Thread regarding Shell Oil layoffs

@2bn

That’s another thing that makes me laugh. IDT / P&T / whatever they are this year runs by getting charge codes to pay for their hours.

If you think they are worthless, then tell your business to not give them charge codes and they will go away. For good, eventually. It’s the only group that you can personally have a role in getting fired as a layman. If you see a bunch of IT and P&T, it’s because your boss is paying for them. They don’t have their own budget, or at least they can’t cover 100% of salary or anything close to that under it for long.

@2bj oh the businesses have been pushing back on paying for IDT; that’s why there aren’t any charge codes for IT projects (were there ever?) still not sure how we justified. There will be a bloodletting that rivals reshape after P&T is gone; not just IDT. P&T turned into a place for people to hide. 2008 (1st year of P&T) was before my time directly in Shell but I was familiar 2008-2011 working as an upstream contractor. Shell was much more efficient at least on the upstream side before wells was split out into P&T. P&T became a monster after around 2012. It was intended to be a way to manage Pearl construction, Prelude and other projects over $100MM capex. Just turned into a mess and “catch-all” for new orgs the EC wanted to try out.

@2be

There are less than 400 people in Shell with AI their title. Of them, a few dozen are JG3 and about one dozen at most are JG2. All 2s and 3s had to apply for a smaller pool of their own jobs last May.

The biggest IT expense in shell that we don’t need is business applications running on virtual machines. By far. 2024 focused on attacking this in what was branded as a green initiative.

IT will be reorganized again, including the above group, in July. There will be even fewer AI roles again. Many are being forced to convert to other tracks.

It’s quite clear that almost nobody in the in thread claiming to be concerned about waste knows what they’re talking about. The number one way to reduce IT waste is to convert your bespoke business applications to use docker. Go do it if you’re so concerned about the bottom line.

It’s interesting that people think there is nobody looking at ROI in IDT when 30-40% of them got fired between May and December of last year for not being billable to 100%. Same thing that will happen again in July.

I doubt any of them even know what they’re talking about. They probably see all the middle managers that added AI to their titles after the reorg to “be relevant” and get salty.

The big giveaway is that they cite numbers about AI failure from headlines because they don’t have any for internal work. Busted.

@jp “If you look closely at IT?” how the fu-k is IT representative of what an oil company?

@2a4 Christ agreed, fu--ing sick of AI promising some utopia for O&G. All this thread is IT people pi---d off that money has dried to pay for their ride to work on their pet projects. Laughable that they’re comparing themselves to any actual businesses within Shell. Slow your role, you aren’t a business. Yes, businesses monetize themselves. Haha not all do? Good lord these AI people are clueless.

@29s exactly! Almost every jg 3 and jg2 in IT has AI in their title. Posting every other week about an AI training they done or a seminar they attended to talk about data and Ai. Total waste of money.

@OP dude Shell is backtracking on AI initiatives. We’re an energy company and AI projects haven’t returned what we thought they could. Google the MIT study published by FOrbes talking about 95% pilot project failure rate. Not sure how that compares to us but we haven’t returned anything near our threshold needed to continue investment. The sunk cost fallacy is not lost on Wael. He’s not afraid to cut and scale back the way Ben was. That’s why polymers in PA cost $18B and can still barely stay operational. We can’t keep paying for AI and IT people that want to work on se-y projects and aren’t being held to an ROI. Just isn’t a good time for us with all of our sell offs, failed exploration, buybacks and lost $BB in two different cases. We need to regroup and refocus on hydrocarbons. Personally i think we should back up and let Shell Ventures invest in AI startups at a distance so long as they’re adjacent to the hydrocarbon value chain. But don’t bring them into the Shell fold until returns in those startups begin to approach our threshold. That’s what Shell Ventures is for. Unfortunately for those in IT that means your org goes back to preCOVID levels. I know it su-ks but where do you expect money to come from to pay for these huge IT orgs now?

@24z this sort of thinking is why it took 17 years (from LSR rollout until now) to speak out against wasting money. I’m talking about the gas detectors at ETCA. Nice win for pragmatism and no way people (especially contractors) could have suggested that 10 years ago. Oh but wait we need all of this stuff! How do we pay for it? Who cares! Here is the MO for most support functions in Shell and I’ve seen it from HSE countless times, legal and now IDT apparently. Buddy up with a relatively weak or new manager JG1 or higher. Get them to buy into something they say needs to be done without understanding impacts to business line. Then impose whatever “needed” to be done and disappear. The business is left with yet more to do with less money to do it. We are held to hard metrics every year. If functions can’t at least articulate value beyond hypothetical what ifs then it is hard to justify paying for them. That’s all, it’s a cost discussion.

@246 exactly this! Spot on.

@251 well if there’s any truth to the post under the “more reorgs coming” thread above this one, somebody agrees with you. Comment about 40% cut to legal coming soon. Seems high. Can Anyone corroborate?

@250 good point, i’lll concede that

@24z I’m not saying get rid of all of them. I am saying cut them all back to a proportionate level when we had more assets. Money to pay you comes from revenue streams. IDT can’t enable a business that gets sold off. HR and legal aren’t good justifying comparisons. Legal uses external counsel for anything on a docket that goes to trial or arbitration anyway. HR? What is that??

@24y

there is no conflict with claiming that our leaders have fake jobs and being happy that they are gone. both can be true.

@24x

not all business units “monetize theirselves”

some you just need because they deliver required services which enable all other things to work. how deep to cut is a much more sensible debate. saying to cut it all is a joke. think HR, Legal, IT.

preventing huge problems before they start costs money but doesn’t technically make profit. that’s what HR, legal, and IT do. cut too much of that and you’ll see a world of pain. all three of these “cost centers” “don’t make money” and yet they do by protecting the company. every little thing cannot be treated as a black box where more money must come out than goes in every single quarter or it’s junk.

@24x and for heaven’s sake be happy they cut someone at the top with a 7 figure compensation package instead of 4-5 people actually working. Got to be the only time in Shell I’ve heard of someone angry we let an exec go.

“That’s what they said about refineries?” I think that’s quite a stretch to compare IT to a business. Agreed, some quarters businesses lose, some we win. Okay, I’ll look beyond a quarter even three years which is what we have to do for the EC. Is IDT planning to monetize itself in the next few years? Serious question because maybe there are licensing opportunities to investigate. Businesses have to meet 12-15% ROACE and forecast three years of NIBIT to sustain that ROACE. With everything we’ve sold off that ROACE target is harder to hit as costs to pay for functions has increased with less assets. Time to cut functions.

@246

that’s what they said about refineries and are now saying above chemicals

what’s gonna happen is that one day trading won’t be able to function because we have no assets and wells won’t be able to function because we have no assets and workers won’t be able to function because they have no assets to work on

keep cutting and being “penny smart, dollar stupid” and see what happens. we already have IT security issues and no new CISO coming.

some businesses make money in rare spurts. you have to think for more than one quarter at a time. technically HR and legal “cost money but don’t make money”. we keep some around using the above logic. shall we fire them?

@OP a lot of this i agree with along with the post below about the former Country Chairs. I wouldn’t get too caught up on responsibilities of support functions getting passed around. I mean is IDT or anything under Rob van Rutten even a revenue stream? Are we selling IDT-related IP into the energy market? If we aren’t selling/making revenue from IDT staff; then I would caution against losing sleep over who leads what in that organization. I’m not saying IDT isn’t important but if it isn’t making money directly; it’s expendable and can be outsourced.

@1rt I generally recommend against automatically assuming a contradicting party does not have the right "datapoints". I am not the original poster but I have worked quite closely with K.P. and was less than impressed. To wit, I would not agree with the strong negative language used here but have not seen these strengths you describe. Keep it balanced: Sycophancy is a critical requirement in advancing through JGs in our system, but is viewed with distaste on the open internet and markedly over there in the US where many of these comments appear to originate. I see someone in her line with the referenced initials but am not familiar with the situation. Good luck and maybe thicken the skin a little.

@1p3 who is R.A as in what are you referring to. Those who are very critical of Kate - you presumably haven’t worked much with her as I would suggest she is the very least of our problems, and pretty technically astute (started off career as a software engineer). Am all for some decent debate here, but then lets at least try and add some actual datapoints on the table.

@mm

not hiring a dedicated CISO given recent happenings at the company with cyber security seems very egregious

@1mp Kate is a useless leader. A political figurehead. Laughable as a talent. She has a guaranteed job longterm so the male/female ratios can be hit. Most of her new scope has been delegated to R.A. who is as technical as a wet paper bag. Excited for July-Aug.

Very suspicious that Kate got this role , nobody knows her, she is very terrible in communication and was brought to kick out people and replace them. She is clearly protected by someone

@jn Kate doesn’t pick up any CISO stuff, it’s Owen per original post. Operations and cyber are closely related, a lot of the cyber landscape involves monitoring operational stuff etc

Shell is a dying company. If you look closely at IT. Most of the current leaders are a result of nepotism. All their parents worked at Shell and "trumped" them up. These folks are all weasels many on souse #2 or 3. with side chicks and chugs. some of the side deals also moved up along with them. Shell will be irrelevant in ~10 years. The US and NOCs made great moves and Shell and BP are looking and building out Charging stations. hahahaha.

@gy

The entire point of the CISO role is that the buck stops with you. Legally. You are personally liable. Will the buck really now stop with Kate? If not, why would she take those responsibilities seriously? You don’t “just pick up” cyber sec. You get well trained and accountable.

@j9 fair.. and then those (many who post here) who are at risk of no longer making lots of money so commiserate and blame a long list of things, be that DE&I agenda, “YL”, India, working in an office again (but no free lunch) the list goes on and on

I left many years ago. I sympathize with people here. But there is a simple fact you all have to internalize. At Shell there are effectively three groups of people: “happy” people making a lot of money, neutral people making lots of money, miserable people making lots of money. Neutral and happy people making lots of money don’t change.

@gj this "then it’s clear that these never needed to be anywhere close to their own jobs" is always a choice and I don't fully subscribe to the logic. The choice is about how much leadership focus on want, and what do the leaders actually do. Often you take out roles and the work just falls onto the rest - I think most people who have been around a while would concur that over the years we have to do more and more work, and more and more of others work, finance, HR etc, we all need to do a lot of that ourselves.

Point the CISO point - and what you referred to the outcome would have been no different, this was there a while in the making, and the counter point would be the more you divide things up - the more chance things slip through the cracks, so there are both pros and cons.

@fn

indeed, that made this even funnier.

on the one hand, i like that we are seeing cuts in the top and middle for once.

on the other, if jobs that already combined 3 other jobs can just be rolled into other executives, then it’s clear that these never needed to be anywhere close to their own jobs

also it feels very sketchy to not get a new CISO given recent events on which I will not elaborate further but you probably know about.

@e7 some things were combined, the role Mike took was AI and architecture combined, which together was about 3 times the size of AI, so heading up that org would have been a bigger role. Back to your original post, two or more roles became one that had more scope and seniority

@dq

Not promoted? What are you talking about. He was VP AI. Then he got sidelined to another made up on the spot nonsense VPship, after Mike took over the AI one. Did he take a swing at Yuris old EVP slot and miss or something?

@dd I think you would find if you were well informed Dan didn’t want any leaving things (email, events etc).. ask him. fair enough, not everyone wants that. Pushed is a bit different to not promoted… people have their desires, choices, sometimes they don’t align, the world moves on

@d9

Dan was literally ousted by Mike when he suddenly decided he wasn’t gonna retire even though he already told everyone he was. Then he retired anyway less than a year later anyway. What a waste.

Dan didn’t leave Shell for that gig. He was pushed out. Why do you think there wasn’t any going away event or email or anything?

I wish Dan the best. The fact Applied computing is a start-up has been made up almost entirely of poached talent from Shell AI and they reached out to him. It was even founded by people who quit Shell AI to start it.

Shell su-king more and more by the week doesn’t mean good people deserve to be ejected or are guaranteed to be better off than before like Dan is. Your takes are very boot licking, completely under informed, and disingenuous.

@cw and… pretty much the same story in every company across the world, fewer senior positions than in the fat old glory days. Nothing to do with deadweight, just evolution, getting fewer people to do more.

Dan getting ousted - thought he move to a much better gig - especially given as you clearly believe Shell is such a rotten company.

@ck

i’ll use fewer syllables so you can understand

if you quit or get fired and somebody else can take on your entire job in addition to their current one, then you were dead weight the whole time

@OP your post literally makes no sense, if you are going to make swathing judgements and statements - at least make them coherent. Half the time here there are people slinging accusations about people and leadership when they appear barely literate themselves…

@OP Our last two US country chairs have been figure-heads at best. Gretchen was only brought in to dismantle and sell off unconventionals. She did that and enjoyed a free ride to su-kle from Shell after selling off assets. Bruce was some HR talking head…he must have had dirt on people. WTF does some HR joke have running Shell US…well we’re jokes these days. Agreed…fake jobs. The US Country Chair should always be a secondary moniker while first being an actual business leader. Haven’t had a real CC since Marvin.

Including YL.