Thread regarding ExxonMobil Corp. layoffs

@3ube But you are wasting time on the dweeb, soooo

@2nrt You personify the little dweeb @ss b1tch who won't survive in the Company, but, hasn't developed himself for options. I guess I haven't been PILed for the very reason management needs me and the knowledge transfer. I wouldn't waste your minutes on a dweeb like you.

While there may be some very old employees remaining, the vast majority have left over the last couple of years thru PIP and retirement (as planned). This has shifted the demographics of the "older" group downward in age. This should have allowed more opportunities for advancements as there are far fewer CL27-30 remaining. Time will tell, but if you're in a lower CL looking up, you got the best opportunity now.

@2lgy Doesn’t matter how content you are. You’re not adding value by taking up payroll and repeating outdated processes.

It’s all good though, they’ll just innovate around you, set a high training bar, and and fail you into obsolescence. It’s how big tech keeps it fresh. Coming soon to a conglomerate near you.

Also, you old-timers can stop saying how much you like what you do, as the huge volume of applications to peer companies from EM employees with 10+ years of service tells a very different story.

#1flz I'm RE and I like my job. If you're under 40 I encourage you to get in to a more relevant industry. As it is for me, I am very content working and taking the money.

@2jhh TL;DR

I’ve designed my life specifically so that I won’t end up like the typical miserable boomer who poured his life into his company, only to realize at the age of 62, when the last vestiges of vitality are being rung from him, that there was never any social contract with his employer to begin with.

I don’t take advice/lectures from angry old men who still need to work for a paycheck in their 50s/60s. Instead, I seek out the advice of those who retired in their late 40s. That’s the club to join.

...How did I arrive to a point where after the age of 50, I still have to show up to a job that I don’t like, for an employer that I can’t stand, just to meet my financial obligations?...

I'll tell you how.

You will find as you get older that you are not as invincible as you believe you are now. Your arrogant projections about how well your 50 year's self will fare thanks to your winner attitude of your young self, will get tarnished the day you realize that life fking happens.

You think you have everything planned but suddenly, when you less expect it, you get hit by a tsunami: you get divorced, or you (or your child) get fking sick (expensively and scaring sick), or you need to pull out your child from free public school because it is destroying him, or your spouse get fking fired, or you take a risky investments and it goes to $hit, or whatever.

Because my young invincible and arrogant colleague, such is life, full of contingencies, and those who succeed in life, are those who can recover from such tsunamis with humility and patience, as those who are now enduring the toxicity of EM caused by arrogant a$$holes like you for the love of themselves or their children and waiting for their right moment to make a move or not, who the fk are you to judg it, unlike you, who will p00p yourself and fall into deep depression because your arrogant attitude will inevitably lead you to think of yourself that you became the looser you so much despise today.

@1glp You’re not getting better, you’re just in a position to delay inevitable changes. This allows you to keep repeating tasks using outdated methods and claim expertise based on repeated practice.

Most of you were average (at best) in your prime working years. Take note of the median age of workers/managers at high-performing tech companies and explain how Exxon’s geriatric workforce plans to achieve the same quantity and quality of output.

@1vla Kudos to you for acknowledging that you actually come to work for the paycheck, unlike the rest of the old-timers who have tried to recast dragging themselves into the office everyday as some kind marker of high moral character, or whatever.

Now you and your ilk can pose the following question to yourselves:

How did I arrive to a point where after the age of 50, I still have to show up to a job that I don’t like, for an employer that I can’t stand, just to meet my financial obligations?

Here’s another one:

If we’re all so good at what we do, why is every company in the industry, including my current one, in a state of general decline?

@1smj. Yes I need the money. For me personally if alone or just two of us, I have way more than enough. Two kids and now grand kids and extended family enjoy my earning power. I made sure everyone is happy, secure, well educated, properly raised and enjoying life in ways I was not able to. Not a moral crusade you pissant, it's a way of life.

@1sbu People under 40 aren’t entering the industry anyway. The few who are use it as a pit stop.

If you’re over 50 and you’re still showing up to work for someone else it’s because you need the paycheck. Stop trying to turn staying in a job you can’t stand into some kind of moral crusade: you need the money, you don’t have externally marketable skills, and you can’t do any better.

@1qeh The pressure is on to make the industry obsolete. Technology is in hand to do that, it will just be a slower and longer transition given the long running dependency on fossil fuels. The anomaly is not the 50+ age employees who have decided they've come this far and might ad well stick it out. The anomaly is the under 40 age employee who can't understand that THEY will be totally obsolete in fossil fuels industry as they near retirement, but, they are still here. The capable ones already have, if you could you would.

Hahhhaaa. Disgruntled juniors casting barbs at their seniors. I'm well into RE and going strong. I'm pretty sure it's for a pretty good g-dd@mn reason. Buckle down and learn how to apply yourselves and make decisions for the real business. Even for the juniors, the days of looking pretty and running around looking for right answers to spin as your own are over. Now is the time to sink or swim. To most of you pissants who won't cut it good, good f n riddins.

....nobody gets better at anything after age 50....

Wrong.

There are more successful entrepreneurs in their 50s than in their 30s.

Source:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kmehta/2022/08/23/older-entrepreneurs-outperform-younger-foundersshattering-ageism/

Question (not being facetious):

If so many of you claim to still have your best working years ahead of you, then why is Exxon and the entire industry flipping between bouts of stagnation and decline?

It it were only Exxon, we could blame poor leadership, but an entire industry? The through-line is that every major operating company is staffed from top to bottom with people who should have retired or moved on, but won’t.

I’m sorry, but I don’t see how a bunch of people in their late 50s to their early 70s are going to lead the next great wave of technological or business innovation. Knowledge workers generally peak in their late 30s/early 40s. It’s all flat from there.

If 50 is when you max out then yeah there are people who have to keep working past 50. Are you suggesting we set retirement age at 50? Who is going to pay for all the retirees? New hires aren’t contributing on day one either. I hope you never make it to a leadership role. We used to have something called loyalty. It went both ways. Young people want to job hop and also throw loyal employees on the street after they have given years to the company. You apply that in your personal life as well? Divorce your wife once she hits 40 and trade her in for a new 20 year old? Your views are going to destroy society.

@svt If that’s true then move on.

@OP Apparently the people pointing out that many of the most active and vocal complainers at Exxon are past their working prime has touched a nerve.

Good.

Nobody gets better at anything after age 50. You might be wiser, but you’re not any better at what you do professionally and probably never will be. Move on.

Mid-career employee here.

To OP: sorta. I definitely am not as sharp as I was when I was first out of school. My capacity for volume of work is lower as well as I age.

Combine this with the fact that a lot of the old deadwood was never very good at what they did anyways (but they’ve been endowed with gravitas because of ‘experience’), and the fact that people stop working hard when they don’t have to (financially set), and yeah, I can see how the company would be better off without those individuals at a certain point. Sadly, that will one day include me as well.

@dps+1iFpxlY2

Are you implying that merit raises and promotions should be given to the junior and not the more senior?

That's age discrimination.

What employees are really communicating is that they hope that the "high salary" more senior employees retire so that cash is freed up so that less senior employees get a raise at the next career development cycle.

Every global business unit has a ceiling on their yearly OPEX including merit raises and promotions. If the global business unit is skewed toward higher salary group older employees, the percentage of money that is available for merit raises is a lot less than a global business unit that has much younger employees at lower salaries.

One of the former Presidents of Refining & Supply used to tell their direct reports in each of the operating refineries around the world at the annual refinery global meeting that "If you cannot meet your metrics for the year, I will have you replaced by someone that can at the next annual meeting."

Bottom line, we steward each global business unit to a fixed set of OPEX, Environmental, Health, and Safety metrics each year at the highest level of the corporation. If you cannot meet those metrics, your career is toast.

You can't look at things in isolation. The reason you are enjoying retirement now are our strong benefits (pension, 401K, medical).

OP, Good point!

I might add... patience is even shorter when you have finally funded a retirement. By that point, all kinds of things become more interesting than your current job.

As an EM retiree, I can honestly say, right this very moment, that I think of a +/- billion things I would rather be doing than working for EM, ha!

Good luck.