Thread regarding ExxonMobil Corp. layoffs

Life is tough, everyone is trying to fake their way into a better life. It is not unique to ExxonMobil. It is human nature.

Before,

commoners got PIPed,
commoners had 7% match removed,
. incompetent management was called out in a public forum,

no one was complaining and everyone was ga-ga with the status quo. So take the blame and move on

Headcounts of managers at our research organizations need to be reduced for the following reasons:

The professors at the universities DO NOT need managers to do research. Why do we need?
None of the Nobel price winning discoveries are results of "management".
In leading universities, the professors take turn to serve as department chair and we should do the same.
The managers do not do real work and they create overheads for research, making research expensive at our organization

Perhaps 10% RTD like employees deserve keeping but make sure to find the rest 90% including both current and previously graduated to other organization URC/RTD employees and show them the highway. Donkey show needs to be over for once a beautiful company to survive.

As someone who was in RTD, I won't pretend that the organization was 100% hyper efficient. It wasn't, and inefficiencies should be reduced no matter where they exist in ExxonMobil. But let's not throw the baby out with the bath water. No R&D at all means no long term strategy or competitive advantage, which means in five to ten years ExxonMobil will be getting consistently beaten in all metrics: interpretation cycle time, recovery rate, etc. (Well, moreso than we already are now...) The best R&D groups, IMO, work closely with one or more business units to both solve the BU's immediate technology needs as well as generate ideas for long term improvements to the business. I think if more research groups adopted this workflow, RTD would be seen in a less harsh manner by the rest of the company.

Regardless, don't forget who the real enemy is. It's not the workers to your left or right, and it certainly isn't the people below you. It's who is staring down at you from above. If we get divided, then they win. That's the idea behind making the layoffs "performance-based." They want employees who remain to blame the cuts on their coworkers' poor performance; not the ineptitude of ExxonMobil's management.

And the final step in the secret layoff plan was for the Company to get the employees to bicker amongst themselves ...

Get rid of Corporate Research Organization.  Why bother hard working value creating employees? In CSR, to be a section head, planner, lab director, or above these are the essential quality:

Extremely low intellectual and technical abilities
Be a selfish psychotic human 
Be good at s—ing to higher level management while crushing people around and below you, 
Socialize with and constantly nod to higher level management while doing no real work

Just look at the quantity and quality of publications from all. There is zero impact from the entire organization to the business and the world. Only publication they get is by few low life's going around throwing money on people and force attending few meetings to get their names in others work. 

Looks can matter when one higher up selects Supervisors.

@1amy — sounds like my project lol. Hired on 2 years ago and still trying to clean up the sh–show the previous person left behind.

Here is an interesting story:
Once upon a time, there was an employee in an Upstream research organization. Mediocre in every aspect but had a burning constant complex to prove to big bosses to make up for whatever he thought he was missing. Over years, he fudged data in his research on an important project to show the project as success. Eager. young management and participants claimed victory, took their celebratory rewards in performance ranking and moved on. Few years later a fresh batch of employees started to use the technology and found nothing made sense and the data could not be reproduced. Next level of management didn't want to blot their career path so they shoved it under the rug and deceivingly started a new project in the name of improvement to fix the problems.

In the meantime the employee who fudged and shamelessly s—ed up to bosses kept moving up and made it to supervisor. Others who ignored it continued their management ladder.

To be safe let's just say that any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. But if this were true, could you imagine the same people are not selecting the bottom performer to save the company? The company was supposed to be saved from them.

Cutting R&D or RTD is not the option. Making them more efficient like any other organization in EM is the answer. There are many companies that completely got rid of their R&D or outsourced their R&D using the same logic that is advocated here. Result was more inferior results long term for the company that they had to rebuild their R&D a decade later with more cost. If you want to have long term competitive advantage, you need to have a technical superiority that you cannot get without competent, technical organization.

Look, the comment about organizational effectiveness improvement is true for everyone including R&D and we as a company need to do that in every department, every function to make ourselves stronger.

Chop, chop, chop.
His Holiness Savior Mr. Darren Woods please take note. RTD, CSR and more.

Ha! There are also folks from Global Ocean Science & Policy. They have luxury life indeed, traveling biz fair across the globe, staying in 5stars hotels, getting expats benefits and great offices on the campus. FYI: you know what they do? they watch whales ... 😂🤣

There are currently entire teams of people riding the technology train in made up positions because they have no other work. Is this really the best way to utilize our people? Posting to sites like yammer all day? If your actually work (some of us do) you don’t have time to sit on this c-ap all day.

I think the real fat is in the parasites of the 6th floor. Those who cuddle to the bosses, in PR, Public and Government Affairs, Community Relationships, Social Media, and even HR.
Who doesn’t get sick of those as2h0les spreading their hurrays in Yammer. Those producing podcasts, those moderating townhalls, those managing twitter and the other pages none care to even read.
I especially have enjoyed putting rules for people like Ortiz and campus communications so their emails go straight to the trashbin.

Who’s going to pretend we care about climate or energy transition if they get rid of research?
What’s next, take a test on climate denial and expunge all who believe in science?

Darren did say that Exxon is a technology company, and there are a ton of managers riding the digital transformation wave.

Exxon is a lot more than just the Bubbas and roughnecks in Midland and elsewhere. Don’t get me wrong, we do love our poorly educated, but they are easy to replace. Brain drain is a whole different game.

Permian was a joke of a hostile takeover

what needs to go first is those lame commercials that come from XOM. We would be so much better off as a company without them. They sound so fake and they completely miss the mark on making any connection with the audience... they are cringe worthy, and if I didn’t work here I’d stop buying anything from Exxon just because of the fakeness lol. And the videos that are internal like the have 1 min ones could go also. XOM people are just in love with being on camera and self promoting themselves... but most sound so genuinely fake. If we cut all this work we’d probably save a whole lot of money.

Couldn't agree more with the the sentiment of ridding ourselves of CSR. Based on what I've seen and heard at the "chalk talks," by and large those folks make boat loads of money while largely contributing nothing to the corporation's bottom line. On top of that, most are conceited a$$holes trying to prove who knows more vs getting actual sh*t done. If the corporation really wants to save some cash, how about ridding itself of useless programs like the infamous algae biofuels one, with EM being at least $300M deep, but my guess is even more when you look at the entirety of it including all the expensive advertising. What about all the other fundamental research programs that go on for decades with no outcome? Come on, time to give a bunch of these "dog & pony show" projects the axe.

I love the id–ts stalking the lay-off boards just to say get over it. Next year they likely won’t have jobs either. Be glad your getting out now. It’s only gong to get worse.

Take it up with Exxon. Whining on here isn't going to make a difference.

RTD is a small component of UIS

LOL try drilling a well without UIS. And I’m not talking in the Permian.

By calling UIS a research organization you have shown you know nothing about the company functions and what other people actually do, which disqualifies you from commenting on what’s right for the company. You should stop embarrassing yourself and go back to your silo