My experience are the Research folks who become managers, they are the worst. No accomplishments to name and lost on LI and Yammer as if they are Gods gift.
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I’ll have a front row seat January 1 in Annandale watching this play out. Kool aid in the atrium. Adult day care at its finest…what a waste of company assets
We can't let Baton Rouge steal the crown soo easily. The incompetent supervisors and team lead in Imperial Upstream in Canada can easily dethrone anyone in the incompetence and toxic chart. Mobbing, gaslighting and setting people to failure to cover up for their intellectual and behavioral deficiencies is all part of their toolkit.
It's a kiss up, kick down culture which promotes talkers and word dancers and retaliates against those who speak up. Looking for the first available exit.
One visit to he Baton Rouge engineering team and you will have the poster child for incompetent managers. Failure is an understatement. Even worse being empowered by department heads that have no idea which way is up.
Undoubtedly EMIT Canadian Mafias.
@2ilw+1exRLSxp — That explains so much. I know at least a few supervisors who came out of that group. Also explains why we have abysmal success at finding carbonate reservoirs lol.
At least in Geoscience, Exxon and then EM had two very different people in research.
The first category were top experts, who published a lot and were on par with academia.
The second category were well-sponsored HiPos who were “parked” at URC just waiting to be promoted in management.
About 15 years ago, one of the most popular places to put these HiPos was the carbonate group at URC. Nobody gave a fig about how much these people would actually learn about carbonates, but they could be involved in organizing super-cool field trips to places like Turks and Caicos. These boondoggle field trips would often involve VPs and other important people who just wanted to “refresh their knowledge of carbonates” on nice tropical beaches at company’s expense. It was, in other words, an excellent place to “network” with the powerful ones.
All of these people would be promoted ASAP to high management and would never have anything to do with the subject of their supposed “research work”.
After years of such high-ja--ing of carbonate research positions, the company realized it’s out of carbonate experts, because those jobs went to HiPo impostors. What a surprise.
The two worst types I’ve experienced:
1-the strong individual performer with zero people skills but a desire to climb the ladder
2-the late career person who’s available at the right time and at the right CL to fill an undesirable supervisor/manager position
Both can ruin careers, but I think #2 can create the worst long term impact.
@zwa+1exRLSxp
Although your thoughts are well placed, your understanding is lacking. ExxonMobil researchers will not qualify to become even a floor mopper in academia.
There is a reason these people are working in EM research and draining our assets- they are absolutely pathetic and unemployable everywhere else as intelligence and knowledge is needed at other places.
Somebody forgot how EM got where it is.
Stealing and bribing.
Everybody above Team Lead should be force-watched 'There Will Be Bl00d' film.
5 times in a row.
Then, maybe, they'll understand how to do it again.
On management:
In the US, managers account for 30% of corporate payrolls. This particular class of corporate employee is superfluous and overvalued. They do nothing in most companies except for call/attend meetings and approve PTO. There are many groups where managers outnumber contributors, and many managers with fewer than five direct reports. In many cases, managers have zero (0) direct reports.
Any company looking to reduce labor costs should start by reducing management and automating as many of their job functions as possible.
Seems pretty universal - EM management model not very good.
Cracking stacks getting old and brittle.
Hard to imagine a more incompetent group than GP or maybe XTO.
@uus+1exRLSxp They’re not very good gym teachers then. My PE coaches were able to give good pep talks at least. Not like our “leaders”.
XOM should divest research. Too many people interested in basic science. Go work in academia and spend your time writing grant proposals. Stop wasting my dividend on your pet project.
The majority of lower and mid management are where they are because they sucked at their previous positions whether technical, business, or such.
From the School of Rock - Those who can’t, teach. Those who can’t, teach gym.
Think of most management as gym teachers.
These guys must be very incredibly bad if they're worse than supervision and managers in global projects!
Same in Geoscience. That is how we lost our way in exploration. Started 25 years ago.