What happens at EM when things are not going well? I haven't been here long enough to see the low point of the cycle, but what I'm seeing when things are high has me worried. If people are baselessly put on PIPs and fired when everything is great, what can I expect when things are not going as well?
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This place is bad...mmkay! If you can't see it; open the toilet lid
No doughnuts or copy paper in Annandale oh and empty your own trash can 😆😆😆😆
Management blames the rest of us for screwing up their brilliant 90’s tactics and deem 8% of us as NSI to cull the herd and set an example for the survivors that they could be next.
BTW- you’ve seen the worst of the down cycle for the last 2+ years. If you can’t recognize it, you are probably executive material. Congratulations on learning to breath with your head buried in the sand.
They blindly lay off white men.
Prior to 2020 there had been no mass layoffs since the 1980s.
@OP O&G is in decline. Some people cope with that fact better than others.
All of the nastiness you’re seeing is really just employees and management trying to get their brains around the fact that perpetual decline is the new normal, and what (if anything) can be done to stave it off.
It’s only going to get worse, so if you’re planning on sticking around, I suggest that you buckle-in; it is not going to be a smooth ride.
This place is FUBAR!! May the evil ba----ds rot in h3LL
It looks like you are having blindness and unable to see the big picture.
The goal is the get to 45k headcount by the end of 2023 and to reduce the breakeven oil price to the 30s.
Everything that has been happening since 2019 (layoffs, change of ranking system, growth of the BTC, increase of PIP %, forcing NRE and senior technical people out with fake performance reviews, hot desking, continuous reorganizations, change of vacation policy, historic high levels of resignations, bringing outsiders to executive positions (including the CFO), limiting on remote work, moving the headquarters from dallas to Houston, even offering lump sum option to everyone, disbursement of expensive assets, are incremental implementations of this aggressive structural cost reduction strategy.
Please open your eyes and look beyond your noses. The writing is in the wall.
Why ask a rhetorical question? You know the answer.
The culture sucks, upper mgmt has destroyed trust, and most of the low level executives are incompetent yes men (you know who you are) hanging in for dear life.
A toxic cluster-f. Get out while you can.
I had been exploring a question for a while and must ask now. Does the company have a policy (even if unspoken) of protecting veterans and mgmt. from PIPs, layoffs etc.? The folks that I know got kicked out in our area, none were veterans or mgmt. Nothing against veterans at all, we all appreciate their service to our nation. But from company's point of view are the unspoken rules in place to protect veterans from any such job cutting exercises? Does anyone know? I am sure HR knows but they are enslaved by and to TG and won't share anything.
@kpo+1ixltXWS You described the situation perfectly. Well done. This is 100% accurate. Let me add the factor of fear. Regular employees feel real fear of what might happen at Exxon tomorrow. The management committee and HR keep making the wrong decisions regarding how to treat employees. You might be OD one year and NSIed the following year even if your performance is better and you do the work of the other two guys who resigned. The level of job instability is unbearable and people keep resigning no matter what they say on LinkedIn and other social networks. People keep leaving.
Also, people are backstabbing each other because they need to survive somehow. So, if your friend and colleague of 20 years looks bad compared to you, he will be laid off and you will survive. That's the mindset. This has ki---d collaboration completely. Each of us has to survive and we'll do whatever it takes to survive.
OP, this will get worse, a lot worse, as long as DW is the CEO and TG is in charge of HR. It will get a lot worse. Add the recession and you have a clear picture of what's coming. Good luck to us all.
It might appear that everything is great right now, but it’s not. Some things might be on the upswing, but overall, we are still feeling the effects of how EM decided to layoff people through forced retirements and PIPs in 2020.
It wouldn’t be so bad if we weren’t misled in an email from DW saying there would be no layoffs, only to have people forced into retirement or suddenly be PIPd when they were told they were doing great work. Before that email, everyone knew times were tough and there may be layoffs, so when we received the email it gave many a false sense of security. A few months later we were all blindsided when either ourselves or many of our co-workers were suddenly being told we were poor performers. RE people were told either retire or you’ll probably be PIPd.
Choosing to tell people they suck instead of just admitting we needed to reduce head count caused an enormous erosion of trust. We have always had to work under the ranking process that has been scientifically proven to be counter intuitive to the things we are supposedly expected to do (collaboration, innovation, etc.), but EM somehow found a way to make that process even worse by removing some safeguards that were in the system (now you can go from the top to the bottom in one cycle).
So, no matter how good things are as far as the price of oil or choice discoveries, you have an entire workforce on edge with little trust in the company and it’s management.
Many are still taking up the slack from all the experience we shoved out the door a few years ago. Not to mention, even though they are now overloaded with duties, they are being told to do more as people quit in droves. Then comes PDS time, these same people are told they need to improve significantly.
As often is the case, mismanagement, stubborn refusal to change, poor leadership, disrespect, and an overall disregard for people & their skills, causes a company to fall into a toxic place.
I’ve been here over 30 years and it’s always been tough, but there was an understanding of the process and culture. Now, it is a hot mess with everyone feeling like they are in the hunger games on a one year contract.
What you see today is the continuation of what started when things weren’t going well in 2019-2020