EM is not uniformly bad. There are places where there is still a good work culture/environment/balance compared to others. What are the undesirable areas, BUs, departments? Why?
48 replies (most recent on top)
Stay away from Engineering and especially special purpose machinery in Baton Rouge. Dumpster fires.
AVOID EMTEC!!! DW and TG put all future NSIed employees there. They will be used to fill the NSI and NI groups and protect the HiPos future rankings.
Stay away from Permian unless you like losing money. Cost of living is high. There isn’t much to do besides work. Office is crowded and substandard. Air and water can’t be good for you. Experience isn’t valued by broader non XTO organization. In fact many in Houston look down on XTO employees so time in Permian sets your career back. Schools aren’t any good. Ever since CM left Houston management flies in on corporate jet for infrequent day trips and only visits for photo shoots so no chance to find a sponsor. Driving on roads is dangerous. Many HiPos just passing through so assessments are a shark tank. If not a HiPo and go it is hard to leave. Longtime local management that is actually good starting to rotate out with risk that HiPo backfills aren’t any good and are just mo--s feeding info back to those in Houston.
All of them. Avoid all of them.
LCS avoid they are reforming the old Gas & Power Marketing gang of male egos and ‘club’ type mentality.
Avoid anyone who was a manager or made their way up in Gas & Power Marketing successfully because all their sponsors retired with fat paychecks and they have no clue what to do except try to rebuild the ol-club! The ol-way!
Public Relations dept.
It's not all outsourced as people imagine.
We're inside and on the ground every day, showing our customers, governments and even our employees the "bright side" of ExxonMobil.
It ain't easy.
I carry a ba-f bag at all times.
Baton Rouge if your an SLS. I don’t know what they’re telling those folks but there have been a couple leave each month this year. Then there’s BRES, full of unhappy engineers who don’t feel their work is valued and told they need to find ways to shift more of what the do to BTC. At they rate folks are quitting it won’t be long and all the work will have to be done from a TC. Those that remain just pick up more work and then get told they’re NSI because they didn’t have enough global influence. How about rewarding your engineers for doing well within the job you placed them and stop slapping them in the face with an insulting message every year?
Management teams in Baton Rouge know the issues but do nothing about it and say things like it’s not in our control. Culture was once great here but those days are long gone with the layoffs, PIPs and TMTS.
F&L
It’s either Chic-Fila or the BBQ place. Too many potatoes 🥔
Global Projects is definitely towards the bottom.
I don’t know why anyone would stay for any role even if it “wasn’t as bad as other parts of the company”.
Uncon. There is no knowledge left. Just clueless EM expats that hate people.
The toxicity in exxon is endemic.
The whole company is a wasteland.
I am surprised that HR has openings. That was one of the biggest targets during the first round of layoffs. They reduced headcount 50% since 2018.
100% controllers. Underpaid, development is mostly for EM specific controls and stewardship frameworks, largely not respected by business lines (sometimes with very good reason, depending on your group), toxic work environment
India
Stay away from Annandale. People are leaving daily. The company doesn't care about people. Don't believe their propaganda. Morale is in the hopper. All upper management sucks. Most supervisors are incompetent. Overall, the place is a sh!tshow.
I worked the upstream Drilling group as a rotating engineer (month on- month off) for 35 years. Retired from EM at 65 years old. It was a really nice EM career, salary and retirement package.
I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my assignments in heritage Chemicals business units. Worked at Chemical HQ. Profit making businesses (most of the time)
I concur with Snap, Crackle and Corn Pop, @kge+1ixLo1YP, about Beaumont, but would differentiate to single out Beaumont Area Engineering Services due to extremely incompetent Engineering Manager and LT that has stepped back in time with I&D in their leaders. Seems to be the norm for the well known history of racism in the Golden Triangle area. They have lost a lot of females and minorities in the past cycles and give preference to predominantly white males. People of color seem to always be at the bottom of performance assessment. The Engineering Manager supports that behavior and has instructed to use PIPs in the past to elect taking the PIL.
If you are white male then forget the whole Company. The only way you will survive that is if you have an "in" with a few winks and nods.
Wat about HR? I am considering to apply for an HR position.
What’s the future for Uncon?
O&G and chemicals have always been cyclical businesses with downturns every 7 to 10 years. In the past, when one is down, the other is up. If you stay in this business, you
have to recognize that this cycle may impact you at some point in the future. Just plan for it financially and always keep your skills sharp in case you need to seek employment elsewhere to weather the storm.
If you are early career, you may want to consider that liquid fuel demand will continue to go down as the world move toward electrification and renewables. Not sure what the future holds, but refining will not look the same in another 10+ years.
@OP If you’re younger than 40 you should avoid EM and O&G period.
The industry is a glorified old-boys club, with everything negative that implies.
If you’re over 40 and have been in the industry for more than five years, then it doesn’t really matter where you work. Same people, same systems, same culture, and (mostly) the same pay. The only difference is the corporate label.
Avoid Controllers and Treasurers for sure. Zero career growth and more outsourcing every day.
Our Tax attorneys get paid so much maybe their group isn't that bad.
SSHE, E&R and Socio; no longer valued and just provides cannon fodder for the PADP cycle’s lower buckets. GTFO.
There have been 2 mentions about Billings in this string. They don’t belong in this post. I worked there for a lot of years and loved it. With the exception of reporting directly to one Technical Manager who has long since left the company, my experience was the best anyone could ever ask for….period. I was truly blessed. I started out loading rail cars, worked through a lot of positions and ended up with a company paid Engineering degree as a bonus and a lot of great memories. I stayed in Billings throughout my 30+ year career and wouldn’t have traded the experience for anything. It’s an often overlooked jewel and would challenge anyone to say otherwise.
@kvk+1ixLo1YP You are spot on.
I suggest avoiding this company altogether.
But in my opinion - places to avoid are LCS (too many self serving yes men), EMRE (hunger game), and any of the business units that is struggling with profitability (dying business).
I can’t recruit anymore in good conscious.
Senior upper management at EM does not trust middle management. They trust the consulting companies and are following their playbook. This was evident during the recent layoffs.
Not to be silly, but I would avoid the entire company. I’d find another place to work. If one area is okay right now, it is likely to be a mess soon.
I hate to be pessimistic, but I don’t see the company improving much over the next few years. If anything, I think it’ll get much worse before it gets any better.
Having said that, I don’t think EM will ever recover and become anything close to what it was in its heyday. If they don’t become more nimble soon and start to truly value their talent again, the company will lose any chance to remain competitive and stay in the game.
I want the company to do well and survive, but they don’t seem to see the writing on the wall or care about their own employees. They don’t listen. They don’t value their people. They are so slow to adapt and change. It’s incredibly sad to watch.
Nope. EM is uniformly trash. Get the he$$ out asap.
O&A chemical plant in Beaumont is the worse! The good Ole boy style of management has ruined this place. With every new change in upper management the situation here gets darker. No family/work life balance too speak of so don't even try to plan family time. Day to day operations change like the wind and communication with mid management S%#KS. We are ExxonMobil we know what's good for you haven't seen the slogan.
My two cents is this is a cultural issue - we do not empower managers to make decisions consistent with what their level of authority should allow. Basic management is managing budget, resources and setting priorities. The level of the company that makes these operating decisions is well, well above industry average and far removed from the actual operation.
For example - refinery managers are barely allowed to hire people if it’s not within the directors headcount, even to the detriment of hiring ahead of retirements - basic competency management. This is why the company is so obsessed with stewardship and data… the people making decisions are so far removed from what’s actually going on you have to convince them (with data and PowerPoints) of what the right decision is that you should be able to make yourself and then be held accountable as a manager for those decisions. Similarly, as managers are not held accountable for any decisions (they don’t make any) they are incentivized in ranking to just be yes men and support the perspective of the leaders above them.
Different microcosms of culture across the company depend on the level of control of the senior leadership over the asset or disempowerment of its leadership. Growth assets have higher empowerment, assets for sale (Billings) or perceived cost centers (IT) and the senior leadership control is tight. Find an area of the company that is growing and you will enjoy your time more.
EM doesn't values any “technology” and EMTEC has not been a spin off into a separate company because there is a technology friendly strategy.
EMTEC is pure and plain cost-savings REORG
They consolidated 3 separated orgs (RTDD+EMRI+CSR) to "reduce structural costs and become more nimble" as mandated by DW.
In this way is easier to identify redundancies and get rid of people.
Also, because downstream and upstream people are now ranked together, it is a perfect way to avoid giving raises to all upstream people (who have higher salaries) and force them to leave on their own.
Don't be delusional and naive, do you have amnesia of what happened in 2020/21?
@okr+1ixLo1YP Snoop and the people behind it on both the IT and Business side are a perfect example of something that only gives off the “appearance” of innovation. Literally a dog and pony show and little more than that.
Despite all the EMTEC bashing, it’s worth pointing out that EM values their “technology” enough to spin it off into a separate company, and a very glaring observation to me is that EMIT was not part of that move. That tells me anything IT related is relegated to a “service” function, rather than something the corporation considers a competitive advantage. In my mind, the worst parts of this company to work in are Controllers, EMIT, and GP (in that order), and working in the field or “close to the bit/close to the pipes” in Prod Solutions or Upstream are still pretty worthwhile experiences over a person’s career.
Wrong
ExxonMobil is uniformly bad.
But if anything, avoid EMTEC, which is the toilet of the corporation.
Avoid ExxonMobil all together!