Got approached by an Exxon recruiter with what sounded like a dream offer: better title, 15% pay bump, decent bennies. Then I started digging and found forum after forum describing chaotic management, constant PIPs and layoffs, and lousy culture. Is this a realistic picture of Exxon?
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Run
What you have in this company are not "unsatisfied people".
What you have is crushed souls.
People whose talents have been so overlooked and trivialized, that they became depleted of any motivation beyond a paycheck and mediocre benefits.
@qw+1jwk8zp2h: Oh my goodness! Don’t you sound fun to hang out with! What an intriguing series of minimizations and justifications. Essentially, you’ve concluded that if you get yours, none of the problems matter. Way to go! Am sure you’ll be promoted soon! (side note, with that kind of reality distortion, if you ever consider cosplay, suspect you would probably fit in well in some sort of Vichy France or 1930s / 40s Germany set)
@qy so you think we're chaotic, and we don't overcontrol or overplan everything?
And you think we have random pips anytime during the year, not a stablished process that everybody hates?
And you've seen layoffs happen! And we have not moved jobs to other countries and sold parts of our business to manage workforce.
lol what
Every place will have unsatisfied people. Then you go into a website where unsatisfied people can freely vent out, of course there will be lots of negativity.
What you don't see are all the other 99% of employees who are managing just fine and enjoying life. And if anyone tries to share their positive experiences, they get downvoted like happened here.
Tio address your points, ExxonMobil is anything but chaotic. Everything is wrapped in strong controls, even the things that shouldn't and end up making some progress slower than it should be. But definitely not chaotic. Everything is overplanned (not a positive).
We don't have constant pips. We have a yearly performance evaluation process at a specific time of the year, with rigid processes and the bottom ~5-10% of employees beibg put on pip to stay another year. You also have ~25% of employees early recognized as outstanding and getting top raises. Sure, some of the thousands of employees may be benefitted from having sponsors, being friends with management, etc but that happens everywhere. Our assessment groups are usually big enough that good people still get recognized even with the protected ones taking a few top spots.
Nothing is officially called a layoff. We are selling bits and pieces of the company and many long term employees are seeing themselves having to go to a different employer, and closing some offices. But no mass layoff just to reduce numbers. These things get handled through planned workforce reduction.
Not sure what you mean by lousy culture. There's a well defined culture that is not great but also not that bad in my personal opinion. I fit it, many fit it. Maybe you would fit it too. Also heavily depends on location/country.
I'd join just for the 15% raise, fu-k everything else. Good pay is good pay.
You have to stay 3 years to get the 401k match. Run for your life. Complete waste of time.
Depends which location. Some are better than others
Salary and benefits are good. Some locations and organizations have much better culture than others.
Company as whole has gone steeply downhill since 2020 with a huge talent bleed and knowledge loss. Any desk job is at risk of being offshored, any non-Gulf Coast asset could be sold at any moment.
Performance assessment is not really a meritocracy and the forced distribution is really unfair. Management is largely clueless though there are some good ones still.
Was once a place for a long career, is now primarily just a job, depending on role and group could end up being longer term.
I love the lack of awareness it takes to talk down to employees that post here when you yourself are an employee...posting here at this very moment. You must fit in exceptionally well at XOM.
Im 10 years w the company and enjoying it. Very good pay and bennies... a lot of people are pi---d cuz it used to be even better. Its still a top engineering job. The online forums are not where normal employees spend their time.
@at speak for yourself - everything I’ve ever written is 100% truth. Most demoralizing experience of my life working @ EM when after 20+ years, was told w/o any warning that I was suddenly “NSI” despite a stellar year returning significant value, during a global pandemic.
Two things happened in the year prior:
- covid, I shamefully had an overwhelming desire to stay alive and work from home - and not be in an office with unvaccinated people that didn’t believe in masks;
- I turned 50 and that often drops folks b/c you’re considered a low flight risk. Or dead wood. Maybe both.
Perfect storm for a craptastic review. Didn’t get the benefit of a layoff package because the company is too cheap. When I took the PIL, received calls suggesting I stay because I was so “valued.”
Really? Hate to see how you treat the people you don’t like.
It really depends on what job you are trying to get. If you get a field level job that requires actual skill to do then your job will be secure and you have the potential to make a lot of money, but if you are looking at an office job you most likely will hate it after a few years. It seems like they make MPT employees change roles every few years.
Run….
Depending on your age ......... Exxon at the moment is a great springboard if you are < 30. They still provide training and like you said in your OP, good pay and benefits. You will likely will get decent raises too if you put in your effort for the first few years.
Comments here tend to be a bit exaggerated but with a kernel of truth. Short term you will probably be safe, but longer term is hard to predict, too many variables outside of your own performance: your immediate supervisor, how important is what you do, whether your skills can be moved to India, which projects you get assigned, what percentage of not high-potential employees need to be PIP…
Better title?
tf
And if you do take the offer, plan not to stay for more than 2-3 years. Use it for the training and to bump your salary up so you have better negotiation leverage in your next job.
Seriously, this is place for takers, not for givers.
Most things you will read here are true. Take the offer only if you dont have an alternative.