How can we compete if we can’t attract the best students in North America and Europe? And even in India, we attract only the 3rd tier students. I don’t get it….what’s XOM strategy to ‘win’ in the era of Energy Transition? Our competition is beyond traditional IOCs and NOCs…the best talent are now going to Renewable Energy and Tech….and we are acting as if we can win the race with stale/listless or tier-3 hound talents.
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@6imm+1euicZfj — agreed. I was OwD last cycle. I think I worked an average of 10 hours a week, including meetings. I regularly took naps at my desk and sometimes during meetings. Totally useless role but paid well.
@6tmc+1euicZfj
“ If you want to be in top 10%, 70 hour weeks are required”
This is, hands down, the most idi_otic statement ever made about work at EM.
Do you really believe that those ranked in the upper third are there because they put in 70 hours weeks?
They’re there because at the very beginning of their career some rotten old manager declared them, out of the blue, to be their protege, which means they need to do nothing more than to pretend to work and boss around other people.
Do you think that any EM supervisor would rank HiPos, especially those with heavy sponsors, lower than some loser who spends 70 hours a week at work?
Go work in IT somewhere else; if you really meant what you say you may have a future there. Otherwise this is just a stunningly sycophantic remark.
Work-Family balance is just BS. It is about d-mbing down everyone to a 40 hour week. Company needs more people willing to work 70 hour weeks when needed. Many tech firms have ZERO work-family balance (Coders coding at all hours of the night). It is not about balance. It is about DYNAMICS; you work hard when important stuff needs to be one quickly; then take a breather when work slows down. Then REPEAT. It is dynamic, not balanced. Yes, you will miss little league games and dance recitals, but that is why you are paid big bucks. If you can't handle it, go get an hourly job, you do not belong in a professional org. Get back to work and come into the Office this weekend. If you want to be in top 10%, 70 hour weeks are required.
Ask your friends in Talent Management in HR. You won't be surprised by their plan.
Engineering professions are dominated by the large public schools even in Silicon Valley. Zuck and Gates are not representative samples.
While top tier schools do admit highly talented kids, the costs to attend these schools make attending them restrictive. These top schools also seem to care more about how the recruits parents can prop thier endowments.
Chemistry, engineering and other sciences, at the bachelor degree level, are generally taught the same. So all your getting is a pedigree, but no guarantee of quality. At higher degree levels, it depends on what they have done, not where they did it.
Which respect to Zuck and the other dropouts, I think those folks are less innovative technically than you might think. However they're good at getting the right technical people to take thier ideas to market.
What we need is fewer business leaders and more technical folks. Fewer leaders to crystallize the direction needed to go during the transition, and more technical and non-technical individual contributors to develop new technologies and execute said plan.
Folks!
We're certainly not hiring Oxford chemists or MIT quantitative Phds anymore.
So if the talk is about colleges - half the Petro and carbon-based Engineering programs will shut down this decade, if not already.
Maybe some sponsorship will keep the Aggie/Cougar/Tiger programs going, but the key degrees for XOM are now Accounting, BADM and Marketing.
You can buy those any where.
(and those are Gates/Zuck/Musk skills too. Those guys don't have a scientific bone above the waist.)
Gates and Zuckerberg had passion for the work/business.
Like we used to.
@2fds you nailed it with your post! I’m amazed it is down voted because it is so accurate. Maybe the down votes are because only a small additional piece of information is not included, there is a 2nd enabler for those graduating a “top-tier” school … the majority whom can afford to attend the so called top tier come from wealthy families and are spoiled and enabled by the wealthy parents and never actually really learned the work ethic part of the equation, rather they learn the money and entitlement part of the equation. A 3.5 gpa from someone whom worked their way thru college is much more valuable than a 4.0 nerd from the so called top tier school that can’t even change a flat tire or oil In their own car. The whiners need to stop whining and get to work , or if you don’t like it, have your mommy or daddy complain to someone. Have a nice day and good job @2fds for pointing out the obvious regardless of the entitled class seeming to downvote your perspective.
@2fds Gates and Zuckerberg both came from wealthy, well-connected families, and were attending top-tier private universities. This is not a good basis of comparison. Most of us will have to at least earn a bachelor’s degree to get anything resembling a decent job.
Comparing anyone to Abraham Lincoln is just daft. He was one of the few people of his caliber ever to have lived. You’re not Lincoln, and neither is anyone you know. Head back to school and hit the books.
In O&G it's how one applies oneself to learn. It doesn't matter if they went to Bobblehead U. Or wherever, but, the wilingness to learn.
who needs Ivy League when we have yours truly Pune University, Anna University and other smhucky graduates
Enough with this college drop out BS!
Gates dropped out from Harvard, not from Farmstand State U!
He was already selected there as top talent. You “buy” talent from certain colleges not for the education they provide but because of the caliber of their students.
Bill Gates and Zuckerberg were college drop outs. Abraham Lincoln did not have a degree either. All Three worked 80 hour weeks to succeed. Graduating from a top tier school with good GPA indicates only 1 thing: You have a certain intelligence and willingness to work hard to get a good GPA. Finding those with a sound work ethic is a problem. Most want to put in their 40 hours and that's it ; no passion to work hard. Anybody that talks about work balance...is LAZY....time to move on. Promote the people willing to work 80 hours a week and who do high quality and quantity of work.
@1rei A lot of top talent is being funneled into aerospace too, despite the fact that aerospace isn’t run all that differently from O&G.
I agree.
The Energy Transition requires Innovation. Innovation requires top talent. The commodity (O&G) part of our business will not grow and can sustain with 2nd or 3rd tier talent….more reliance on TCs.
A winning proposition calls for the best talent from around the world….That’s what we need to compete in this New World. The very best and most innovative talent will naturally come from the top schools around the world. EM is currently not attractive to this group…they would rather choose Tesla, Microsoft, Google or Amazon.
Look at the schools that some Chiefs and Senior principals are coming from. EM has stopped attracted top talent in the US long time ago. They simply promote whatever they have predetermined.
@1vnu
I totally agree with you.
My post objecting to your post was actually an endorsement of your thoughts.
Admittedly in a twisted way.
I've been binging Norm McDonald a bit too much lately, maybe.
Just can't get that wry dry sarcasm into the typewriter.
When I wrote “The expectation from HR and hiring managers is that people are born knowing everything they need to know for the job they’re hired to do.” I was trying to convey how unrealistic the hiring expectations are for most HR departments. While it is somewhat hyperbolic, it isn’t that far off from what is often expected of a candidate.
While HR shops for unicorn candidates, positions remain open for months, and the added work gets dumped on already overworked employees, who then get burned-out and quit. Rinse, wash, and repeat.
Have to take exception with a post immediately below.
Quote:
"The expectation from HR and hiring managers is that people are born knowing everything they need to know for the job they’re hired to do."
This notion is just completely wrong.
While it is true - for hiring of HiPos - this is an expectation by the management.
They do truly believe that narcissism and related sycophancy are "born in the bone" traits.
But those are actually learned traits - nurture not nature.
5 successful years in EM only enhances these traits.
So I have to disagree with this idea of the poster.
And for any new qualified hires, mercy on you 3.
@OP Nobody hires students or new grads.
The expectation from HR and hiring managers is that people are born knowing everything they need to know for the job they’re hired to do. The idea (again, from HR) is that a new grad will have 20+ years of experience and be willing to work 70+ hours/week for less than $90k/year. Positions will remain open and overworked employees will continue quitting until companies realize that none of this will ever happen.
@nog take the class antagonism elsewhere. Many jobs require a bachelor’s degree at a minimum. Once you obtain one for yourself you’ll understand why this is so.
For a commodity business, we do not need to hire top talent. We just need "commodity" employees that are content to keep our facilities operating 24/7.
It hasn’t been about talent for a very long time. All that matters now is how quickly and how loudly you can extoll the virtues of whatever position your boss takes. We are ExxonMobil is nothing more than a cult, and truly talented people won’t want anything to do with a cult.
We compete by controlling our OPEX. Salaries, medical, and retirement pensions have risen faster than product prices over the last 20 years. We have to do more with less.
This is not about top tier universities. It’s about top talent. Too graduating students are hesitant to join O&G….and XOM in particular. Technology and emerging renewable companies attract the best talent. XOM cannot survive with 2nd and 3rd tier talent. I agree.
As long as our “not so smart” leaders are still around, we will not be able to attract top talents!
You can graduate from top universities and get hired by EM and end up become stupid and talentless as result of continuos of brainwashing and stupid policy in the company. During my time at EM, sometimes I could not believe some words that came out from the experienced people in the company, that have been working only with EM.
Yeah, let’s see those blue collar guys do flow assurance work. American anti-intellectualism is so gross.
This post is what is wrong with XOM. The majority of jobs in this industry don’t need people with college degrees, they need people with common sense and a strong work ethic. All of the employees that I work around that have college degrees have absolutely zero common sense and aren’t willing to work hard. Bring in blue collar guys with common sense and the company will get back on track.
@psb. Haha. Good one
What the company needs is more BYU grads. They could single-handedly turn this sinking ship around. A top tier school worth top tier graduates. /s
For most non core functions within EM top talent is not needed; that would include IT, HR, Accounting and several others groups.
The bigger problem is narrowing our recruiting to TX, LA, MS, AL. Nothing wrong with the quality of the schools but we’re better off bringing folks in from across the country.
The strategy is NOT to hire / attract more people. EM is top heavy and the PIPs will continue until the HC is in line with operational footprint going forward.
It is true..talking about meritocracy...some people even if they are bright, but dont have money to finance the expensive tuition fees of the ivy leagues, will not be able to get in there...you can graduate from top universities but end up being so corrupted once you join the toxic environment at EM...
People keep thinking we want to attract “top talent” this is clearly not the case. Xom is happy to go after mid tier talent while thinking all of the “processes” and “work flows” can be executed by nearly anyone and from anywhere.
No such thing as low tier students just because you didn’t go to an ivy school or graduate with top marks. Some of the best engineers I’ve met in Exxon at baytown and emre were from “low tier schools”, but they were humble, passionate, and worked hard. These engineers were often more technical and creative than engineers from better schools.