I decided today that I will not be retiring with ExxonMobil. I will keep doing my job to the best of my abilities until the right opportunity opens up for me somewhere else. However, when that door opens, I am walking through it without hesitation. I would like to explain why and hear from the group about what people think.
I am a few years into my career here and thought I would work here until retirement. I genuinely enjoyed the challenge of my work for the first few years. When the going got tough and I would be dealing with bureaucratic nonsense, I would remind myself that at least I was paid well and would see that pay continue to grow steadily and allow me to provide for my family. I knew at some point, I would need to uproot my family from our home and move somewhere that the company chooses. My wife is extremely close with her parents and the threat of that has made her anxious for years. She understood that these sacrifices were required and that she would need to adapt. All of the stress and uncertainty was worth it because of the paycheck every two weeks. Yes, there are other reasons that we all work here and I do truly believe in the work I am doing, but ultimately a stable and healthy paycheck is what keeps me coming into work.
Then COVID hit. I don’t know if everyone remembers but the Houston Campus was one of the last large workplaces in our region to go remote. I had a friend at Shell who could not believe that an organization as risk-intolerant as us hadn’t sent everyone home with monitors and WFH gear. Perhaps that inflexibility in the face of a major threat should have been a red flag.
Then we spent a terrifying year looking over our shoulders as the company thins the herd of smart, honest people and runs off many others. Layoffs take place in a mysterious and labyrinthine system that leaves the survivors shaken and asks people to pack their bags right before the holidays. We all know that this stinks but what are you going to do? We all agreed “there just wasn’t enough money to keep everyone”. The same excuse saw raises get zapped on 2020. Nobody was surprised by that and it made total sense. We couldn’t wait for the market to recover and the good times to come back.
Throughout 2021, a general malaise set in. Good people left for better opportunities, many would be dismissed as “not fitting in”. We didn’t seem to make any attempt to keep them from leaving or learn from the reasons they gave for leaving. As the attrition mounted, fewer hands were available to do a growing amount of work.
The tiny, simple things that make a workplace attractive have also disappeared: Trash piles up in offices, IT systems go neglected, one day the intranet search function broke and nobody fixed it, and don’t get me started on the wretched, overpriced food offerings. Morale has dropped and dropped. But I am a big kid and I can suck all that up. I just kept reminding myself, “year end raises are coming.”
Now we find ourselves in the good times. XOM stock is ripping YOY, we are spending billions on share buybacks, we raised the dividend, we are paying down debts, green-lighting new projects. Business as usual is BACK! Except for raises. After all the fear, anguish and sacrifice, we receive a pittance by any measure. Short of inflation, short of our peers, short of the expectations that leadership set for us.
To add insult to injury, DW just awarded himself a 200% bonus on top of his base salary after already taking a 25% raise in 2019. Go look at the 8-Ks if you don’t believe me.
I feel like Arthur’s mother in The Joker. Naively assuming that people with immense power and wealth would do the right thing when it is within their power.
What makes me sick about all this is not just that the company didn’t show some generosity. It’s that the company has the money to EASILY do the right/smart thing and plug the brain drain by giving generous bonuses and are choosing not to.
I think it is clear that it is not a matter of if I get severely screwed but when. I have been served well by the ranking system but it is so obvious that over the course of a career, your are going to get a manager who will not push hard enough and get you a bad rating. Why wait for that?
So in conclusion, I think I have reasonable grounds to head for the exits before the ship tries to sink with me onboard. Thoughts?