It seems like from the posts that the work force is very green now. Not that it’s bad to have young professions but you also need experienced mentors.
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@25fom+1nibBPES Really? Still with the WFH BS. There are so many companies that require full-time in office all week. Just look at Exxon if you want an example. I like WFH as well, but with the current WFH Monday and Friday I find it hard to complain any. Sure, I would like to be home everyday, but that will come with retirement. In fact I would be willing to take a 20% - 30% paycut to WFH with benefits instead of retire. I think for all of us that would like to negotiate a WFH strategy that paycuts whould be the first place to start. It means you are willing to give up something for something in return. On the other side don't be surprised when we are told no more WFH and just go back to 9/80's.
@fnk+1nibBPES
I agree but what is even worse is so many experienced and inexperienced are finding better full-time work from home positions and are leaving.
Yep, Sell the GOM and North Africa.(on top of everything else) ... Leaves Oxy with APC's mediocre Permian basin acreage and Colorado ( regulatory minefield)... Great $55 Billion dollar acquisition. That's forward thinking!
Should get out of GOM and also North Africa.
Talking about O&G especially GOM. Oxy has a massive deficit in both experience and technical expertise that starts right near the top. When Oxy picked up APC it became a very different company with the addition of GOM and so initially there was an inexperienced executive management team trying to figure it all out with a degree of hubris, while all the technical expertise shuffled out the door. It is still happening today with 20-30 year technical experts going to competitors to get away from micro management, no exploration success, flat production, layers of new bureaucracy, cuts in capital investment and focus on CV at the very top. It's a death spiral that has been so poorly managed by senior officers/HR it's bordering on negligence. These folks need to get a grip on reality and do everything possible to retain experienced staff or get out of GOM. It's not if but when Oxy takes a big hit financial or safety or both caused in most part by the lack of experience. This is no dig at the engineers in the front line as they are doing their very best and are overworked, but you need people that can see round the corners and that only comes with years and years of experience.
@7tja Perfect summation of Oxy. Anyone good at their job left a long time ago.
The workforce is in general much younger and inexperienced. Not that experience matters anymore, because it doesn't get valued here. Experience is a trap, the more you have, the less mobility. Younger staff doesn't understand the concept of experience, because “they know better”, no need to read manuals or books, Google does it all. Worse, the upcoming workforce will think of interacting with ChatGPT as experience!
In 2011 I was in a meeting where APC management said that 60 % of the professional staff was eligible for retirement benefits in the next five years. There was a corporate push for knowledge transfer before the big crew change. Performance metrics were built into our yearly appraisals for mentorship, working with other teams, presentations to business units, etc. Given that we had a five year start on knowledge transfer, little happened. Lots of confidence from the youngsters and senior staff that wanted to wrap things up and retire. The OXY acquisition completely extinguished the fire as everyone figured out what their COC package was worth and how soon they would be released.
I have less than 10 years and I have someone on my team that I sincerely look up to. It will be rough when he leaves since there is NO ONE that can replace his knowledge.
Confidence always got in the way when interacting with the experienced staff. Many, many times I heard from less experienced folks that they had things under control and they had full command of the subject matter. Confidence does not equal experience. Too bad management didn't understand that concept too. You should have taken advantage of the wealth of knowledge roaming the hallways before the great extinction event....
In our company that the the most "confident" staff were schooled at Texas A&M and OU...Must be something in the water there.
"experienced mentors" are mostly gone. But i guess it depends on the specific department. Lots of retirements/forced retirements over the last 8 years. Lots of newer workers that don't complain that things were better before because they were not around before. As the workforce gets younger, you will also see more natural turnover since younger folks are not loyal (for better and worse) like the retiring generation. But I don't think most of the statements above are only Oxy specific. Similar trends are occurring at most organizations. New normal