Thread regarding ExxonMobil Corp. layoffs

Remember the exec that moved everyone from XTO to Houston. Once that job was done, she was shown the door also. Her speeches throughout those times were beyond dillusional.

When one of our CEO's stood up at an offsite dinner and told everyone in research and engineering that:

(1) We no longer control the price of gasoline at the pump, all we can control is our OPEX

and

(2) when asked if he would sell one of our refineries he said, "If the price was right, I would sell my own daughter."

Both statements were recorded on VHS video and distributed to every employee from research and engineering.

Unfortunately, both statements were true.

That time when my boss showed up to a meeting and the site executive told everyone: “I have to leave now, but listen to what this guy has to say. I don’t know what he’s going to say, but it’s going to be great”.

Half the people around the table were completely confused. The other half nodded like the good sheep they were. I realized then that my lying, backstabbing boss was the new “Golden Child”. Typical such such types, he promised his bosses the world, delivered nothing, and now he’s the technically challenged Fuels Department Head in Clinton.

@8zaj, LDD or LDC ?

LDD- she talks a good talk but lies like a rug. Will happily stab anyone in the back. Acts all empathetic but actually has no ability for genuine care of her employees. She just does whatever HR tells her to do.

Due to poor paraxylene margins, a team of technical experts was asked to make recommendations on cutting paraxylene production by fifty percent in Singapore. We had following PX assets in Singapore: JAR (h-Mobil site), SAR (h-Exxon site), JAC (third party acquisition) championed by the president of the chemical company.

The third party JAC acquisition never operated at nameplate capacity during five years of operation. The team of technical experts came back to senior management with the recommendation to shut down the third-party acquisition, JAC, to reduce the para-xylene production by fifty percent.

The VP who read the report asked two questions and provided the answers to the team of technical experts.

(1) Do you know who made the decision to acquire JAC five years ago? KM
(2) Do you know who is the president of the chemical company today? KM

Then the VP said, "you rewrite your technical recommendations report and bring me a different answer".

A few months later the team of technical experts came back with a new recommendation to shut down JAR (h-Mobil) and reduce production at SAR (h-Exxon) by fifty percent and keep the inferior JAC plant (third party acquisition) operating at capacity.

Bottom line, ignore your technical experts' recommendations because it is a career limiting move for any executive to tell any of our management committee that they made a poor business acquisition decision.

Definitely the “hotshot” situation. A close second would be when I was on my cell phone, with my dying father, when some jackwagon VP came up to me and told me to get off the phone. Since I was pacing in a 1X1’ area, the odds of me tripping and falling must have been too high for this person. Anyway, comes up to me tells me to get off the phone, I told him to shove it. It’s then that he decides to share with me that he’s the VP of such and such to try to frighten me into submission. At any rate, that put a really bad taste in my mouth about the culture and I ended up leaving within a year. Still boggles my mind when I think about it.

Why is the board tolerating such an incompetent and id--tic people like DW, TG, BK, and their likes in the leadership roles. These id--ts can't even survive and get any roles closer to what they have at XOM. The would fail miserably outside of XOM right off the bat, so then such an incompetency celebrated at XOM is beyond my understanding. Fu----g TG and her team is so incompetent that they even sent out 2022 1095 health insurance form stating and claiming credit for providing health insurance to those that got laid off in 2020. I am what's the limit to their incompetence and lies and yet they get rewarded handsomely.

When I was taking the Leadership class at the University of North Carolina, we had an Executive V.P. talk to the XOM employees over dinner about how we could be a V.P. someday.

After the V.P.'s speech was over and he/she left to catch a flight back to Dallas, the University of North Carolina Business School Chairman who organized the two-week leadership class stood up after the dinner and told the three hundred employees in the room that we needed to remember that there were three thousand employees in the cemetery who tried and failed to become a V.P. for every new V.P. promotion.

@2omj I was at EMPR at the time and it was a total cluster, should have stayed in Paulsboro, eventually all was consolidated and moved to Clinton, another cluster, move from a refinery environment to Clinton, what were they thinking, we lost all our catalyst talent when this happened. The move from Paulsboro to Clinton was another mistake, Now the target is Clinton such a waste of money ! site is doomed , no technical advancements in years , just wasting Hydrogen! corporation wants out of New Jersey 🤡 are in charge, When is the management PIP ? Way over weight here…….hey let’s do a lab sweep and look for-contractors on their I phones 😂🤣

In 1999, the Exxon V.P. of Research told Mobil Research and Engineering staff in New Jersey that they needed to move to the Exxon Research Lab in Baton Rouge. His rationale was that Baton Rouge was a state of art research lab, with state of art equipment, and state of art scientist. He also said that all pilot plants in Mobil Research and Engineering would be moved to the Baton Rouge Research Lab and all Mobil personnel would have the opportunity to operate the same pilot plants in Baton Rouge that they operated in New Jersey.

I told the V.P. of Exxon Research that if Baton Rouge was a state-of-the-art research lab with state-of-the-art equipment, why did Exxon need to move all Mobil pilot plants from New Jersey to Baton Rouge, just move the Mobil scientist and operate the state-of-the-art Exxon pilot plants.

The V.P. of Exxon Research was speechless because he knew that he had been caught in an obvious lie.

Had a VP guest speaker in this leadership training class I was taking. For an hour he rambled and never actually answered any of the questioned he was asked. I then wondered how a person like that could even get to vp level?

I asked my classmates after if trhy felt he answered anything and they had the same feelings.

I would say the top for me is still the “hotshot” fiasco from the EMIT VP, which was witnessed globally.

Corporate Strategic Research in Annandale used to run out of money in October to purchase supplies for research. When I asked why the V.P. of research does not understand what it costs to do research, one CL-30+ senior scientist told me that the V.P. does understand what it costs to do research. He/She has accountants, controllers, planners to tell him/her the annual costs.

The Senior Scientist told me that the V.P. of research just likes to run their research operations this way.

During our engineering services contract bid, my manager and supervisor made sure one company had the rates we needed to get the contract. His college friend was the engineering company general manager; they used to socialize together.
He made sure all other bidders were disqualified and pressured Contracts to do so.
It was very obvious whee wet he was doing and everyone around his circle knew. No one called him out in fear of backlash.
He got promoted a few years later.

Industrial Hygienist installing an air-quality monitor in a VP's personal conference room.
VP calls his personal Admin to his office and says:
"Ask that man what he is doing in there."

I once witnessed my supervisor ask for money in exchange for a service contract. This happened many years ago in an isolated location (Muscat, Oman). As a newly hired graduate engineer, I was really stocked but I keep my mouth shut and my head focused on my immediate work. This was a period when there were not as many company controls in place. Sure enough, the contractor brought around a bag full of money. Nothing ever happened to my supervisor that I know of.

He was also a drunk. I’d be on the rig and call in to my supervisor for advice on a particular drilling operation or clarification of the well construction procedure and he would be drunk on the radio (no phone only VHS ship-to-shore radio back then). What a joke.

But, I survived this BS and now enjoy my EM retirement to the fullest; never having to work for money ever again.

I still remember back when I had only been with the company 2 years out of grad school, TG told me "do you expect me to tell you how to do your f--king job?"

Bryan Milton....a few years before he was forced to retire....at a GSC forum when we were getting sued by one of the blue states for a climate issue and at the start of the "exxon knew" activism, he said "I think this will all just blow over" He just pushed it off like it was a one time issue.

This was around 2016 and at EMHC, so I dont think he fully understood things would never be the same in the future.

I was eating lunch at campus with a few colleagues when our VP came and sat with us. He asked what we were doing and had a really good discussion about projects and ideas for increasing profitability in one area. He apparently went and called my division manager, who called my department head who chastised me for “going behind his back” with unapproved project ideas. A few months later in my performance assessment, I was called insubordinate and not a team player and put on NSI and PIP’d. What a joke.