It is sad to see Noble do badly, and I am someone that was laid off after putting many years of sweat into making a company that everyone was proud of. Where did they go wrong? The idea was planted that there is not enough young people to carry on when people retire. FREAK OUT! Let's get rid of everyone over 50! Did anyone stop to think....how did Noble become a company that was admired? A company that people wanted to do business with? a company that people wanted to work for? Maybe just maybe, it was the employees that built the company. Nope....let's clean house! When they laid off the people that had made the company, they flushed experience, knowledge of how to make Noble profitable, and mentors down the drain. They hired people out of college and gave them titles, and incentives and vacations. These young people did not have a clue how to work themselves up the ladder or to handle the positions given to them. They only knew entitlement. It was not their fault they were given what others had worked their butts off to achieve, it was the leadership or lack of that made the mistakes. The executives wanted to make sure their nests were feathered and they used the people and their pensions to do it. Well now you have a company that is run by money hungry fools and employees that are struggling with not knowing how to do their jobs. Where did Noble go wrong? It is simple, the leadership should have taken a little less bonus and let the older people stay and train the younger people to take their jobs. Give them the money they had earned through the years and treat them like they should have been treated so they could retire with their insurance and pensions that they had worked hard for. They would have been happy to train the new people and the company would be in a much better and a much profitable place. It is sad that Noble is failing, but it is sadder for someone that used to be damn proud to work at Noble to watch it happen. I see other companies doing the same thing as Noble did, and each one is paying the price! Instead of the Oil and Gas Industry being a great industry to work in, it has become one to avoid. Guess the plan didn’t work after all. Hopefully, the ones that got rich when throwing others under the bus and could care less that the company is failing has a huge doss of Karma!
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A lot of truth in these posts. The transition began begore CD retired also, it's not all on DS even though he seems to be struggling with a strategic direction. As Noble began to grow we brought in many honchos (mostly from BP but I don't think that was necessarily a negative, just the boys club, and the HR lady) to be VPs, GAP crap took over, HR grew tremendously along with compliance and other support groups. Are they needed, of. Purse. Just not the numbers we had. We transitioned from a company of substance to one of fluff. And yes, the company decided / realized at one point that the average age of the work force was too high so he push to hire youth began. I never blamed the youth for the "problems" but the lack of management and guidance along with the sense of need to move them around frequently and having to pay them more and more because we thought they might leave. The whole company was mismanaged the last five to seven years it seems. I won't go into the dumping of senior employees to save a buck, it's already been covered. The top floor is occupied mostly by people who can't make strategic decisions. Noble's a company in an apparent free fall to its' death.
Nobladarko - You are spot on with the comparison. Anadarko is now filled with truly incompetent management and the only old timers around are the ones you don't want training up the next generation. The young kids think they are experts because they've worked 1 basin..... ooohhhh.
Interesting, must be a poorly run company theme. Insert Anadarko for Noble and the script reads the same.
Well written and well said.
This foolish effort to promote the "kids" became apparent every time upper management said "We are looking for the leaders of tomorrow". Anyone that was paying attention knew at that point if you were 40+ years in age....... your career (with Noble) was over. Those same 40+ people (again if they are paying attention) stopped teaching the young kids. Now Noble has an environment where the kids are in charge, they are making very immature mistakes, the experienced individuals are just letting it happen, and the upper management is just collecting paying checks to pad their retirement. Noble is a VERY TOXIC environment and I not sure they can recover.
Welcome to the business world, American style. The truth is most large companies operate this way. If more executive realized that they have a moral responsibility to help the "peons" under them, we wouldn't be in this situation. We're the ones that made them rich!
Furthermore, Noble has no chance of recruiting more experienced professionals. Because nobody wants to work for these losers! They have the worst reputation in the industry. Even their current employees are trying to get out.
I could care less they are failing. They deserve to fail. This is what poor decisions by incompetent managers will get you. Failure!