I am currently not in Houston. I’m in the USA but supporting field activities. I am hearing rumors that plan is to slowly move all Houston based engineering jobs to India. Are others hearing this as well? So hard to tell rumor from fact these days. Probably best to plan for it to happen as any of us can be PIPd at any time anyway.
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If someone in Asia or Latin America can do your job at half the cost, your job will disappear. COVID remote/WTH has taught us how to work remotely and how to work globally. Most of our KL & Singapore engineers are very GOOD. They have an ASIAN work ethic and many are far better than our US counterparts. That is true in India, Budapest, N—ria, Angola, Russia, UK, Australia and BA and all other locations with engineers and geos cheaper than AMERICANS. Many of our international employees are from GREAT international universities, like MIT, Princeton and Stanford or Cambridge , Oxford, Beijing University, Singapore, Tokyo University (top 50 universities), but they do not have visa to work in US.
@1akv+18ilo3aj exxonmobil Singapore is just one more of the EM subsidiaries, like Imperial in Canada, etc. they are laying-off permanent employees and then hire temporary or sub-contract cheaper workforce.. see what Shell did in Beijing few years ago (same assets and same number of employees but now with +60% of staff is outsourced).
@nsi+18ilo3aj - Asian talent never complains? Is that why the "Exxonmobil Singapore is laying off employees" thread has over 600 replies and 300 votes and completely overshadows every other thread?
My partner is starting a new business in the tech industry and she hires freelancers based in Asia, they are talented, cheap and never complain when the coffee machine is broken..
no surprise if large corporations do the same for 99% of their staff..
EM and major oil companies have their days counted, in my humble opinion they know this was gonna happen several years ago, it was just covid their perfect excuse to start getting leaner..
teach your kids asian culture of saving money, been healthy, austerity, the world is more competitive everyday
I don't think long term engineering is going to go away. I think that technical experts in the US likely will. Only to be replaced by a bunch of engineering generalists in the stateside to combine all the technical information together.
@xle+18ilo3aj - Fully agree. I think it comes from Management Consulting company now calling the shots to create good perceptions to Wall Street. There will always be a core group of US technical staff overseeing it
TMTS and HW3 are about moving the jobs to Asia. Management calls it Business Transformation but it’s further layoffs. On one hand we hear there won’t be more layoffs in 2022, but I heard one of the managers saying that in 2021, one of the priorities for our organization will be to staff up KL office. To stay flat within headcount, there will be “offsetting” in other countries. “Offsetting” = more layoffs. Lying through their teeth must have the purpose of keeping control and having people engaged until transfer of duties overseas is complete. I guess technically Exxon won’t have layoffs, because US jobs lost will be compensated with new jobs created in Asia.
If a low-cost operating company took control, within no time, most of the people on campus will be out of their jobs (at least on the downstream side). They don’t need these corporate engineers and advisors sitting and telling people the operating units how to run. There may be some but not armies of people. Besides, low-cost operating companies don’t do pie-in-the-sky research either and so much of that will be eliminated. In effect, even without shipping any jobs abroad, management from other frugal companies, if they were to take over, they would eliminate so much waste and fluff. One only wonders how this place makes money at all. These stringent discipline and frugality should have been the norm decades earlier but better late than never!
I cannot confirm if it is true but have been hearing this for almost two years.
Complete by 2024. Not just Houston. Company wide. Yes, its true
Older, experienced engineers can run circles around BTC and are charged with "knowledge sharing". We'll see through the transition. The younger or less developed engineers in US who want to be mainly technical should seriously consider moving on. The Company vision is not for you.
If you are young
Run fast
Run far
Run as soon as you can
It is much easier to make a move and leave now than after you have been at EM for many years and have kids etc to worry about.
What is the time frame you are hearing this will occur over? A few years or decades?