Thread regarding ExxonMobil Corp. layoffs

Give me one good worker with skills and drive over 10 kindergarteners that are rudderless and need constant correction and oversight. Value does not come in quantity but in quality.

The model is not to swap 3x 5-yr engineers for 15x remote junior engineers. That leads to poor quality. Instead it is to swap for 10x remote juniors and keep a 5-yr engineer doing the oversight. Hence more work gets done at the same cost, despite the efficiency reduction. What management don’t understand is that the stress level for that 5-yr engineer is high; and more importantly the job satisfaction is very low. Constantly correcting mistakes and teaching the next junior with zero actual experience.

@bs Pyongyang or Mogadishu Technology Centers anyone? Might as well cut to the chase and go straight to the bottom!

There's maybe a decade or less of this 'talent' arbitrage to play while other international oil companies also outsource to the same place and drive up salaries. Then on to the next.

The issue is not India. The issue is still EM management who pays low salaries in India that does not attract above average talent.

The salary in India paid by EM is 50% or less than what a top company ( any industry, we are competing with a broad engineering pool now) would pay.

The cheapness doesn’t benefit anyone, poor strategy. But it seems like there is no other option given the terrible economic reality the world is headed to.

Folks who have tried working with BTC would know that it's actually quite diffcult to get things done right. Usually it takes multiple iterations,oversight and hand holdings. That's a fact And it's s becoming an acceptable norm, so perhaps this is the new world the company chooses to operate in.

@aa
No one really has any idea how poorly qualified people were hired in BTC—fake degrees, fake credentials, fake experience

@OP This assumes that productivity (a nebulous term defined by nebulous metrics) scales in proportion to the number of workers.

It’s an oversimplified view of knowledge work that the typical executive derives from a spreadsheet and a bar-chart.

They have graduates from many unknown and low ranking universities and yet we hire them in huge numbers.

@OP In dollar terms you are right but I have spoken to a few of those engineers and they know that they are getting fleeced by EM too. Every couple of years I have to work with a different BTC engineer because the last one quit and switched to another company in Bangalore. The quality of engineering is poor.

Five engineers each with one year of experience do not equate to one five-year engineer.

Except you get what you pay for.