Last year was a close call: if the company would have not borrowed money to pay the dividend or if the dividend would have been under threat from the pandemic for another year, the share price would have tumbled into lower single digits and EM would have had to “merge”, with catastrophic consequences for the employment of not only regular workers but at least middle management as well (see the case of BP buying and eviscerating Amoco and Arco in the late ‘90s).
The 2020 layoff was scary for the management because we’ve seen the “fraternity” rules broken. Normally during downturns supervisors and low-level managers might be reassigned to “technical positions”, where essentially they do nothing useful, since they have no technical skills, boss around the people who do the real work and are served self-important softball duties.
This time the rules got broken and any manager/ex-manager with any blemish on their record got laid off, just like some lowly commoner who is not member of the intangible fraternity.
Now that the price of oil has risen and an upturn might be on its way, the previously scared mid-management is again showing its fangs. We see an exponential increase in self-congratulatory posts on LI and an avalanche of nasty posts here, telling us how good and beneficial the bloated PIP is for regular workers and how the disgusting low achievers have to be mercilessly identified and rooted out each year by our flawless ranking system.
Hi-pos and management, you better remember this: what most of you are is nothing. You owe your positions exclusively to sponsors, mediocrity themselves, who have “chosen” you before you could possibly show any meaningful results. Your technical skills are at best a smoke screen, because all supervisors (themselves members of the fraternity) know who you and your sponsors are and have given you softball assignments all the way to your promotion. You have grown in the ranks of the management not by taking any risk or achieving real results but exclusively by guessing what the people above you want to hear and keeping them “happy”, which is the national sport at EM. Your value as “managers” outside the company is laughable, because everybody knows the value of the self-reproducing EM “leadership”. On top of that now all of you have the distinction of presiding, as a group, over a staggering destruction of value at EM in less than a decade.
If an upturn is coming, you can be sure there’s also a next downturn down the road.
Your arrogant posts don’t fool anybody: you should be afraid for your jobs on this sinking ship. The cold water will get to you too.
24 replies (most recent on top)
Doesn’t matter if any of us agree with the process. We aren’t in a position to change it. Only thing we can do is vote with our feet.
“Life is not fair” - every dad everywhere
@1dud+1dsHsvgd
If that’s true, what does any of what you say have to do with the original post? How does it prove it wrong ? If you’re subject to, aware of and ready for a potential PIPoff, do you agree with the process ? Do you think it’s fair? Do you think it’s meant to make us better - to make you better? Do you see the management being subject to the same hypocritical process?
I am not a HiPo. I am ranked well currently but haven’t always been and don’t expect to always be. I don’t have a sponsor. Being ranked well doesn’t make you a HiPo. Your ultimate CL potential makes you a HiPo. I’ve been around long enough to realize I could be PIPD at any time or asked to leave when I hit 50. So I keep transferable skills up and have a large cash cushion saved up. I save for retirement so stopping working earlier than full retirement age won’t be the end of the world.
Stating every manager or supervisor thinks and acts the same way and obtained their role by being a bad person is lazy and intellectually dishonest. That is group label and victim mentality 101. They are bad I and we are good.
How is this about blaming a group? Is there any way to become a manager with EM other than the one described in the original post ?
@1crc+1dsHsvgd
“I’m not a HiPo”. I hope for you this is BS, otherwise you’re completely brainwashed.
@1adx+1dsHsvgd I work for a living. You may be living off the company, which is pretty much OP’s point.
I don’t have a sponsor. I am not a HiPo. I have no illusions of becoming an executive. Doesn’t mean I can’t have a good career even if that means I need to plan my finances so I am PIPd in my 50’s. Many people would love to quit working and retire in their 50s. Myself included.
We are all so negative. Ge-z. Please look at your bank account and see who you are living off! You Grow up!
Not all supervisor are bad. Problem is that the good one don’t get anywhere, they get filtered out.
@1bkr+1dsHsvgd
Where exactly do you think you would be now in your career without your sponsor? How well did that person get to know you before putting you on the golden list? How demanding were you supervisors? What do you think, did they know who your sponsor was? Maybe you care to answer to these specific questions instead of delivering the same boring drivel we hear every day.
Blaming a group / group identity politics is a bunch of BS. The responsible sovereign individual will take action rather than adopting a victim mentality.
@1vvx+1dsHsvgd Here is something specific. If you say everyone does something or everyone behaves a certain way you are lazy and wrong.
WSJ NEWS EXCLUSIVE BUSINESS
Jan. 31, 2021
Exxon, Chevron CEOs Discussed Merger
Exxon’s Darren Woods, Chevron’s Mike Wirth spoke last year about combining their companies in what could be among the largest corporate mergers ever
With a post like that, we’re sure to see some angry managers responses. It would be interesting if they have some specific things to say instead of the usual “go work somewhere else if you don’t like it”. That stuff he can hear at each and every town hall.
Another post with sweeping over generalizations. Don’t be bitter. Take your talents where they will be appreciated if they aren’t at ExxonMobil.
What is he driveling about now?
Didn’t ExxonMobil acknowledge that they had preliminary merger talks with Chevron, during the bottom of the pandemic ?
@xzb+1dsHsvgd
What you say about management easily finding jobs was maybe 20-30 years ago, when the company had a solid record of getting things done. OP has a point, now everybody associates EM and its sad shrinking with massive management failure. Remember the article about the Cube being a symbol of downfall. You think that encourages anybody to hire former EM managers?
Dude ExxonMobil is an epitome of incompetent people and management. No where else you will find an system so efficient in hiring talented people and rapidly brainwashing them to be id--ts and minions. Top to bottom it is simply pathetic.
You’ve made some incredibly poor assumptions about what the market would have done, and what our response would have been if prices did somehow stay lower (although everyone knew they would be coming back quickly). And I’ve seen far more management people quit and find another job at other companies looking to learn how to grow and scale to something our size. Actually a lot of the technical people in my area are struggling to find something else with the same pay because of how archaic our tech is. Nobody wants someone with old skills, and not in the US. Some specific areas where it’s new tech have lost a lot of technical people, but for a vast majority of our technical folks, they are overpaid because we don’t pay based on role, but by CL and age. I dislike the over management we have, but they have done much better in finding new roles than most technical people have.
Yup, my company has resumes full of these XOM folks that have been rejected with the reason being "Do not meet functional experience".
Yup, recently one of the LI post was from an E&PS employee you merely posted under employment update banner stating how he remains with E&PS and now has a larger international scope and just wanted to provide that update to people. I mean come one, really? So it is just not manager or mgmt., the worker bees are also being and some already are brainwashed to post bu-----t like this.