After hearing from the communicator that I’m “safe”, I felt brief relief followed by sadness, guilt, surprise, anger, and frustration.
The last thing I feel is safe.
Do you feel safe?
I don’t think this is the last round of layoffs. I keep thinking: will I be spared next time or will it be my turn?
Safe for now, but for how long?
@vyn+18sNxNdl
That is not a 100% true statement. I have seen people who provide a lot of top quality work for an organization be let go.
I worked with someone who would come in 5-6 am and leave that time at night. They did their baseline engineering job and then went above and beyond taking on additional assignments. They were in the top performance wise. Their also had a good personality and tried to help others. They lost their job. This is one example. Another engineer with top of the line work ethic was forced out. He was trying to improve things.
Some reasons why hard working people are let go while underperformers stay:
Some of the worst employees who are at RTD in the UIS are still working. Ha looks like the worst ones are safe by design.
@1rix+18sNxNdl That's what happened to me - 20+ years at EM now jobless. Still can't accept it, like it's a bad dream.
Tenure and knowledge is no longer considered valuable at xom. Of course there's no guaranteed lifetime employment. But when you have 20 or more years with the company, good work ethic, regardless of being high flyer or not, we were still valuable. Now, the only thing xom considers with respect to tenure is that the employee is becoming too expensive (i.e. a liability). And they need to be cut before they become retirement eligible, when they will become an even bigger liability. Absolutely, no regard for the human aspect.
The ranking system in EM is still somewhat of a mystery....by design of course. What you have to understand is that management expects everyone to be "excellent". There are always a very small % of folks who are clearly poor performers in the very real sense. I don't know the percentages, but this is likely quite small...certainly less than 5%. These are the folks who struggle to do the base job well and as an example would include someone in a technical job family who was out of their depth. This happens with folks being forced into roles that they are just not suited to. Then, you have the majority of people who do a good and even exceptional job in terms of the job remit/technical role etc. Many of these people can fall into the lower third or middle third. Feedback for these people can be excellent, across the board....highly valued people. However, without a sponsor or the "visibility" (hate that term) to management, it does not matter how good a job you do, unless you manage to tick the other boxes...like high visibility LPS "leader", power point supremo, or other b—s— activity that doesn't actually contribute anything to the bottom line. Folks need to realize that being in the bottom third (,or whatever they are calling it this month) is not a measure of your actual ability or value. Most times is is a direct measure of your visibility to management...that's all. Unfortunately, that's how things have become over the last 10-15 years.
Sure. that would make sense if the company just laid off all low performers (buckets have to redistribute) . But in many cases, we just laid off many excellent and exceptional people as well. Most likely, the NRE'S are the ones that are going to be placed in the middle/low performers bucket to begin forcing them out.
Seems many of the people posting on here don’t realize that when ranking comes around they aren’t just going to leave the bottom buckets empty. With so many people fired those buckets will now be filled by people who were formerly middle of the pack. People who were top ranked will get d–g down to middle. Don’t people understand how the ranking system works? Many people are in denial of what is coming. Your “performance” can’t protect you from the reality of the math of what happens when this many people disappear in a single year.
Just the use of the term 'your are safe' sounds like a concentration camp.
Keep your nose to the machine - you are not on the next train out.
Can’t wait for next ranking cycle and all the people posting on here saying they are so great work hard etc find out that what happens to their ranking the year after the bottom of the rank group is fired.
I am hearing folks who have been onsite everyday and not wfh are going to highlight that on next performance assessment in March. Going to get interesting now. Wfh may backfire for some.
At what point in history did "humans" become such pansies and want promises, fairness and lose any concept of hard work and a hard life? Just shut it, do your job, work hard, be respectful and for God's sake stop whining and also stop Brown nosing. There are no promises, humans are all different so don't start the "treat me better so I can feel like an equal. We are not all equal, life doesn't come with a contract for everything being easy and fair! Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, put your head down and WORK!
Not only I don’t feel safe, I do NOT trust them anymore.
Management has lost all semblance of trustworthiness.
Every company (even large ones in the tech industry) is doing layoffs right now. Have fun with the "my company doesn't do layoffs line elsewhere"
I was not laid off but I find it hilarious that the ones that were not laid off are calling themselves “over achievers” or “hard workers”
We are safe because:
I have been with Exxon for almost 3 years now and if I lose this job I admit I would have a hard time finding another job. Actually, I wouldn’t even know what job position to look for. And you “over achievers” would do.
Fact of the matter is when real work needs to be done at XOM, we hire contractors or consultants to come do the work and teach us what we are supposed to do. Then when work slows down we fire the contractors, we rotate positions, rinse and repeat. This time we had to lay off employees instead of rotate because of the downturn.
More than ever before, the remnants will be tough competitors. This catastrophic event in EM's history has left a big exclamation point in everybody's minds: swim or sink. Going forward, it's the battle of the toughest.
Professionals need to form nationwide unions????? What kind of a naïve woke BS comment is that.
As a "professional", if you truly contribute to a company and that company does not value you then take the initiative to leave and go somewhere where your ability is appreciated.
If you honestly believe that you need to hide behind some kind of union representation then you really did not have anything to contribute in the first place.
Survivors don’t want to think they may have been lucky. They’d rather attribute their survival to their perceived superiority.
Your communicator meant you are safe from that round of layoffs. If the numbers don't improve, there will of course be another round of layoffs.
I was "safe" a few times during layoff, until I wasn't. IMO if a company is willing to lay someone off, they will continue to do so, and their justification for doing so will continue to get easier as time goes on. Layoffs have become just another tool for poor management and companies really like to do them doing disaster like Covid so they can claim that Covid made us do it.
Employees need to realize that loyalty is something from the past, and professionals need t form nationwide unions.
To the people commenting on relative performance... Many in the layoffs were not just low performers. There were some exceptional people lumped in there as well.
Inevitable drop in rankings will also be used to justify no raises for years. When you drop in rankings the HR recommended pay you should receive drops with it.
Many will wish they had been part of the layoff when they are PIPd next year. The severance, health insurance, supportive LinkedIn posts, etc etc will all go away. Will probably have to sign the form saying you will never reapply to the company as well since it will be relative performance based.
Agree 100%. Do the math. What do people think is going to happen when ranking is completed in a couple of Months. Everyone’s ranking will drop. The ranking is relative to who is still left. People are about to have a huge reality check.
Yearly PIPs and no limit to how much you ranking can change in a year does not equal safe for anyone. We are all one rank cycle away from being without a job and there is nothing you can do about it. Some will say trust the system but I’ve seen too many good people “impacted” to have any trust. I’ve already started thinking about what I would do if shown the door. Build up your emergency savings. Figure out what skills you need to get a job outside EM and work on them. Be prepared for the worst.
Company is a sinking ship. You may be in the upper decks and not drowning at the moment (those let go via PIP/Layoff), but the ship is still sinking.
Best to use the time planning an exit strategy and be prepared when your deck starts to go under. It will eventually come, the writing is on the walls with this company.
There is no way the company can support the headcount, pension, and dividend with declining O&G demand over the next few decades with the captain and leadership of the ship refusing to take any action to change course.