Thread regarding ExxonMobil Corp. layoffs

Pi-s off the wrong person, by such outrageous behavior such as correcting a sponsored person in a meeting when they make an ignorant statement - you can get PIP’d.

Not a good working culture. We have so many managers leading groups about which they have zero experience or knowledge that they are dangerous. We need to feel free to correct them without fear of reprisals/PIP.

Very interesting that the original post was copied word for word from a response I posted to a different post a few weeks ago.

The PIP system has been weaponized and can be used against anyone without a sponsor.

This new culture is inspiring many to quit. Even excellent engineers with zero chance of getting PIP’d are quitting because the PIP-forced ranking system is so insulting/degrading/non motivating.

If you RE in Annandale beware, lots of insecure department heads / managers especially in Research Operations and CSR . The young Researchers and PHD’s are running for the doors. We have a dumpster fire here. Shut the hydrogen down nothing coming out of this site for years.

pqa+1e5epgSJ
That’s hogw_wash. In the current set up, the quality of your work and any “improvements” you make to it have zero value for ranking. Your supervisor has first to put the highly sponsored HiPos on top of the ranking, to protect his career. Beyond that, he/she’s a little dictator, who can do anything to your ranking, with immediate, catastrophic results for your career and zero review or appeal. If you say something that sounds like independent thinking, something that crosses him, you’re fried.
If you’re older and competing with young supervisors and managers in CL28-29, they will always accuse you of not having sufficiently wide impact with your contributions, when that is obviously role-dependent, and we have our roles assigned -that’s how they keep you at the bottom, regardless of your work. But that is soon not going to be an issue anymore, because all these remaining experienced workers framed as low-performers will be put in NSI and forced to retire anyway.
The ranking system is half fake, half crazy subjective. After the changes in 2020 it has become impossible to manage for regular employees.

@ucm+1e5epgSJ I clearly said if you do go the extra mile and do more, you’ll have a better career. At no company will you be promoted for doing 1-2 small things. That’s called doing your job. Doing 3-4 medium improvements is the extra mile to get you promoted to high CLs. Doing 3-4 medium things can get you to a CL29 in EMIT. That’s not much work for a good salary. CL30+ sure you need to kiss a-s. If you go ask any company high level manager how they got the job after a few beers, they’ll say some luck, some skill, and some a-s kissing.

And honestly, a-s kissing should be a part of that role. Your job at that level is to ask the CEO for more funds, to work on large deals and work with other high level people to get them to do things they don’t want to. That requires a-s kissing.

@pqa+1e5epgSJ - on your comments : If you just do the job that was assigned to you, and make 1-2 small improvements to the process each year, you’ll be just fine. If you want to reach the higher positions, you’ll make 3-4 bigger improvements.

This is my problem. Even if you go extra mile, work harder and more productive, at the end your supervisor will say - that is your job and you are in the middle.
Hence a lot of people get frustrated because they will then belong to the "same group" of people that just doing their basic work.
At the end, it will just demotivate people to do more and go the extra miles, because the one that get promoted and have visible assignments are the one with sponsors!

I obviously can’t speak to your experience. But in mine, we had a lot of “SME” people who in reality sucked. They were regarded highly, but once you stuck a real problem in front of them they’d just claim it couldn’t be done, it was a system limitation. Which was complete bu-----t. Once we brought in a few contractors and new hires, they completed things that were “impossible”. Most people went on believing the SMEs were good, but management found out their lack of skill and that they would take credit for the success of a project when it really had nothing to do with their “expert” knowledge. This largely came up when it was time for PDS reviews, and there was conflicting information. So they got PIPed finally. A lot of these people were older, because we promote people based on age and we don’t have SMEs who are 25, we only have them when they are 40 etc.

If you just do the job that was assigned to you, and make 1-2 small improvements to the process each year, you’ll be just fine. If you want to reach the higher positions, you’ll make 3-4 bigger improvements. It’s really not a complicated system. Now if you want to hit executive level ok sure get a sponsor and BS your way to the top. But it’s really not that hard to avoid PIP and have a good career here.

Who's your sponsor