Folks, we’ve got fresh material served by friendly managers crawling out of the woodwork after dark:
I can see how things are going on at work and I’m not going to change my opinions or base my job decisions on somebody saying here that the company is “good” or “bad”, but there’s indeed a flow of postings on this site trying to tell us how the company is better than we think. This probably provides an answer to often asked questions about the real size of attrition. Must be pretty bad.
Real, ordinary people posting on this board after have strongly different opinions and sometimes exchanges can get nasty, even vulgar. The people who push the “EM positive” messages are very different, they never get personal. Clearly they have been instructed not to start flaming wars but to influence.
Forget the clusterf_ck the company has become in the last two years, close your eyes and focus on the golden oldies.
It will get better. Don’t let negative thoughts corrode your healthy mind & career.
This is from the “EM is laying of people in Singapore” mega-thread. This message is literally spread everywhere now - you can smell the desperation.
So that’s why you get Fun Fridays, Halloween costumes and jeans in campus, as a token of our unwavering good faith. Meanwhile you’ll still get fake, forced ranking and oversized PIPs.
I never had to work with some sociopath hellbent on climbing at any cost, nor have I had a supervisor who fakes ranking to get the HiPos with high sponsors on top. None of my managers have been taking decisions that damage the company in the long term and be careful to move up and let others deal with the disaster.
2pkd+1dBHvCuD
I don’t know where you have worked your three years of experience (if this whole thing is real) but you sure are in a hurry to generalize based on one area and minimal experience.
The oil industry is a nasty one and for sure doesn’t pay anybody out of generosity. There’s a very good reason why it pays experienced people more, even if occasionally some happen not to deserve it. The industry often downsizes but is always careful to keep a hard core of experience - again, not out of altruism.
Your story, on the other hand, jives admirably with the sui-idal new strategy that this company has adopted - replace experienced workers with new hires, because they’re cheap and worked even better than the old ones, which seriously makes me think you’re precisely a professional troll.
If you and your story are real, imagine that there have been major downturns in the past and yet nobody has come up with an idi_otic strategy like this until now.
YEE works against your getting a raise, not the other way around. Once you start being blocked from getting a raise because of your age, you really start getting pay cuts because inflation effectively lowers your salary each year - no matter what you contribute.
That’s the thing though, they aren’t being treated as worthless. On the contrary, they’re being paid a lot. And with YEE being a salary component, they’re being treated favorably BECAUSE of their age.
We have worthless people at every age and useful people at every age. But the point is the company is saying that they’ll pay you more solely for the fact that you’re old. That to me sounds like age discrimination in favor of the older people.
They realized that they can do absolutely nothing and simply because of their age they’ll make a high salary and get an age based increase. And I don’t blame them for that. But don’t complain when your PIP is a little higher, because you’re not doing anything. If you want to be treated as something more than worthless, then be something more than worthless.
@2pkd+1dBHvCuD I do not think you are capturing the full picture, but you do have a point. The system sucks on both ends. We have both worthless and highly valuable 50 year olds. I am sorry you are working with some closer to worthless.
What you are not seeing is that almost ALL of your 45+ year olds are treated with the similar disregard except those on the hipo track for at decade or more. And yes some 50+ year olds are indeed worthless but there is also a third category….. they look worthless but in reality they have just realized they are f-d as far as the system goes so they are really dis-incentivized from contributing more……
As an employee with 3 years experience I take a massive issue with someone saying we discriminate AGAINST older employees. By every metric you want to use I contribute more than both of the 50+ year old people in my group, maybe even more than them combined. And I’m not a hotshot or incredibly talented, they just don’t have that many relevant skills and especially don’t have the desire to learn. Am I paid more than them? Not even close. Is there any way that I possibly could be paid near what they are with how our salary treatment is? Nope. Because upper CLs are only available to older employees and YEE is a part of the salary equation. Young people do all of the work for none of the pay. If you want to not be PIPed a little more than other groups, then let’s pay people by the value they contribute, not their age. You take the 70% pay cut and we won’t PIP you.
I have personally seen the age discrimination in the ranking process and had the unfortunate task of communicating drops in ranking to some great performers that should have moved up instead of being artificially pushed down.
Age discrimination at Exxon has always been systemic for older technical people. As they got to CL 28-29 and age over 50 and especially 55, their ranking was always dropped to get the young supervisors, managers and HiPos yet unpromoted high in the rankings, to back justify the choices made by their sponsors.
The difference was that in the past these highly proficient technical workers were never put at the very bottom and in danger of being let go, because somebody had to do the work.
Now the EM management drinks their own Kool Aid and puts these workers in the PIPs, because they take seriously the ranking that they have just faked.
An organization that is hypocritical and fakes ranking to justify the decisions of the higher-ups is in deep trouble, but when the managers start believing that their lies supersede reality the organization is doomed.
The sad thing is that Exxon used to be the premier oil company in the world, for real, and we were setting standards for the rest of the industry. Now, even when you look at the corporate troll propaganda, the best they can say is “we’re not (much) worse than the average of the industry”.
When even troll propaganda has to be scaled down, reality is grim.
Perfect description of the new EM, look it up on LI
Thank you, 2gff+1dBHvCuD, keep them coming!
The sad thing is so many people on here react based on emotion instead of rationality. They don’t use data or any logic in their complaints and rely solely on rumors that if you did 5 minutes of research on internal sites you’d realize are wrong.
They also adopt the “grass is greener over there” idea without having a clue what is really going on outside of their XOM bubble.
Yes, we were at the bottom of the pack and in a tight spot before the pandemic begun, but why should we punish the bad management who led us there when we can just reward them for continuing to lead us to further success?
Not all companies have forced ranking.
Assemble a team of 10 great people and none of them get ranked at the bottom. Not at EM!
1mup+1dBHvCuD
Thank you for delivering your troll material directly to this thread.
When you say you’re an experienced hire, what exactly is your experience focused on? Bootl_iking or brownno_seing ? Or maybe you’re a former contractor now hired permanently to “improve” the company facade?
Well, OK, we don’t have training, experienced peers, best relative job security in the industry and a real shot at a normal retirement for ordinary employees anymore, but we still have forced ranking, parasitic HiPos, inbred management and age discrimination. And the new oversized 8% PIP combined with All You Can Drop ranking is so sweet!
Age discrimination is a fact. I saw it in my first Supervisor assignment ranking session and when I inquired about how that person was moved down I was told that after 50 years of age, points are taken away from these late career guys and given to younger people just starting their careers. This was not related to performance.
I saw the discrimination, questioned it, and was told it was the norm. That norm prevailed in every ranking session that I attended over the years.
OP just quit and go experience working somewhere else if other places are so much better. As an experienced hire I can tell you you it’s the same at Exxon as it is at every other company I’ve worked at.
Either you’re just blind to how the world is or you’re some sort of Greenpeace troll or something
So you see, the PIP is indeed for personnel reduction but is not a layoff because layoffs are not about personnel reduction. Got it ?
HR or mangers coming to this site and making these comments makes me sick to my stomach. This shows you they don’t listen.
Just saw a picture of a female with a “healthy” chest on this site while reading this inane post. Thank you Troll McTroll!