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EM hasn't had mass layoffs. They have gotten rid of some contracters here and there and maybe a few low ranked employees, but certainly nothing close to the scale of what Chevron has had this year.
@1bho, I find your post to be very insightful, particularly in your observation on why XOM is twice the size of Chevron and likely to grow the gap even larger. Good post.
Chevron has such piss poor management that they provide hundreds of horror stories. Exxon doesn't have much to joke about.
XOM institutionally knows what Chevron and the others still, after watching this movie 4 times over the last 30 years, do not: now is not the time to cut personnel, now is the time to begin E&D to support the next two or three decades of production. XOM knows that they will desperately need these same people when things rebound, and they are most desperate for E&D personnel at the moment. Now is the time to get rigs on contract for pennies on the dollar. Now is the time to grab the best and the brightest who are either leaving or being cut from others (most notably, the mismanagement at Chevron), and now is the time to look seriously into M&A. This is a very well known (and quickly forgotten for many) cycle, folks, regardless of how many pundits are shouting about the Saudis, etc., and the cycle always repeats. You are not hearing much from XOM because they are simply following the business model they have had in place for the last few decades, and the same investment approach touted by Warren Buffet. Note that XOM wasn't making big headlines with mega-MCPs during the 100+/bbl days, and they are not making headlines with any layoffs now. They don't need to. They are quiet, professional, and, above all, successful.
There's a reason XOM is twice the size of CVX. That gap will grow significantly over the next couple of years.
OP, because XOM has not had across the board layoffs, at least not yet.
Because Chevron employees have defined themselves as petulant, bigoted and childish idiots while all the other companies act like adults. I should know, my experience is with GOM.
because Chevron folks are a bunch of cry babies while XOM aren't and keep focused on the task and their work
I hear you about working for a service company. I came to Chevron from a geophysical service company and I am also appalled at the magnitude of waste, inefficiency and turtle speed slowness for getting anything done. At the same time, there are constant meetings about why the productivity is not as much as what was projected. The main emphasis is on making power points and spreadsheets on various processes and procedures and not on actually getting real work and progress done. Thee is no sense of urgency in becoming more productive. Simply laying off thousands of people and then claiming increased efficiency/productivity because of lower personnel costs is pure BS. The people who remain are still in the same work culture/environment.
ExxonMobil is a much better company, in terms of saving costs and being more versatile across the oil & gas business. Chevron is very exploration and production focused, which is the sector that is getting hit the hardest right now. We can't justify drilling or spending money on new projects, when oil is too cheap. Exxon has more midstream and refining capabilities, which are currently keeping them going. At Exxon, managers get fired or demoted when they make stupid mistakes, and lose millions on projects. At Chevron, this somehow gets overlooked, as if it is no big deal. Those of us that came from service or engineering companies to join Chevron, are often appalled at how careless their costs / spending can be. At those smaller companies, every dollar counts. Exxon is also very critical on spending, and reducing costs, all the time.
Because we are in much worse position than Exxon, we have more reasons to complain and vent
Because.
John Watson stated many months ago that Chevron (under his management) would preserve the stock dividend. Now, many good people would lose their livelihood anyway because of what has and is happening to the entire oil industry, but the obsession with preserving the dividend is making a bad situation worse. Chevron pays over 8 billion dollars a year to dividends. This is in addition to the highly questionable decision to undertake multiple MCP's simultaneously. Precious few top managers at the many oil companies have any memory of the crash of 1986, nor of the bitter an painful lessons that were learned. So many solid and experienced people will never return to the oil industry. I have seen this before - the great dumbing down of an entire profession. There is a saying that good judgment comes from experience and experience comes from bad judgment. There is less and less good judgment left at Chevron, and there was already a shortage to begin with. Stay upbeat for your family this Christmas and check out how many times you hear about Chevron and its dividend from Watson and the financial news.
You want 1000's of messages for Exxon, just go to https://www.thelayoff.com/exxon-mobil. This site is for Chevron only.
Two reasons:
1) Chevron people are bored so they go online and rant, vent whatever instead of work. This website is probably shared on Yammer or some intranet.
2) Exxon people don't know how to find this board.
Next question.