I will start - The organisation is starting to fail across the board with all of the reorganizations. The talent pipeline weak. We are seeing a huge proportion of the new grads leaving but more concerning is the 15-25year range who have frankly had enough of the BS. No raises, more BS and the opportunities are less. The new D and S model is so much worst than the old system (sounds like our PA system) and only helps the HIPos. And Darren will retire just before the s hits the fan. Goodbye long term growth.
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@a1 resignment to this scenario is what damns the company. The case study is real.
@m1 I recently returned to EMHC after being away for many years. It is unrecognizable. So much politics. All people do is try to setup others and perform political games. Disappointing to say the least. It is disgraceful. I am either going to get out of EMHC or find a new job.
The past few years, survival meant how well you play the politics. Now there are way too many politicians and not enough doers which is why management has become worthless and the doers are overworked.
Presidents, Vice-Presidents, and Executives are all smiles at internal and external forums, but behind closed doors they will cut you off at the kneecaps if you are not delivering on your metrics that impact their RSU's.
Our best people leave and our worse people stay in this dumpster fire
@gm there's half a dozen other operators I would work for, but chevron aint one of them
Downstreamers ego hurt is resulting in their toxic refinery culutre being spilt over to upstream. Hence upstream is headed into a disaster as incumbent upstream managers have no ba--s to tell the truth or say no to stupid ideas from their downstream masters.
We actually know the competition (CVX) is better than us, and secretly wish we worked there.
The talent bench is empty. We have space to bring on people, even from outside. However, none of them have the internal experience needed. Why do you need internal knowledge? Because the systems and processes that have been built for many decades are interwoven. Even if you replace a system like Polaris will, you still need process knowledge to ensure there are no gaps. You don’t have that knowledge with a new hire, external hire or even someone you build up that has 5-10 years experience. DW’s HR strategy was flawed and it’s causing a deep gap within the organization. Only way to fix it: convince the current 20-25 year experience personnel to stay and develop the organization. Mark my words, the org will suffer if they don’t intervene now.
Please delete Mobil from ExxonMobil as we no longer want to be associated with this toxic company.
A fish rots from the head, the rot in EM is now deep rooted and irreversible. A COVID panic has been turned into a catastrophe by DWW and his accolites. If you can leave then leave now. Take your skills and experience somewhere where they will be respected and valued.
We used to have a very strong Procurement organization. But then we started down a path of constant reorgs, unnecessary category assignment shuffling, and the relentless shedding of experienced talent in favor of offshoring to the cheap & clueless. Bureaucracy is increasing at an alarming pace, but that makes sense. If the largest demographic in your organization is clueless, lots of guardrails are needed. No one in the HC10 countries are optimistic about the future, and everyone is looking for the exits. But that's what the company wants, all of HC10 folks to leave without severance or retirement benefits needing to be supplied. I guess if you can't save money through negotiation, you do it through cheaper labor. Downward spiral much?
@cm especially young college grads look very suspicious, like one of them is about to run another Columbine scenario at campus. Also there’s almost no police presence lately, so I’m ready to skedaddle if one of these poor souls will start deleting others and then self delete - I don’t want to be there that day
The Streisand Effect Thrives at ExxonMobil
Mechanism
Attempts to suppress information are often made through cease-and-desist letters, but instead of being suppressed, the information sometimes receives extensive publicity, becoming viral over the Internet or being distributed on file-sharing networks.
Seeking or obtaining an injunction to prohibit something from being published or to remove something that is already published can "backfire" by increasing the publicity of the published work.
The Streisand effect has been described as an example of psychological reactance, wherein once people are aware that some information is being kept from them, they are significantly more motivated to acquire and spread it.
The Streisand effect has been observed in relation to the right to be forgotten, the right in some jurisdictions to have private information about a person removed from internet searches and other directories under some circumstances. A litigant attempting to remove information from search engines risks the litigation itself being reported in the news.
The phenomenon has been described by the Chinese proverb "(when one) attempts to cover (the truth), (it) becomes more conspicuous" (欲蓋彌彰, pinyin: Yù gài mí zhāng).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect
@cf the good part about this lack of repair and maintenance is that many of the speed sensors and cameras on the campus roads aren’t functional so anything goes, speed wise.
Development and Staffing Mamagers have woken up and realize we don’t have the right folks with the right experiences (capabilities) as we have gutted the workforce through the management approved Country Programs. Now they don’t have the b@lls to tell the senior leadership. The talent health assessment will all show green even though some areas we are deep red
I see so many people on campus that appear to be at wits end that I am absolutely shocked we do not hear about employees self deleting every month.
@ca I thought I was the only one who noticed. The garage parking space counters are never working. Lights falling off the walls. Nasty mirror discoloration in the bathrooms. Broken faucets and toilets. Outdoor lighting not maintained. There are even some broken glass panes that just have caution tape on them for months now. HVAC not working for weeks in some areas. Lights on elevator buttons burned out. Monitors in huddle rooms that don’t connect. Trim falling off of conference room tables.
Houston Campus is physically falling apart. Check the number of maintenance items as you walk through. Half the restrooms do not function and most of the doors are in constant need of repair.
Forced PIP targets for many years.
I think if other fortune 500 companies, or E&P peers saw our working conditions in the cubicle shanty towns at EMHC we'd be the butt of a lot of jokes.
Offshoring jobs to Bangalore and managed service providers (MSP) is not actually saving $. DW touts structural cost savings, but it's just pushing cost elsewhere through bloated headcount in MSP's, rework, and travel and meetings to/from the GBC's. There are a few areas where it might help, but overall it's a sham and a lot of the moves aren't saving $.
BTC maybe the future but it’s not a bright future. The number of HR complaints and controls violations is significant.
If Investors knew about how sc--wed this company is becoming, they would vote DWW out or sell their shares. yes our stock price is correlated to oil price but it’s getting to the point where we will not be able to deliver. Our Investor relations will need to get smart to be able to show new wins of winning.
The amount of Upstream talent that is leaving is astonishing. DWW hate of the upstream has taken shape of him destroying it. The downstreamers have taken over and the Upstreamers are just leaving as no future and the salary curve as being merged ie not competitive. Any upstream project will be much harder to operate now
Senior management spends more time designing a PowerPoint slide to make themselves look good than actually doing something to make themselves or company look good.
@OP One of the things about ExxonMobil I think would surprise people is how unremarkable a lot of them are. For the most part, they’re just not particularly interesting or funny, nor are they all that intelligent. Some do have a weird kind of bookish intelligence, but its actual utility is often somewhere around zero. The irony is that they all seem to believe they’re not only brilliant, but hilarious. They laugh at their own jokes. They laugh at each other’s jokes. Everybody is apparently having a wonderful time. Meanwhile, every time I get invited to one of their social events, I think, you know, I would rather sit at home and eat a box of staplers. Not kidding. Maybe from the outside it looks different. People see ExxonMobil, a huge, prestigious company supposedly hiring “the best and the brightest” and probably imagine rooms full of brilliant, fascinating people. It’s just not. And I’m not claiming to be one of “the best and the brightest” either. On the contrary. I wasn’t recruited off the college circuit. I came in as an experienced contractor. I’m older. I’ve been here a long time. But I lived a real life before Exxon. I’ve been out in the real world. I know what real work looks like. And this is not it. This environment feels more like an elaborate post-college hangout for people who never actually left their college days. A lot of them were hired straight out of school and have spent their entire adult lives inside this corporate ecosystem. They’ve never had what I would consider a normal job in the actual world. That’s probably part of what makes the whole thing seem so dull. They’ve spent years speaking the same corporate language, following the same career paths, going to the same meetings, attending the same social events, and laughing at the same unfunny jokes as if they’re absolutely hilarious. And apparently they are. I’ll have to take their word for it, cause I'm not laughing and dont find them particularly cool or funny.
The “culture” is a laughingstock
The PIP Was Never Abut Improvement. That improvement plan isn't a rescue. The decisions already made.
Formal write-ups are up nearly 30 percent since 2020. Most people on one don't make it out the other side.
Seven signs the PIP was never about improvement:
1/ The goals arrived without warning
→ No prior conversation about the gap
→ No coaching before the paperwork
→ Straight from fine to formal, overnight
2/ The timeline is too short to be real
→ Thirty days to reverse months of feedback
→ Not enough runway to actually improve
→ Just enough to build a paper trail
3/ Support gets promised, not delivered
→ Training mentioned, never scheduled
→ Check-ins that quietly stop happening
→ Words on a document, nothing behind them
4/ HR is looped in before you are
→ The plan already has a shape
→ Legal language appears immediately
→ You're the last to know it's happening
5/ The goals shift once you meet them
→ Hit one target, another appears
→ The bar moves faster than you can climb it
→ Success was never actually the point
6/ Your manager avoids specifics
→ Vague feedback dressed up as formal process
→ Nothing concrete enough to actually fix
→ Hard to improve at something undefined
7/ You're quietly encouraged to resign
→ Framed as preserving your dignity
→ It also preserves their severance budget
→ Read that offer carefully before taking it
A real improvement plan wants you to stay. A paper trail just wants a clean exit.
Absolutely miserable culture. People walking around with hateful looks at every stranger as if they see every person on campus as a competitor. Constantly measuring each person as if they are going to push them down below the NSI line before age 55.
The overly competitive forced ranking/mandatory NSI Hunger Games system administered by EM will be a case study as a disastrous culture for corporations to avoid.
Qatar LNG is done. They don’t want to work with DW.
LCS is a non starter without huge taxpayer subsidies
The dysfunction the dysfunction. The horror The horror. The incompetence, nepotism and favoritism that fuels the dysfunction. The appointment of id--ts as leaders. The inability to challenge the stupid corporate ideas and processes. All this leads to the decline of exxon as a profitable company.
Proxxima is a hoax
They are going to try ramp up hiring this year as they are expecting the Exxodus of talent to accelerate.
Remaining Guyana acreage is not nearly as profitable as previous developed areas. Available opportunities outside of Guyana are not as good as Guyana. Basically DW was very lucky to be handed a winning series of projects in Guyana and the Permian and has failed to find anything close to as good. They will invent some new graph to show they are still winning but in reality they have not prepared well for what is coming. Upstream projects in the coming years will be harder just at the time that we have fewer experienced people who know how to execute.
Remaining Permian acreage is not nearly as profitable as what we have already developed. Promises of technology improving recovery are lies just like PROXXIMA.
The total lack of understanding of upstream and belief that they can have downstream employees just slot into upstream roles is a recipe for disaster. Process engineering fine. Materials fine. But offshore execution, offshore platforms, and offshore subsea work is not the same as a refinery. Meanwhile we are aggressive targeting those who understand these very areas. Especially the technical people.
The complete and total lack of understanding by management of just how impacted the workforce is by the changes they have made. Not a single employee is behind the current management.
As a late 40’s life long employee, I confirm OP is spot on. Every single employee I talk to who is not a hipo feels the same way. Every conversation with another employee outside of work always turns into a discussion of how bad things have gotten and how little faith and respect we have in management. Every single person I know is trying to find a way to get a new job. Every single person I know is convinced their job will be moved to India and they will be unfairly PIPed. Every single person I know does not think it is reasonable for employees to expect to reach retirement age without being fired via the pip. I cannot even begin to describe how bad things have gotten since DW took over.