I don’t work at XOM, but I am an exploration manager and another company. I just saw on LinkedIn that XOM is hiring operations geologist, petrophysicist, and reservoir modeling geologists at your office in India? Are these expat positions or has Exxon fallen so low to outsource these important critical technical roles?
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You’re getting loonier and loonier. First you decided that I’ve written a thesis (nope), then that it was in Sequence Stratigraphy (nope), then that it didn’t help me find oil (??!!).
With this kind of insightfulness, you should be at least at VP level.
Learn to read. They said the “…thesis you wrote” isn’t helping you find oil. They didn’t say that sequence stratigraphy never help anyone find oil. Sequence stratigraphy did cause a paradigm shift decades ago. Your contributions probably did a lot less, or nothing at all. Except perhaps to give you a false sense of superiority and entitlement.
“ The masters or phd thesis you wrote on sequence stratigraphy isn’t helping you find oil”.
Actually, it does. Funny how you chose an example showing your complete ignorance. Sequence Stratigraphy revolutionized how oil is found and after being put together at EPR it has swept the entire oil industry, being a critical instrument in every company ever since.
Your arrogance, condescendance and absolute cluelessness clearly show that you’re a manager or at least a HiPo going places in EM’s rotten system. Good luck continuing with EM and BTC cheap geoscientists!
As for geoscientists coming from all over the world (including India) to get degrees in the US, don’t worry, they will be fine in O&G companies that, unlike EM and only EM, don’t fall for idio_tic consultant advice of replacing their highly skilled workers with sub-average cheap ones in Bangalore.
The masters or phd thesis you wrote on sequence stratigraphy isn’t helping you find oil and doesn’t make you more qualified to find oil than a trained scientist in India.
Like it or not, the company doesn’t need all the people it is currently employing and there is a lot of work geos do that could be done by a lower skilled employee overseas.
Your value is decreasing. Plan your exit on your own terms. Stop whining about sedimentology and sequence stratigraphy. Try gaining some expertise in business analytics or something else that is actually useful in today’s job market. I haven’t seen any FAANG job postings for sequence stratigraphy experts. Jus sayin
Just as in other fields, top geoscience graduates from India get a higher degree from US universities and then get hired by international O&G companies at truly competitive salaries.
No such Indian geoscientists would go back to India to get hired for local low salaries at BTC.
If you want to figure out what’s the level at BTC, just open an IT ticket and see how helpful the BTC employees are, before finally the ticket gets solved by people in Houston, which by the way may be Indian as well, but truly qualified.
If you think what doesn’t work for IT help will work for Geoscience, you must be a delusional manager, of which we have way more than needed. THOSE jobs we should send to BTC.
@3onk+1eP1cYbn
Your understanding is incorrect. Many Geoscience Departments in US and a few other countries with tradition in the oil industry have professors specializing in Petroleum Geology. Geoscientists learn a lot on the job about the oil industry but a strong background in a long series of disciplines like Sedimentology and Sequence Stratigraphy is vital. A lot of geoscientists hired by EM are mediocre and quite a few of them are just opportunists waiting to get on the management gold train, but that doesn’t mean that any oil company that wants to survive doesn’t need a number of highly qualified geoscientists.
Similarly, the fact that some, say, chemical engineers at EM end up doing something entirely different (and maybe very d-mb) doesn’t mean that an oil company doesn’t need highly qualified chemical engineers.
It would be advisable to talk about things that you actually know and stop throwing dirt at people whose job you know only through cheap clichées.
You might want to consider the fact that all the results of the geoscientists’ work you get to hear about are through the disastrous decisions that the management takes. You don’t get to see how the real work of regular geoscientists looks like.
@3jxp+1eP1cYbn — you are correct. A commodity company, for whom employees are a commodity too. Everyone is replaceable, and that goes for myself too. I’m also a PhD and in operations now. My former job, in research, was completely unnecessary.
This is a Commodity company.
'Scientists' on staff provide good cover, but the job will be analyzing Commodity production, storage and logistics for delivery. Or just a tiny bit of that process.
Maybe that is science.
I am a 'Chemist' with PhD, but that is essentially what i do.
My understanding is that most of the geos weren’t trained in petroleum geology in school or grad school. They learned it on the job. Give the people in India the right training and guidance and they will identify the same terrible prospects that you do.
@2hxu+1eP1cYbn
Just like our management, you are obviously totally clueless as to what geoscientists actually do.
Of course there are lots of smart people in India and other places with low costs. The problem is that while Indian higher education has an excellent record in fields such as computer science or electrical engineering, it has no such achievements in Geosciences. Even when it comes to Seismic Processing or Petrophysics, you can hire non-geoscientists with strong background in mathematics and physics and train them enough to get the job done to an average level.
You’re not going to be able to do the same for Petroleum Geology or Seismic Stratigraphy - India has no significant academic research and teaching in such core topics.
Maybe you find the details boring, but before expressing sweeping opinions you might want to actually find out what is what. If you’re not a manager you should be, with that disdain for the details that make a sea of difference… and got this company in deep trouble.
There are a lot of smart people all over the world, including India. It’s not surprising that the any company would try to leverage the massive brain power that exists out there. US employees should take notice and plan their exit ASAP.
Also, it’s primarily a company of engineers. It’s not like management actually listens to the advice of geos. So why not pay less and continue to ignore what they say?
In the end, this is not unique. I’m sure this will play out with the tech companies and other Wall Street darlings once they have to actually show solid profit or pay a dividend. Once that happens those companies will be looking for the cheapest labor possible.
Best advice is to make as much money as you can and plan for early retirement with a second career that benefits your community, or society at large.
Good luck! GET OUT!!!
@2att+1eP1cYbn your analysis of LCS is painfully accurate.
Agreed with previous post; there is no one around to find the “next big thing”, all the experience shoved out the door. And I have observed the old geoscience habit of “attrition to management” occurring…..we are grooming talented technical people for management slots that are non-existent and/or require moving current management to dead end jobs. Unbelievable. No one is leading, no one sees the big picture.
The people who decided that Geoscience jobs can be moved to BCT or KL don’t have even the slightest idea what Geoscience is about.
In order to maintain the course and replace the underperforming upstream assets, EM would need the equivalent of 4-5 new Guyanas. The disastrous management of EMEC in the last 20 years resulted in only one major discovery - Guyana - which barely survived attempts to stop it before it happened from a bunch of managers or technical managers.
Now that Geoscience and especially regional exploration has been turned to shambles, the average experience of Geos is 5-10 years, all experienced workers retired or thrown out, STCs and chiefs strangulate any independent thinking, where are these discoveries going to come from?
EM might as well claim that it is moving away from fossil fuels, like European companies do, simply because there’s NOTHING in the pipeline. They want to maintain the course but have no way to do so.
I watched in horror and disbelief Dec. 2020 when some of the most talented and hard working geos I every worked with were laid off. Some of the individuals retained still amazes me-ppt jockies, bs masters and bu-t kissers. I do not see a path forward for geoscience in US-too many of the good ones are gone and what is left behind have neither the skills, desire or experience it will take to right the ship.
It wasn’t enough to layoff or PIP over 30% of geoscience; our leaders aim to outsource all subsurface work.
EM doesn’t value experience or institutional knowledge.
In practice, there wasn’t a way to distinguish good geoscience work from bad, given the continued blunders like Brazil Exploration fail.
UIS is the place where geoscience careers go to die now. The job of the few standing will be to pick up the pieces of the cr---y work done overseas, or just hold on until they can move on.
The only jobs available for Geoscientists in the US might be in low carbon solutions; albeit those are earmarked for showboats willing to greenwash, true believers, and evangelists willing to lobby for corporate welfare. Failed supervisors and managers will saturate the few openings.
Gand macha rakkhi hai is company our iske logon ne.
Translation: The company executives and others are playing dirty games with a complete disregard to the long term future of the company.
@1ttt+1eP1cYbn it has more to do with cheaper than smarter. Xom has made it clear they are ok with lower quality but higher quantity. From a pure business model it’s likely the right decision, like it or not.
I thought unregulated competition was good? Don’t hate on the smart people over there. Look at our own education system.
So low....
Save a million, lose a billion
Yeah - EM geoscience technical work is moving to low cost countries. Appears to be similar for a lot of the technical track engineering positions too. It'll be interesting to see what the long term consequences of this experiment will be. Good or bad, I'm sure DW will have floated away on his golden parachute by then.
There are some decently skilled technical folks that would be happy to be recruited away from EM if your company is hiring - many can see the writing on the wall.
Just watch out for the powerpoint jockeys, though you can probably weed them out easily enough since their only language is corporate BS.
Mobil Oil dropped the retirement age to 50 after many lawsuits filed by people who they fired to stop getting full retirement. Their “generosity” didn’t come out of the blue.
In Mobil Oil, you could retire with 100% pension at the age of 50. You were also still eligible for the Mobil insurance plan until you turned 65.
If we dropped the retirement age from 55 to 50 today and allowed retirees to keep their ExxonMobil insurance until age 65, we might have a mass exodus of people that have just turned 50.
In the last two years, EM (or rather the Dallas “leadership”) has decided that they have discovered the silver bullet that has eluded for decades the rest of the industry, as well as previous Exxon managers - replace the core technical workers in the US with whatever is available in cheap labor countries.
The current EM top management has found in the past of the industry only one example worth emulating: that of pre-merger Mobil systematically (and illegally) getting rid of older workers to stop them reaching RE status.
EM management has clearly put this company in the same group with Amoco, Arco, Mobil and Texaco. Eventually there will be no more jobs, not only in Houston, but also in Bangalore and KL.
The question is where in India will they hire the deep technical talent. As intelligent and smart Indians are, there is no culture or motivation to have technical depth and sustained education. The young smart technical Indian employee career progress follows ShivaJi style. Attack (apply and join) a company that pays more and also looks good on the resume for the next jobs and then keep changing jobs frequently to whoever pays more. There is no concept and cultural/societal reward for staying focused in one technical area.
To make matters worse, ExxonMobil can only hire third grade students and employees in BTC, India as it is nowhere close to being competitive to those small elite top notch students (most will go to google, come to US for higher education or have their own start-ups). In terms of hiring quality, the situation is no better in U.S.
@dxz+1eP1cYbn - good point, the last thing we're breeding now is thinkers. The right answer is always yes. Or retain optionality.
@glm+1eP1cYbn I'm suprised you think people think. I thought this was clear to everyone???
It's very clear that the direction of travel is to offshore all technical work or leverage contractors to do it. I'm surprised this isn't already clear to everyone???
There is no future for geos in the US, not at EM at least. @agw+1eP1cYbn is correct. A couple years ago I was in UIS and we were asked to describe in detail all the various tasks and skills required for our role. It was a thinly veiled beginning to the outsourcing initiative.
I actually heard a senior leader in Houston smugly say “there is no job we can’t move to BTC/KLTC” this of course did not include his own position.
Not only are most jobs subject to being outsourced, look for more BTC/KLTC folks going out on the expat circuit once COVID subsides.
Yes. The BTC in India will become the source of all of our specialist geoscience technical work. A similar organization in KL Malaysia will do the generalist work for production geoscience. Sad and scary
I saw the ad for geologic modeler, and it was a bit unsettling, if not unexpected. Offshoring highly skilled positions now, it’s a clear signpost. Also a clear sign that our upper management line either has 1). No clear idea how real collaborative work is accomplished (Houston -Bengaluru coordination is extremely challenging) or 2). the ultimate plan is to offshore all technical work. Not the company I hired on to for sure, and in 4 more years, assuming I’m not PiP’d before then, not my problem.