When I joined the company it stood out among all the other offers I had as promoting based on performance. No system is perfect - but ExxonMobil appeared to be one of the better ones. Now however, it's all about politics and diversity. Look at all the promotions to junior exec roles and the development opportunities that lead to those roles (or even just senior technical roles - CL 28/29). Seems to me they are almost all diversity demographics. If you don't fit one of those demographics - doesn't matter how good you are - your likelihood of advancing is almost zero.
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Discrimination in the effort to achieve diversity is still discrimination.
When EM does campus interviews for engineers, interviewing 8 male and 2 females with a target of 3 hires, those 2 females get offers and 1 of the 8 males gets an offer. The male that gets the offer is likely the 1 minority male.
I have worked with many of these diversity hires and most were moved upward so quickly that they had no clue about the job they were responsible for. Now that the experts are all retiring, those clueless managers will struggle.
A fellow Supervisor was pressured by our female department manager to move a female direct report up the rank list.
In the ranking meeting, that Supervisor admitted multiple times that the persons directly compared to that female were better performers and should be moved above her in the rank striatum.
The female department manager was livid and had a long disciplinary discussion with that Supervisor for not campaigning for the female employee to move up the list. The Suoervisor just claimed that he was being honest in the ranking meeting and was not comfortable making false statements that she outperformed the coworkers that she was being directly compared to.
In the Higher CL ranking meeting, the department manager dropped that Supervisor the maximum amount allowed because he did not lie about the performance of that female direct report.
The written rules and written policies about ranking seem quite fair as written, but the politics and sexism and racism input (officially and unofficially) create a bias, racist, sexist rigged system.
I was told directly by my supervisor that there was no way for him to put me any closer to the top of our group rank list due to the number of minorities in our group that Senior Management had instructed him to place at the top of the list. He said Senior Management had plans to promote those minorities and he was instructed to give those minorities the rankings that supported those planned promotions. The rank order submitted to the ranking meeting has built in racism.
There is verbal instruction from Senior Management to place minorities artificially at the top of ranking. Racism.
After ranking sessions, HR analyzes each rank list and adjust minorities upward artificially to meet their “target distribution”. Racism.
Ranking system at EM systematically racist. Not 100%, but a significant underlying factor in every step, every year you choose to stay.
PS: All references above to Racism include discrimination on both race and gender.
Interesting - the posts about the bias in ranking and HR's direct involvement in creating it, is consistent from what I have heard elsewhere...
In addition, it reminds me of a change they made a few years ago on the "KO forms" (Knowledgeable Other - it's a form for people you work with to give feedback on you). Those forms used to have both semi-numerical questions ("excellent", "Above Average", etc.) and free form text boxes to type words. Then they changed it to just words. That makes it much harder to compare people. I originally thought this was just unintentionally d-mbing down the form. But now I realize it was probably deliberate. Without the semi-numerical grading - HR can easily claim one person is better than the other and the KO forms can't be used as proof otherwise. Assuming, in theory, they could be discoverable in a legal case.
"Soft Expectations" for some. "Hard Expectations" for others.
I know a supervisor that had 2 male and 2 female direct reports in same rank group. He submitted his rank order based on performance that just happened to have the 2 males above the 2 females.
That supervisor was threatened by Senior Management that if he did not resubmit the list with the 2 females above the 2 males that he would fall significantly in ranking himself. By the time of the ranking meeting, the people gathered in the ranking meeting are not aware of the threats/intimidation that lead to the list with females above males so they place the people into the larger list in that order with no knowledge that the discrimination has taken place.
Hidden discrimination. Orders like that are always verbal.
I was told by HR that there was a quota for diversity promotions and to support that quota the ranking distribution was manipulated to support/justify those promotions.
Minorities were moved up on the ranking list after the rankings were agreed by all in the room. Some moves were huge and completely false.
The way I found out was that I had a minority that was just an ok performer and ranked under his colleagues then the ranking was finalized by HR and the minority was at the top of all my direst reports. I contacted HR and asked how such a move was possible and how was I supposed to communicate a move to top of the ranking to such a poor performer. That person did not need to think that his effort justified such a huge move up the ranking.
It is a fact that EM uses race as a basis for ranking and promotions.
Life is not fair, accept it.
The maturity of some of these posts says alot about those supporting demographic based hiring and promotions...
Diversity is good. Treating people fairly and equitably is even more so.
As the OP suggests, the current promotion patterns look like they are heavily biased against the so-called "majority". That is just as bad as the bias against minorities that people claim existed decades ago (though I would think that was mostly driven by engineering college demographics but whatever).
Direct supervisor should start asking questions now, and once confirmed, place the Trump supporters on a well deserved PIP next month so they can learn to make better decisions next time. They caused these Pips.
I am not sure how long you’ve been with the company but it has NEVER been a meritocracy in the last 30 years I’ve been here. Just because you see some people of color or women doing better than you, doesn’t mean it is “all about diversity”. Honestly, that’s one of the few good things about work these days. I get to work with many different people from all over the world. It has made me a much better, well rounded individual.
Opie, not everybody's granddad was a Humble Oil VP like yours was.
That was him - this is you.
Sure enough when the times are tough, let's just try to attack each other? Not taking your dog whistle respectfully.
Have lost a lot of good people over the last few years. It's a global company, and had the pleasure of working with all kinds of people from all walks of life.
Look at the timelime. All of these Pips started with Trump. So, anybody that voted for Trump should be undoubtedly placed on nsi. Direct supervisor should ask tricky questions to find out vote inclination.
All diverse groups should be protected from NSI. The rest should be pipped.
Stop whining crybaby