So what is the difference between quitting and retiring from an HR perspective. Someone told me that you get your prorated annual bonus of quarters worked when you retire (but not if your quit). Given that, why does anyone quit when they could just retire (and then get employed elsewhere)?
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The crew has changed! Just look at any demographic slide you will see no longer see that camel hump of people near retirement. They are gone. The new generation has taken over. We are seeing general managers with 15 years experience and less!
@2jiu. To answer your question, most of the all-stars did not quit or retire. They were laid off.
....”for over ten years now”. Maybe the projected start by some accounts. The “crew change” is defined by many individual retirement decisions, which we all know depend on the health of the overall economy, the market, and other factors. A lot of good people took a package during the downturn and with the overall market up I am being invited to an accelerating number of retirement parties. All antidotal evidence for sure, but I suspect the numbers will not really register until commodity prices rebound for long enough to impact exploration and asset development rates. Sure we could have a Fed driven “Trump Crash” of stocks or other bad news that could cause many to push back their retirement plans some years again, but not forever.
We have supposedly been in “the great crew change” for over ten years now.
You can love being an engineer (or earth scientist), but become sick of your direct report management chain and all the day to day bull that constantly swirls around. Add to that, when you get as old as I in this industry, you basically have enough money if push comes to shove. If you want to keep working, but feel the need to move your feet, the question becomes the best new opportunity exit strategy. Whatever you are looking for, unless I am missing something, it would seem to me that the exit paper work with HR should be “retire”, even if you have a new job waiting. With the recent salary treatment of all the petro tech 25s, I suspect I am not the only one pondering these questions. Yes we are just off another painful period of layoffs, but funny how fast attention gets diverted from the fact that despite the normal commodity fluctuations that have always occurred in this industry, we are in the middle of the “great crew change”.
This is, forgive me, a pretty stupid concept. To quit or to retire. Not exactly Shakespeare. Whether to suffer the slings and arrows of a lack of fortune? Do you like your job? If you are in a position to even ask this question, first, well done. If you are on the borderline financially, just ask yourself when you are looking in the mirror while shaving, why am I going to the office today? I like the movie Sister Act 2. Whoppi Goldberg quotes from some book and, to paraphrase, if you wake up in the the morning and all you can think about is engineering, then you need to be an engineer. Don’t ever stop doing what you love.
So what about all the all-stars on this site that left and landed positions at other companies with twice the pay and benefits? Did they quit or retire?
No one likes a quitter, not even a future employer. Just retire and move on with your Plan A or B. I would expect you have more to gain if you exited the company in a “planned” manner. Read up on the company policy and process for initiation of your retirement application. Once you know what to expect, schedule a meeting with your HRBP and ask any final questions.
Why don’t you just quit and stop this useless thread and indecision. If you were better at making decisions you wouldn’t be in this mess.
Ok, sure, there are ups and downs on leaving any situation, but I can not think of a single scenario in which one would be BETTER OFF telling HR that you were moving on to employment elsewhere (i.e., quitting) vs. simply “retiring from Chevron”.
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Once you go to HR with questions like this, they grab your file and as soon as you leave, they make notes in it of what you’ve been there inquiring about. Be careful with HR. If you ask questions about retirement, they’ll get the idea that you are considering it. Watch out. Besides, those turds are not there to council you or give advise. Their standard response is pointing you to what the website says. When dealing with HR, pretend you’re at a poker table... keep your cards close to the vest. Today’s HR is not the same as it was back in the 90’s, when you could saunter into the office and discuss things openly with your trusted HR rep.
You only get a prorated bonus if your age and years of service meet or exceed a certain threshold / talk to HR.
Retirement as such is triggered when you submit the paperwork for the lump sum or annuity - this can be some time after you leave Chevron should you wish.
Best to speak with HR.
Moderators, what’s so obscene about the word “cok-tail” [deliberately misspelled] in the post below??? Can you tell us?
I was laid off in 2016 with 32 years of work service. My goal was to retire in 2017, but I cannot complain. It was only a goal, not a financial necessity to wait ‘til 2017. The company paid me the equivalent of 1 year in severance, I was able to get 6 months of “cheap” Cobra health insurance paid by Chevron, I got 6 months of unemployment benefits despite not actually looking for a job. Everything worked out like a charm. Just lucky. Today, I’m working a 25 hours per week part-time, low stress job only 3 miles from the house. I wasn’t looking for it. Just offered to me through friend of a friend at a BBQ and c---tail party.
Not everyone is eligible for retirement and if you quit early, you forfeit your non-vested amount. Getting layed off is completely different and you get a much better deal with the severance. In general, there is no "option" to be voluntarily layed off so that you can get that deal. It's a matter of being lucky enough to want to and be prepared to retire during layoffs. The odds that you are layed off at the perfect time to retire are slim. Taking another short term low-stress job to fill the gap is a more feasible option.
Happy people retire. Angry people quit.
I’m not sure why anybody would quit versus retire if they have that option, but there is a minimum number of points to be eligible to retire so it’s not an option for everybody.