This year, EM management finally tells us the truth: ranking of employees is not based on their work but on the “impact” of their work. Since the “impact” of work is defined by the assignment, which is given and not chosen (no list of open positions at EM, no way to apply by yourself) your ranking is predetermined when you are given a specific assignment.
For those who still don’t get it: you are practically ranked even before you start working. Work has nothing to do with it.
You, an unsponsored employee, might work 10 hours a day on an assignment that is not particularly glamorous. You show inventivity and originality in getting to your results, but they’re not earth-shattering so you get to present them to your lower lever manager maybe once a year, if you’re lucky.
Your sponsored “colleague” works half an hour a day to compile results from others. The results are very important and he is a “star” in your group, presenting two or three times a year to the VP or even higher, with pictures of the meeting posted on LI.
He’s “Outstanding”, you’re hoping to not find yourself in NI or NSI.
Desperate unsponsored workers have to engage in “work cannibalism”. Since their work assignment doesn’t have enough “impact”, they try to step on their team mates and duplicate their work, hoping to steal a dose of “impact” - from other unsponsored peons, obviously.
Now that it’s official, hopefully we’ll see an end to brown nosing imbe_ciles posting here about how simple and good our ranking system is.
12 replies (most recent on top)
Not only that, what you were directed to achieve (value creation) at the beginning of the annual performance cycle can be ranked as valueless per your manager's determination (due to business environment change). This has happened to many.
When it comes to HiPos, especially those with very powerful sponsors, the supervisors will always bend backwards to create high-impact, low-work assignments for them.
One time I was in a group with multiple projects, each coordinated by one of the people actually working on them. We got a new team member, supposedly equal to us, but in fact highly sponsored. The supervisor immediately created a special assignment for that person, who would coordinate all projects - call meetings to find out what our results are and then present them to a grateful management. Within six months, that person was the official “expert” in all projects. Top technical management today, without having done one day of honest work throughout their career.
Politics, race, gender, and the strength of your sponsor.
I have seen a person moved up over 20 RG points after ranking meeting completed. HR said that he was moved so that his race was properly distributed. Curious as to whether any persons lost 20 points to make sure their race was properly distributed!
That seems illegal, up or down.
I hope I get to see the day that the poor performing managers get theirs. I had a manager tell us to pull a motor. Needless to say nothing was wrong with the motor. She was wrong again. Cost the company a lot of money to pull a motor when it was just a permissive, yet She somehow is still here, God help us all in Bato;Rouge.
Br0wn-n0sing accompanied with Impact.
Is that not ok?
If someone had just told me that it is not ok...
Sponsored individuals easily survive a useless low impact assignment because the top manager in the ranking meetingvwill state that the lack of impact is because management failed to challenge that sponsored individual.
A normal employee has no such shield thrown up in the ranking meeting for protection.
When you finally wake up and realize that ExxonMobil is in a commodity business, you will understand why we are treated as "commodity employees".
Even the sponsored HiPo's are now just realizing that their skills are also a commodity (just look at the recent LinkedIn updates of HiPo's whose careers have been sidelined since our reorganization on April 1, 2022). HiPo's are even updating their LinkedIn accounts to include their personal gmail, yahoo, me, ... etc. email addresses. HiPo's can also look into the crystal ball to see the future of their careers in a "commodity" world.
Especially in Annandale! If your RE brace , so sad
Yes, our management is getting more and more brazen. They have always cut themselves the biggest piece of the pie, but before they at least tacitly tolerated people who were doing the work getting a thin slice as well. Now they’re openly saying that they and only they have any value whatsoever.
Wow, this thread has at least two great posts. I was there, 35 years. And, it appears that you have an insiders understanding as well. Thanks for sharing.
Same thing with the new Skill Assessments, both technical and behavioral. Levels 3 and 4 are unequivocally defined so that only people with “leadership” positions can fulfill the requirements. Regardless of how experienced a worker is, if they are not in some “leadership” position, the clowns who “validate” the skills don’t even need to discuss with him/her, it’s automatically a “2”.
Young people should note: a technical worker who is not sponsored (and therefore will never be “leadership”) is and will always be just a temporary employee whose contract will expire as soon as their job can be moved to a low cost country, absolutely regardless of their skills or performance. Forget about a “career”.
It wasn’t like that at all, but this is the new EM.
Bingo!