Thread regarding ExxonMobil Corp. layoffs

Don’t know about other orgs but CSR should have been decimated a long time ago. Really junkie people pretending to be researchers or research managers here.

“I’m not hopeful that the reorganization will help EMRE and Annandale. We are a total failure (CSR, PPLE , Research Operations)”. Me neither

“Those days no answer and safe procedural stint was a sure shot way to move from supervisor to some manager level jobs.”
It is still the case. Full of those people.

I recall a bunch of supervisors at URC who basically did nothing other than discussing processes and safety. We had this really nice guy who became supervisor and manager etc. and he could not make any decisions or stood behind any new ideas. Their goal was to not cause any change and keep status-quo (of fake success) until their next assignment.

If you ask this particular supervisor a question outside of the procedural rule book you get a silence and zero opinion. Those days no answer and safe procedural stint was a sure shot way to move from supervisor to some manager level jobs. I can't recall a single manager or supervisor who showed any kind of backbone at URC.

It is simply pathetic and all these people are clear examples of why EM is what it is now - a company that ki--s innovation and brilliance of people and provides thrust to really fake personalities. To date most managers at UIS and others who came from and to various research organizations are continuing to do so. This inefficiency and fake careers have become their lives.

I’m not hopeful that the reorganization will help EMRE and Annandale. We are a total failure (CSR, PPLE , Research Operations) Laboratory Technicians , Department Heads, Technical are leaving weekly, We are wasting the corporations capital here in Hunterdon County. Need a total management shift . How long can this drag on,! I expect EMRE will shrink in a major way and head to Texas, or major outsourcing. There is a plan …..

Fire anyone and everyone who has worked longer than 3 months at any of these places and is less than 58 years old: RTD, CSR or EMRE. Employees from these places who are less than 56 should be saluted throughly with broom sticks.

@2sru+1eNg0PVx
The exact same thing happened in Chemicals!

Leadershit!

URC used to have great talent and it was fairly inspiring. Over the years, however, management decided that it needed more “business” focus. Year after year, HIPO managers and VPs went through like a revolving door. Every new manager reforged the place and set ambitious “new” goals and confused the technical staff. All failed but left in 1-3 years to a higher position. No accountability whatsoever. I have seen many technically strong employees either driven out or leave from frustration.

People embracing the dirty games will be promoted, focusing on real work will be eliminated!

Stop writing about things that you know only partially.
20-30 years ago EPR and then URC had a number of top scientists, yes, with PhDs. If you want to verify their value check the key developments in Petroleum Geology and Engineering during those days.
In the last 20 years research has followed the general process of d-mbing down of EM. A lot of newly hired PhDs learned how to play the dirty EM game of promotion without any results. Check again the record of industry innovations and you will find nothing this time.
URC has also been used as a favorite parking spot for HiPos masquerading as “scientists” until they would get promoted in management, most of them only with Masters, not that it made a difference at this point.
The old scientists have all retired in the last four years and research has become a complete joke, with or without PhDs.

Hey URC was full of all those PhDs in the roles of planners, safety leads, ergo leads, and jokers called commercial advisors. What a donkey show.

@2sru+1eNg0PVx - completely on point. We've done the same thing in EMRE and to an even greater extent in Projects. BPO is a fungible joke... But that's what is recognised and celebrated.

Everyone hates research nerds, real men do real work. We get ittttttt in the 11,000 posts on this topic. Yawn

Basically, if people want to survive in this toxic system, they have to become bad!

@2sru+1eNg0PVx Very lucid and accurate description about URC and RTD. I fully agree with your assessment that the former EPRC had technical people who had depth, were respected and produced industry leading technical value in the 1970s,80s and 90s. 2000s and 2010s have been a $hit show at URC. The younger employees have developed intolerable attributes. 

You are incredibly correct about how most supervisors and managers essentially made a career by making no decision and doodling around without an answer when anything intellectual came their way. They would always hide behind processes and wait for their next assignment without taking any tangible risks. Lately URC/RTD has definitely become the worst place to have on anyone's resume. What is worse is employees from RTD are moving to other business units such as XTO and projects and literally destroying otherwise healthy normal work cultures at different parts of EM just by their presence.

To see how bad it has gotten at EM (overall), you don't need to look too far and only at RTD. Look at CSR in Annandale - it has all the problems of fungible and useless employees and management for the last two decades - without exception.

The skill development is a joke! You seem know everything but actually know nothing! Look at those chiefs, spes, pes. Most of them are fake experts!

@2sru+1eNg0PVx Great post! I am a PhD from URC and have expertise in a specific area. In the past years i have been helping numerous people resolve their technical problems. However last year I was forced to leave my area (I was asked to minimize the efforts in my area) . I used to enjoy my area so much and now lost interest to almost everything!

The post from @1mkg is spot on. The old EPRCo was viewed by both the best researchers of acedemia and industry as the pinnacle of career opportunity. You only got an offer and stayed employed if you were delivering on cutting edge business value. The EPRCo staff were world renowned experts that set the bar for much of the oil and gas technologies that emerged in 1970-1980-1990 decades. Look at the authors of the SPE monograph series across all topics, most have EPRCo with a leading presence. Then a funny thing happened - the word “fungible” was discovered by HR and senior management. The decades of 2000-2010- to present then seemed to be focused on developing fungible staff and fungible management - with outcome of collectively d-mbing down the entire organization, and unfortunately creating employees whom generally do not possess the requisite technical depth to be leaders either in their technical area or being effective in making individual risk management decisions as supervisors or managers. A retrospective analysis if ever performed, would show that idea of developing fungible employees actually drove performance to the lowest common denominator, hence a major reason the company lost ground to the other IOCs. The word “fungible”, coupled to the broader hiring emphasis, during the most recent decade on I&D, rather than maintaining focus on developing the most technically and business competent staff, continues to make the lowest common denominator even lower. This is why business decisions are slow to be made and the endless recycle on information is the norm before a decision is made. Many fungible managers have learned that making no decision is actually a decision and the embrace no decision making versus taking on personal risk in making the final decision. This employee development approach has been a conscious choice by HR and senior management, the unintended consequences have not yet been fully acknowledged. Unfortunately, do not hold your breath for the unintended consequences ever to be fully acknowledged, or the employee development system changed, to address this fundamental employee development problem.

The old EPR did great work. URC after the merger was one giant train wreck with no game changing advances. Has nothing to do with anti-intellectual and everything to with a game playing culture and reward system. Someone with some power figured out URC/ RTD was no longer producing ground breaking research that improved our business profitably and is shutting it down. Way over due!

XOM is anti-intellectual!

Those PhDs could have done fantastic technical work in other companies. But in XOM, they became either brown-noses or pathetic losers. Why?

PhDs from the top universities for sure with few caveats:

Lately it is impossible to recruit from top universities. And even among those good universities, we have managed to collect toxic, incompetent bottom of the barrel PhDs.

The only caveat is that lake you

Most of the PhDs from top university learn the system pretty quickly and actively participate in the charade. Who could blame them? Work on what interests them even if it has little to no value to the business, trips all over the world and higher pay and faster promotions than the real worker bees. It was a great gig while it lasted!

Wait now that CSRand RTD will come together. The creativity in BS will go through the roof!

I've no idea what any of those letters mean

This statement is so biased! You should blame the toxic culture of XOM! Those PhDs are from top universities and outstanding. But XOM only promotes the brown-noses and push aside the real experts!

Cut them lose. The so called PhDs will not get hired anywhere else.
Payback is a bee ch.

Wait for travels to start again. RTD researchers and abundant meaningless advisors will be lining up for international business travels on company dime with made-up excuses.

Worthless Supervisors will come out of hiding and preaching leadership behavior (doubt any of them know what normal human behavior is), holding many many meetings and asking for PowerPoint successes to claim pathetic victories.

CSR crusader has exposed the cesspool called Corporate Strategic Research in Clinton, New Jersey.

By any chance was RTD meant to be a short for RE--RDs?

@1mum+1eNg0PVx cesspool from NJ and Paulboro

If you think RTD is bad, wait until EMRE takes over UIS as part of CS&I. You have no idea of the cesspool from Fairfax.

Every URC manager should be prosecuted for stupidity and damaging the company by propagating meaningless work. Supervisors were consistently brainless figurehead. The entire thing called RTD has been a big sham.

So we can have managers like Woke Deal.
In the past, URC was a mandatory rotation for all climbers now VPs.
They left their mark by camouflage their ignorance behind terrible decisions, ruining years of research, and squandering potential and opportunity.