The US employees aren't as good as overseas employees. Doesn't have anything to do with costs. I think we need to have a higher quality CEO that is overseas!
19 replies (most recent on top)
Former David O'Reilly was from Ireland and was very clever.
We got su-ked into a terrible contract with Bechtel to build ALNG. Basically an open cash cow for the contractor with no legal recourse. And when Dave retired, he went to work for Bechtel.
@1gra Definitely doesn't work in IT and hasn't dealt with the incompetent MSP workers. Bottom tier.
Many people would like to see MW replaced by Vicki Hollub. Let’s see.
@1gra. I agree wholeheartedly with the bulk of your observations with one exception. Moving overseas doesn’t address the core problem which is terrible hiring and advancement processes (coupled with lack of accountability). I was with CVX for over 30 years and I have to admit there were plenty of people moved into positions that had zero skills or experience for. There were also successes but way too many on the bad side of the ledger. DEI and the woke culture has only accelerated the problem because they have zero regard for the business. I think there are a couple of fundamental things CVX needs to do. Focus on the business and business results (long term). MW appears to be focused too much in the near term and the flavor of the day. Anyone remember every year when the CEO would talk about business results, new discoveries and the growth of our reserves? Start hiring and promoting the best, regardless of who they’re related to or “the optics”. Stop being distracted by the new, flashy process (that was designed for a different industry). MW needs to go and a replacement that’s focused on CVX business and growth needs to be brought in. I would argue it should be someone from outside of CVX because I suspect all of the internal candidates are tainted.
The worst CVX employees I have encountered have all been in or from the Covington office. I don't know how that places manages to get anything done right.
Reap what you sow my bro's!
Militant work from home cats be licking sour cream now my bro's!
Mike the man be doing what the company needs, cutting cost and cutting da fat.
Da gravy train polluted by the yanky brain drain car crash yank train be coming to a lack of employment retain, my bro's.
This is a USA company and majority of shareholders are in the USA. Overseas is such an odd term....international?
I’ve worked on six continents and had multiple expat assignments with Chevron, retiring thankfully in my mid-forties.
US workers are nothing special—at all. Like everywhere else, there are high performers, average workers, and low performers, following a typical bell curve distribution.
The main difference is that while oil and IT majors often hire top-tier talent overseas, Chevron tends to hire mediocrity at best in the US. For instance, in Kazakhstan, I worked with a Kazakh planner who had 15 years of solid field experience, spoke four languages, and held three degrees. Meanwhile, the entitled American B2B barely wrote professional English, had minimal execution experience, but had phenomenal presentation (aka BS) skills. The Kazakh planner did the work, and the B2B presented it. I have many similar examples. It was all smoke and mirrors, with no substance in the American planner.
On the other hand, I encountered some of the brightest geophysicists in the world from Texas. Their skills were amazing, though unsurprisingly, they weren’t the best presenters.
I checked on both of them recently and found that the geophysicist is now with ConocoPhillips after the 2020 fiasco, while the planner has moved on to another expat assignment, thanks to his strong connections within the company.
In my view, moving operations overseas is the right move for the company, despite the painful impact on our local economy. Corporate responsibility at Chevron, and in corporate America in general, is shameful.
Long story short, the US workforce has been overvalued, overcompensated, and is largely replaceable—if not entirely, then to a great extent.
What accelerated this outcome was RM and her toxic agenda, which pushed real talent out and kept the politically polished but useless staff. This has put the US workforce at a significant disadvantage. So, they are not only overpaid but also poorly behaved, with very limited technical and execution ability.
Unfortunately, this move overseas seems inevitable.
@1bh who was the non-droid looking one?
@1bh nailed it OP. It was a lifeless room which reflects the state of Chevron nowadays. Com'on wirthless! Zero effort to inspire your desperate employees. He and many other corporate ceo snakes have sold their souls to the greedy devil and we are here stuck in their vicious destructive plans and deals.
That address was seriously devoid of inspiration. Only one person in the room seemed like a real person. The rest were corp droids asking California certified questions.
Don't need to offshore the work to the third world when your government is onshoring the third world.
The very top Chevron employees I have ever worked with were Brazilian, Thai, Indian, Welsh and Australian.
The idea that they're 20% as good so you hire 5 and it'll equal one good us employee is hilariously insane. You should be in a GM leadership position.
People must have not worked with some of the overseas people. Many are incompetent. If we really want to cut costs offshore the CEO and other roles. Could get much cheaper labor to be just as incompetent as our EM.
True, if US employees can be remote work, why not use overseas. With relocation of HQ, they may restructuring a lot.
I’m not sure that 5 x 20% competence equals 100% competence - maybe you just end up with 5 times as many people that can’t do the job.
So then what are any of us doing here if the leadership is saying this? Just waiting for the inevitable?
Well the cost arbitrage is significant as US manpower cost is incredibly expensive (as proven by Manila and BA). People argue that the skill sets and competencies are still below that of the US but couple of things going for offshore operations: (1) If an offshore employee is only 20% as competent as a US employee, you can hire 5 of them to compensate and still be cheaper than labor here in the US; (2) most ot these offshorw employeea are quite young with multiple university degrees and can speak multiple languages - they may not he ready now but they can likely navigate a steep learnint curve, (3) culturally, they are most likely willing to please customers as well as deliver discretionary effort, (4) likely no sense of entitlement - they are just happy to be working for a multinational company and (5) they hardly whine and complain like us Americans do - where serial complaining seems to be a national sport.