I would like to take the time to explain the truth about Weatherford as a company to hopefully benefit anyone thinking of working here in the future or anyone thinking of investing in its stock. Overall the company is a joke and I would not recommend working here to my worst enemy, i'll start back a few years ago to explain why. Weatherford announced about 5 years ago that they had purchased a building at 2000 St James Place to consolidate the various Houston locations (JFK, Marathon, Post Oak, etc) into one and save money and increase collaboration by doing so. Unfortunately they do not know how to count and not only was the building too small to fit everyone they ended up having to get space in additional locations and further spread out the Houston area workforce (Park Ten, Woodlands, etc) in the process.
Talent wise Weatherford does an incredible job of losing the best and brightest and promoting absolute morons. Weatherford has acquired multiple companies in the past 10 years and in the process lost ALL the talent that made those companies successful and worthy of being purchased in the first place. They do not seem to realize that when they acquire a company the employees working there are the most important thing they bought not the inventory on hand or name. Within 6 months of acquisitions almost all the staff has turned over and nobody is left that knows anything (EWECO, International Logging Inc., Houston Well Screens, etc). Weatherford is now absolutely filled with consultants and they are never included as part of a layoff. Around a month ago we were informed that Dharmesh had decided to layoff consultants and keep around full time employees during the oil price decline so that when the price returned the company would be able to react quickly since key talent was still around. Since this idea made so much sense the company rewarded Dharmesh by demoting him shortly after and began their process of laying off only full time employees like normal. Meanwhile the company pays to house consultants from India in hotels throughout the Houston area and pay them over $100 per hour. No bonuses are given to any regular employees like every other oil related company only executives are qualified for bonuses.
The company does not promote from within and only hires outside individuals for their executive positions. For example, a few years ago within the IT organization Mike Dove departed the company for KBR leaving behind a perfectly good successor named Bill Droke who should have taken his position. Instead, they hired Mike Perroni from Halliburton and Bill Droke promptly left for NOV. Mike Perroni came in and talked up a good game about giving employees new job titles and creating career paths to move them up in the organization but was full of crap. Multiple years later all Mike Perroni did was give employees new titles from which nobody has been promoted or received any type of pay increase. All the higher level positions he instead filled with his buddies from Halliburton and passed over any internal talent (Gary Tyler, Kenneth Alexander, Michael Haigh, etc all from Halliburton). To succeed in Weatherfords IT organization now you either have to be Indian or be coming from Halliburton those are the only options you have.
Stupid concepts such as reducing inventory by $500 million are talked about each year and always fail to occur yet nobody is penalized because of it. They are once again talking about this goal in 2015 and no doubt will fail again because the same morons are in charge of the Supply Chain and other organizations.
The main concept Bernard has stressed over his tenure is he wants the company to grow but now in the past couple years he has absolutely reversed course and decided it is time to shrink to less than 50,000 employees by year end 2015. He has been an absolute failure as CEO and needs to be eliminated it is clear he has no idea what he is doing.
Regarding the current layoffs announced last Thursday they actually began that process weeks ago. Around a month ago they started "randomly" drug testing people hoping some would fail so they could let them go without any severance. Two weeks ago they began laying off people quietly at the various offices in advance of actually announcing anything. Unlike Schlumberger and other companies Weatherford once again proved what a coward the CEO was by laying off quietly and not making an official announcement. Last Thursday as they were hosting their conference call layoffs were going in full swing throughout all US offices. Bernard mentioned they would only be laying off support staff and other unnecessary employees but this is an absolute lie. They are laying off people with reckless disregard and when the oil price does return will have absolutely no competitive advantage because nobody experience is left. Anyone with a combined age+tenure of 50 years is being offered early retirement to get them out the door. These are not support staff these are key employees and the only ones who know how to do many of the jobs being eliminated. Weatherford is either going out of business or being sold to another company they have not left any hope for being a profitable company anytime in the future. If you are not part of the current layoffs I urge you to start looking for a job elsewhere because this company is a sinking ship. Meanwhile multiple job postings remain on the Weatherford website which could have been filled by those being laid off. This option was never explored however nor were other choices such as furlough.
Lastly, Weatherford tries to stress how they are a safety oriented company yet they have laid off multiple safety coordinators in the past week. We are all forced to watch a video during Safe Start where Bernard cries about how one of his employees was killed and that changed him to care more about safety yet his actions reflect the truth about this French POS.
In summary if you are thinking of working here don't, if you want to invest money in this company you might as well light it on fire, this company is a hellhole and you should avoid it at all costs. Within the next 5 years it will cease to exist as a standalone company.