1978 Article about Exxon's culture
https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/so-you-want-to-be-chairman-of-exxon/
In your opinion, has anything changed in 50 years?
16 replies (most recent on top)
@2luq The SVP (still employed!) who’s being arraigned in Montgomery County court tomorrow on felony SA charges started in the field in a technical role, as have several other massive douchebags. I’m not sure I’m following you here.
Your comment boils down to “back in my day, we walked uphill both ways….bla, bla…”
You’re just another disgruntled old guy who should move on but won’t or can’t. So go ahead and stay disgruntled. Rest assured that nobody with decision making power gives AF what you think.
In 1978 we would mentor new employees and break them in properly, promoting from with in , and had a functional Human Resources department. Exxon cared about the employees. Was a great company to work for . Today it’s a rotating door of managers that haven’t got a clue…..Army of Yes men no guts
The biggest cultural change was so many people in XOM today have not worked in oil fields or in refineries or in chem plants. They pushed powerpoints in t campus building and they were desk jockeys with no practical experience on rigs or in plants.
Very few of you have been offshore or in an LNG plant or on a rig; you push paper. Our culture is now paper pushing and no one has any respect for the 30000 workers in the field and in the plants. If every desk jocky quit; XOM would still be producing 4 million oebd. We do not need office people to produce: we need office people to push paper.
A CFO outside hire leads to stalling multi billion dollar projects for approval and implementation of Hotdesking to abandon owned buildings but must keep AC running so no savings.
Not really worth $2 million per month.
Why was the CFO an experienced hire? We finally woke up and realized that training and converting a civil engineers to a chief financial officer was a failure.
CFO's should have broad based experiences outside the oil industry.
Exxon culture has a major duplicity.
An id--t with a sponsor can go far with little effort or contribution. HR strategically places sponsored id--ts into fail safe positions.
Non sponsored productive workers PIP’d as sacrifices in each rank group.
Execs prospered in this system so will not change it.
Good article...almost nothing has Changed from then to now.
Why do you think the CFO was brought in?
I began working for XOM in 1976. I came out of the military and found the management style at XOM similar but not as harsh. Management and other employees treated you with dignity and respect, and they expected the same in return. It was a very formal and businesslike work environment. Yes, there were occasional personality clashes and disagreements, but they were resolved professionally and without noticeable lingering acrimony. We were all on the same team and had the same mission. It felt like you had a job for life in a company that treated you fairly so long as you did your best. Then I noticed a change when the company began hiring a flood of MBA's. The company focus switched to short-term results with a hyper-focus on cost-cutting and minutiae. Next, the unspeakable act happened. Someone was brought in from outside the company and placed in a fairly high management position instead of being promoted from within. Thus began the slow slide down the hill, which only accelerated with each passing year. That's my take anyway.
@ife The technical term for what you’re doing is called “culture jamming”. It’s used extensively by alt-right internet trolls.
This typically involves identifying as a member of some disadvantaged group and then proceeding to espouse or defend reactionary talking points. Old trick, doesn’t work on anyone who is web-literate.
The reason why nothing has changed at Exxon for 50 years is because the same people have been there for the past 50 years.
Minority here. WTH does race or s-x have to do with the culture really? Nothing! Other than ignorant,lazy, excuse obsessed useless employees use as justification and leverage to dismiss their incompetence! Culture should be based solely on the respect of employees and each other. XOM demands a Culture where respect is annihilated by every last action they take! The ranking system is an all out demanded, raging, incented war between employees. The ERG is an as--ult on white people, Christians and males and Americans in general. All of this and a list for days creates a hostile, divided, Culture! Whatever you do don't say this out loud or put it into print. Oh darn, too late!
The company is still mostly comprised of Anglo Saxon White Male at the top levels. White females are more likely to be promoted if they check the boxes and don’t rock the boat. Smattering of minorities to give appearance of diversity. I suppose mostly at the first line supervisory level to help recruitment in Asia.
The culture was fundamentally broken, but was distilled and celebrated post covid. A company in the transition to becoming a shadow of what it was, driven by selfishness and individualism that is endorsed and promoted.
This is the fundamental culture in EM.
What a long complaint. The company has been more profitable than ever. Those “hard edges” weren’t enough.
I started to work for XON in 1977, and worked at XOM in the upstream for nearly 40 years. When I started, my mentors were very experienced and hired mostly after they returned from WW2 or the Korean war (many were combat veterans). The management culture of XON (and most of the Fortune 500), came from the military style discipline. Process, procedure, management by objectives etc. Also, this was before the MBA came into being. So Management by objectives was the rule of the day.
By the time I started to work, about 15% of engineering grads were women...so XON was hiring many more women. By early 1990s, the work-life balance issues were starting to gain traction among men and women. At the merger, Mobil brought in a far more diverse international group of employees. XON was white Anglo saxon, NE europe/Canadian/Australian (some Japanese and some Singaporean/Thai/Mal). Mobil had many employees from Indo and West Africa. Mobil helped diversify XON. As the military vets retired, the culture lost alot of its hard military style hard edges.