Sad but true - we are massively over-staffed as compared to peers. I didn't like seeing friends leave yesterday either, and one day it will be me, but oil is $70-$80/bbl and our net debt has stayed almost flat. That's ridiculous. We have 5X the Ops folks most companies our size have.
A few items to note:
- Haven't heard any high ranking execs that were let go - my bet is very few of them, lay off those who do the work instead. A real cost cutting would focus more on the exec level.
- Don't let Brendan fool you - the exec VP that "retired" - look at the filings, she is making more this year than any of us will make in our whole life.
- Our scope of management is terrible. Average EVP should have 200-300 people under them, ours who left had like 50. Average VP should have at least 100 - we have many VP's with 5-25....yes a VP whose scope is only 5-25 team members! We have directors or senior managers that have 2 - 4 people. Again, the layoff should have hammered the management ranks - that's where the bigger bucks are too.
- Finally, it's always easy to say cut some people and figure out work we arent' going to do any more. But then you try to cut work and the VP's always say "Oh no, I need that report" or "I need to be able to explain everything to my boss in case they ask". We outlook and forecast (inaccurately) the heck out of ourselves, we create massive quarterly slide packages that take hundreds of hours to prepare and then get reviewed in huge groups with managers, then sr. managers, then VP's, then COO, then CEO. Why don't we couple what we aren't going to do anymore with the people leaving
Came across this at @1bhb+1uVhwpK0. Bumping it up so it’s not lost in replies.