It feels like the writing is on the wall with geoscience. 4 interns and no hiring in the US for the past two years.
I have seen quite a few ex-supervisors get demoted into individual contributor roles. Most of the VPs were demoted to directors also.
I am staying because I love the job, 5 years experience and not a chosen high potential. My time will come once I hit the 10 year mark.
@ewes+1he9wjuF I’ll have some of what you’re smoking.
Geoscience at EM is in the bottom 1/3 of exploration companies. We can’t find anything. The only stuff we found was by accident or by acquisition.
Geoscience is my far the best across the company. The people are down to earth and many will serve as great leaders. As for staffing, we will always need geoscientist and just like any company numbers go up and down. Come on do a good job and show you want to be there just like any job and you will do well. I wish there were more Geoscience VPs and presidents. This could really help the company see things through a different lense.
As we sell assets, XOM will need fewer Geo Scientists. Some can move into alternate roles (plannnig, low carbon , commercial), but retirement, pip, resignation and very few new hires will reduce headcount by 30% over next 5 years. plus some geo may get to go to the new operator when a field gets sold. We had over 1000 geoscientist before the downturn in 2015, i think the number is now below 500...probably can get to 300 over next 5 years. In 2015, we had a 1 president level geo, 2 evp level geo, 8 to 10 VP level geo. That number has been cut in half and can probably be cut to 3 or 4 max. Several of these upper level geo are in Low Carbon until they retire in next couple years. over 30 geo STC will need to be cut to 15 to 20 max.
Why do you say “demoted” when someone becomes individual contributor? It’s better to be valued individual contributor with marketable skills outside of XOM than a supervisor who only knows to “”manage” the XOM way.
Geoscience is over staffed still by factor of 3x compared to competitors
Yes overly staffed even with the obnoxious “UOG” processes. Also find that Geos take ownership of work from other job roles.
Regardless of being over or understaffed as a total function (I honestly don't know), I will say it doesn't seem like teams are appropriately staffed.
Some areas/disciplines (reservoir modeling, ops) seem to have too few people and several other teams working non-prospective areas are too big. Future of geoscience besides BTC and KLTC sure doesn't look too bright though. Plenty of geos leaving at a steady pace as well seems like.
Geoscience has, for as long as I can remember, over-hired, and given their people too little to do/not enough responsibility. The result often is make-work or over-work of trivial non-value added activities. Our staffing levels are almost embarrassing when compared against our reservoir engineering colleagues.
Erm, yes.
Never stop looking for the next job