Friendly visit from someone who works for another O&G major and has questions about a potential career with Exxon....1) how bad is the culture? 2) does Exxon pay a bonus structure similar to Valero, Chevron or Marathon? 3) does the executive leadership team value morale of the front line workers?
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Just like 1983, 1986, 1994, 1997 2015, 2020. Layoff then morale dips then people quit...Salaries stay low...THEN HIGHLY RANKED QUIT... Management panics throws money at everyone. Then Layoff cycle starts again. This business is cyclical. Get used to it. If you survive, you will retire with millions
I've worked for two supermajors in my career and one other very large independent. Exxon is in a league of it's own in terms of red-tape and corporate BS. It was truly astounding seeing how many manger level types making $200k plus who had no idea how things worked at a tactical level within their departments. I really could not believe incompetence of the overall leadership from first lines all the way up through c suite folks.
Exxon doesn’t do bonuses but it’s claim to fame has been their base pay is so much higher than all the other O&Gs that it doesn’t need to....Valero paid a bonus of 97% of target this year, Chevron 75% of target and Marathon 120% of target. I know people at MPC and Valero that grabbed bonuses in the neighborhood of $40k-$60k....neither of these companies cut their 401k match either.....I wouldn’t work at Exxon unless you like and thrive in toxic cutthroat work environments. You are better off at a downstream major or Chevron...
@nil+19XP01Mj Exxon supervisors and managers are the most worthless, spoiled, incompetent, immature and entitled people I have seen anywhere. I quit and I if I could turn back the clock, I would never have joined such a company which has no value for technical work and rewards flatterers and sycophants and bullies. You deserve to fail for your incompetence.
ExxonMobil has had a culture of spoiled entitlement since the Rockefellers were in charge and it was merged with every other oil company. It's always been enormously profitable. It had a huge offshore portfolio that's kept the gravy coming up until now. Every other industry had their crisis in the 70s when cradle to grave and pensions stopped existing. Every oil major, whether it's Shell, Chevron, BP, Saudi Aramco, or even services like Halliburton, Schlumberger had their come to Jesus moment where the useless dregs who were used to doing nothing and didn't know anybody had to be winnowed out. XOM has been shifting from downstream to midstream and upstream for a long long time. The cost of extracting oil has been going up and up, and with the flood of petroleum in COVID, the cost of doing business is above the revenues for the very first time.
This is the very first time all the entitled bums at Exxon have had to face the music. There's going to be a lot of crying and whining, and some percentage will drop out of the industry, just like happened at every other company in the past, much more so for the mid majors and smaller. Everyone else has been used to this for a long time. If you want to join a company of whining crybabies who have to face a lack of job security for the first time in their lives, this is the place to be. It's still one of the cushiest jobs around.
OP - have been with XOM for over 10 years. I have friends at Chevron with whom I frequently chat. I can tell you Chevron management has more integrity than XOM management. As employees are beginning to realize that, the culture at XOM has gotten cynical and super toxic.
Just like everywhere else it's not what you know but who you know. If you didn't s— up early and often when you were a fresh faced kid who did some proper networking, it's going to be harder going now, but you can still schmooze at BBQs even as an older employee if you talk the talk. Learn to golf and grill, play racquetball with your boss's boss. If you're sitting your a– in an office, unless you're figuring out geology or something, none of this is very hard.
Only executives receive bonuses and other high-end perks at ExxonMobil. Base salaries on most bands are comparably lower than Chevron. Culture is eat or be eaten, me-first, back-stabbing, brown-nosing, generally toxic. I've been with ExxonMobil for more than 2 decades and I have colleagues who moved to CVX and Shell and we compare notes.
Value morale? They don’t care at all. They use words like entitled to describe workforce. They insulate themselves from feedback. They don’t change a broken system because they benefit from it. They don’t care about us. If they could they would get rid of all of us.
No bonuses at Exxon unless you are one of the very few high level managers or ranked in top small percentage. Experienced hires are not seen as high potential as that is reserved for those who hired in at 22 with a BS degree.
I recently talked to some friends with Shell and Chevron. I think all three companies are very similar....with all the problems that come with large companies: Red tape, large middle-management layers, lack of transparency on decisions from above, etc.
That said, I think Shell and Chevron employees know it is just a job. They check-out at the end of the day. At ExxonMobil, we’ve had a career of being told: ExxonMobil hires for life, This is your company, Employees are our most valuable asset. ...yet the actions of the company through Covid clearly tell us otherwise.
So a lot of the criticisms you hear are people falling out of the ‘honeymoon’ stage....even if that honeymoon stage has lasted 5, 10 or 20 years.
With recent cuts, I do think ExxonMobil compensation is less than Shell and Chevron....and no bonuses. Right now, they are asking you to enter into a marriage for life with a cubic zirconium on a gold-plated brass ring. The gold will scratch off quickly.
Corporate Socialism/Capitalism - it is turtles down from there.
Just the nature of things.
It's the same at all the oil majors. O&G is a much smaller world than you think. It's an incestuous industry where the contractors and vendors work for everyone, and all the people who get laid off after every oil downturn just hire on with whomever.
Bad, no, no