After speaking with some other colleagues of retirement age I’ve found that everyone has dropped in rank and either gotten NI or PIP. Damn shame if you ask me. Seems like something that we should be able to do about it since there is no credibility behind the ranking decrease. Anyone else experiencing this?
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Agree with the statement of "All this tells me is that the entire PDS/ranking process is an unnecessarily cruel exercise that is not really dependent on your actual accomplishments." It is especially true when it comes to group yang mangers together with senior technical employees. The managers sitting in the room of ranking evaluation have to struggle on their integrity and honesty and knowingly rank people outside the room to lower ends otherwise they take the low ranks themselves.
Multiple experienced engineers who are very respected in the industry have told me this is happening to them. Anyone who is in their 40s should pay attention and consider if they want to be looking for a new job in their 50s. If not I suggest now is the time to ramake yourself and get a new job on your own timing and conditions rather than being forced out.
This is conflict of interest by design. Many senior technical employees are ranked with managers who score the rank of technical employees - the competitors of managers in the same ranking group. Remember the true reality: you have very low chance to win a game that players on the other side are referees themselves.
As an ExxonMobil employee, I enjoyed a great career until I hit "near retirement" age of 52 in 2020. I was given a PIP and was told I needed significant improvement to maintain employment within the company. I satisfactorily completed my 3-month PIP assignment and maintained employment. Because I was in the NRE age group, the company would not request separation. Unfortunately, I was given a PIP the next 2 years as well. It was clear of their intentions to part ways as soon as I was retirement eligible. Significant stand out items on my work history were ignored. The younger employees were untouchable, but those close to retirement were given a PIP. Most people don't realize a PIP freezes your pay. You will be passed over on every pay raise opportunity, until removed from the PIP. I would have loved to represent myself at ranking. but had to rely on others to stand up for you. I retired the day I turned 55.
I'm near that NRE group. Dropped significantly this year. Had a great year in terms of accomplishments - both qualitatively and quantitatively better than the prior year, yet dropped significantly while younger people moved up. So much for the companies commitement to high ethical standards.
If you are younger and reading this - don't think this doesn't effect you! It shows you exactly how the company will treat you as you get older! If you are sticking around because you think things will get better and you will have opportunities - you won't. Once you get close to RE and there is a market downturn - the company will pull this stunt again.
It wouldn’t make any sense for the protected NRE status to go from 52 to only 53 and 1/2. The whole point is to protect people close to retirement from being thrown out under some pretense just before being retirement eligible. The lack of protection from 53 and 1/2 to 55 would defeat that purpose.
Anyway, when you look at the 2020 layoff, you will see that, out of fear of lawsuits, EM has excluded from the “involuntary” part everybody who was over 52 (NRE and RE). On the other hand, they went with a vengeance after people just below 52, reliable worker bees who would have never been laid off by a normal management. That’s part of the new “scorched earth” policy, that aims to eradicate older workers before they reach protected status. This is the part that is more susceptible to lawsuits. Pre-merger Mobil was using this dirty trick to stop people from getting retirement; lawsuits forced them to a change RE age to 50. Even big corporations are vulnerable when they overreach in their illegal actions.
Officially, Near Retirement Eligible (NRE) is actually 52 to 53 1/2.
After 53 1/2 you can be let go, but most managers and V.P.'s try to avoid the "forced to leave stick" until you are officially 55 years old.
Agree with you, at age 55 and 15 years of service you can retire. However, age 55 is 75% of pension, 56 years old is 80%, 57 is 85%, .... 59 1/2 is 100% of pension.
Try not to leave money on the table by retiring at 55. The extra 25% lump sum pension or annuity can come in handy 20 years later.
@1vbq+1it2e8tU
NREs are 52 to 55. They can be put in NSI and a form of PIP that does not allow the company to fire them. Of course, as soon as they turn 55 they can be put again in NSI, with minimal chance to pass the PIP and therefore forced to retire with only 75% of the pension.
When they were giving the 4months pay “package” in 2020 both my supervisor and my supervisors manager asked if I was taking it. With a vague response I did not. Dropped like a rock in next ranking and was offered Pip or PIL. I retired instead, and did not sign any of that nonsense paperwork. If you choose to take PIL you must sign it. Complete setup.
Have they Pip'd near retirement eligible employees? (I.e. those 50-54).
Is possibly two factors going on? Clearly age discrimination, but also, as others have documented in other threads, the top quintiles are mostly reserved for diversity employees. So if you are old (and likely white male as that is the older demographic) you have two discriminatory factors working against you.
RE. Have been in VG, until this year, NI. Sign me up for class action.
It is clear that someone or group needs to start a legal action that will require the company to release the rank position vs age for a large population. When the graph shows that the ranking goes down with age, there will be huge support for a class action suit for age discrimination that the company will have a hard time defending. Not sure how to orchestrate this, but I know it will show quantitatively what people are referring to in these comments.
No decent raise in 3 years and dropping each year in the performance evaluation for no reason other than being near RE. I'm retiring from this BS.
wow Some excellent comments on this thread.
Who is the architect of this phukup ranking system? If it’s a particular company pushing this phukup system it might be interesting to see what other companies they are infecting.
Class action! Class Action!
They really ought to have a training class on this.
Another 30 minutes down the drain.
The PiL package sign-off allows you to reserve the Age Discrim possibility for future litigation. But you must submit a separate request to the PiL lawer, notarized, to obtain this special exclusion of company liability. Within 30 days or so.
And - in any case - all federal litigation must be initiated in a Tejas court - Fifth Circuit.
So your signing of the PiL doc says.
Good luck. Ball is in your court.
It is very real. True age discrimination. It's like being r@ped, your word against theirs. Company claims REs are old and dottering and their performance shows it. Nothing we do can pull us out of the bottom bucket.
Some posts here a missing a key issue. Technical people at the end of their career have indeed been forever ranked low, because at CL28-29 they are ranked together with highly sponsored young supervisors and managers who, in the always corrupt Exxon system, MUST get a high ranking to continue moving up and fulfill the prophecy of the old fa_rts who sponsored them.
However, for decades the deal was that the fake low ranking of the highly experienced technical people would NOT be used to get rid of them - after all, somebody has to do the work! Retirement at will was essentially guaranteed. After 2017, but especially since 2020, our “leadership” decided to use this “traditional” low ranking to force experienced people out, a move that does untold damage to the company.
So no, it wasn’t like this since forever. This is “the new ExxonMobil”.
What a shame.
ExxonMobil has become the armpit of corporate America.
They've been fu----g REs and NREs in the rankings for YEARS. How have they've gotten away with this ? Individual lawsuits won't work....got to be class-action
It's been that way at least 20 years.
Competencies are way down because RE and NRE are leaving in droves. Partners and suppliers are aware of the lack of skilled workers. It’s embarrassing when I overhear the comments.
Just hoping that this attrition does not lead to a major incident.
I had an exceptional year in 2020 and made millions of dollars for the company. I should have been at least in the middle of the pack. However, I also turned 55. Then BAM, I dropped from the top third to NI. Supervisor gave some lame explanation that it’s not about the results but the behavior. The only negative they can come up with is that I didn’t network enough which is not true and not actionable considering people were WFH. Even the way KO feedback was gathered was highly questionable. This gave me the impression that supervisor was struggling to find a justification for the pre-determined rating.
Since turning 55, I was NEVER given any high visibility projects that aligned with my core skills. Even more recently, anything that would bring accolades would be re-assigned to a more junior person.
I saw a previous post on quiet firing. Well, this is age discrimination and cronyism at its best.
I’m quite tired of this game so I resigned with my dignity intact and a nice pension.
This is not new. Has been happening since well before 2020. I make no excuse for those who chose willful blindness. Just because it is impacting you now doesn’t mean it hasn’t been going on for many years.
Many RE technical employees are ranked with managers who are ranked higher even if they accomplish nothing. ExxonMobil has never ranged managers as their own decision unit.
Hence higher CL technical staff wind up in NI/NSI. The percentages for NI/NSI are too high. Other companies have a small non performing group.
For Annandale, many of the staff have not impacted the business in a positive for years. Clinton never cleared out the dead wood and are now paying the price.
This is happening in Annandale every ranking cycle. Beware If you’re RE, you will drop in ranking and will soon be NI, or NSI, you will be blindsided, good , smart employees thrown to the wolves. no one is safe in this situation. No loyalty….knowledge others is a scam, means zero, this needs to hit management hard at this site way fat !!!!! Technician ranks are leaving in droves. Prepare for site closure…….Best of luck, I miss Mr. Frosty 🍦🍦😪
As the number of people doing technical work who are RE has decreased sharply, at this point virtually all RE’s are in NI or NSI. Remember we’re talking about technical un-sponsored people only! - management does not suffer the indignity of PIP; if they need “to be retired” they are forced to do so “voluntarily”, or else they loose their supplemental pension, worth 1M++.
That was the whole point about these weaponized PIPs of the last years. A few more rounds and all REs and today’s NREs will be out through forced retirement. Remember that the system counts on NO MORE PEOPLE entering NRE status. Watch out for the systematic targeting of people around 50, just before they will enter NRE.
It will be interesting to see if EM really can pull this huge feat of age discrimination and remain lawsuit proof.
Why don’t we do anything? Are we afraid of the big bad man?
I suppose because I’m involved this time and didn’t realize the discrimination until recently.
I am a few months away from RE and I have told anyone who will listen that I’m retiring immediately after I turn 55.
I have had a tough year and fully expected to be PIPd or NSI, but I squeaked through. Perhaps it is because I’m so close to becoming RE that I was spared. I know I haven’t done my best work this year. If anything, I’ve been too vocal and critical of the company & management.
I know 2 people who did great work last year who have gone down in rank. They both were told they must do much better next year since it is getting more & more competitive. There is a very real chance they’ll be PIPd next year.
All this tells me is that the entire PDS/ranking process is a unnecessarily cruel exercise that is not really dependent on your actual accomplishments.
They’ve been doing this since July 2020. Why are you surprised now ?
Is it time to get a lawyer or will that matter?
It’s definitely happening in our group. I know of at least 5 employees over 60 that this has happened to. They all have close to 20 years and it seems like they are going after the NRE’a with a vengeance.
Funny you should say that since I noticed a “trend” when they were laying people off. I know they will always cross their T’s and dot their I’s but I think they count on people not discussing it with each other.