulatory strategies vetted out. Flawed Compliance Infrastructure: Product approvals are heavily dependent on documentation. However, current records are completely inadequate. Management fundamentally fails to understand how these systems are interlinked. Unqualified & Absentee Leadership: The leader with department oversight completely lacks the expected knowledge and experience for this level, making her a massive liability. She is rarely in the office but knows exactly how to work the system. She aggressively pushes for unnecessary, in-person regulatory meetings solely to accumulate personal travel points rather than to mitigate actual business risks. Disastrous Transition Management: The leadership transition wreaked total havoc across the department. Negligent HR Department: HR shows zero interest in investigating why good talent is leaving the company. Alarming Job Security Signs: It is a massive red flag when a leader encourages employees to apply for roles entirely unrelated to their expertise, or receiving automated AI notifications about job openings outside your department.

See reviews by: Helpful|Rating|Date|All