Anyone else seeing experienced hires being promoted ahead of life long company employees? Seems the company hasn’t been doing a great job of developing their own employees so has to go outside for talent now. Lifelong employees beware!
36 replies (most recent on top)
@OP I've seen the exact opposite. Laterals come in when bodies are needed, but the winners and favorites here were already chosen. But bias gets many people here for many different reasons.
Given the (non) work culture at ExxonMobil, it makes sense to bring outside employees for anything important. Typical EM employee has been too brainwashed to act as a non-value generating asset.
Bringing in outside talent instead of promoting from within has been happening since 1980.
@rg I’ve seen the title watered down to “technical sales.”
I’ve also seen more “sales engineers” in Houston than any other job market. Almost all of them have dubious credentials and failed miserably in technical roles.
@rf That was…kinda my point.
Hiring someone into an engineering role without an ABET accredited bachelor’s degree in the relevant engineering discipline carries huge risks at several levels. I don’t care what their “experience” is. There’s things they just aren’t going to know or be able to correctly apply without having had the educational background.
Nobody who doesn’t have a college degree should be supervising someone who has one, regardless of the endeavor.
sales engineer 🤡
“testing it yourself” is foolish. that would be a sample size of 1.
job market data indicates that MBAs don’t add value to the job hunt unless it’s a top 10 school.
we are also entering an era where the best companies would rather hire people with proven technical skills and zero college over other options. this will soon trickle down to more typical companies. we are already seeing decay of wage premium for all college degrees.
do not tell people to waste time on any old MBA. top 10 school and networking or bust. also it’s not cheap.
also, it is vital to note that most post-MBA roles cap out below senior O&G IC or staff levels.
@qq So-called “engineers” are a dime per dozen around Houston because companies there lavish the title upon people who often have neither the credentials nor the experience to call themselves one.
I don’t think hiring managers appreciate the amount of legal exposure they’re creating for their employers by putting their unqualified bbq buddies in charge of highly engineered systems.
@qq Have you tested this yourself by getting an MBA and working outside of O&G?
I left O&G some time ago and have yet to see anyone who wasn’t already well-connected benefit from obtaining an MBA.
This may have been decent advice before 2010. It isn’t anymore.
An MBA does not help much if you stay in energy and are STEM. It helps if you are searching outside of oil and gas. So Career reboot means changing industry and job family. Pure engineers or scientists (nerds) are a "dime a dozen" in Houston. People that can make money in energy are rare. People that know technology and money are golden with great people/soft skills.
MBA and masters is such awful outdated advice
phds are barely an edge, masters mean nothing
the value of an MBA is going to a top 10 school and working. too many people with terrible paper MBAs have causes too much damage and ruined the pipeline
it’s good to remember this advice - a shortcut is no longer a shortcut when enough people know about it.
reboot your career by writing down every project you’ve worked on and the value it brought, and then making a one page resume tailored to job apps. only apply to job apps if you have an internal reference. find one before applying.
@pp This is terrible advice.
An MBA does almost nothing for you without significant social capital and/or a specific corporate pedigree. They’re also very expensive relative to the career payoff for most people.
There’s much better (and cheaper) ways of getting ahead financially in the corporate system. The smart ones have either figured this out or will soon.
ExxonMobil Upstream had ignored it's true technical talent base too long and required many outsiders to fill the gaps. Many people with deep industry experience were hired in their 40s to CK27/28 positions to contribute right away. Many went on to more senior roles as the impressed the project managers and executives. Then the BTC debacle arose where they were kinda sorta BTC people (but not really). Hence, the current state. Bottom line is about retention where it's really required, being a lifer with minimal real skill doesn't cut it anymore.
If you are in the first 5 years after college and you have been ranked in bottom third with no promotions and sub-inflation pay raises. You should re-boot your career by:1) get an MBA or Master's 2) change jobs. If you change jobs you can easily get a 20% bump in pay because they will assume you are middle ranked. But what you learned and the experts you worked with and the big value projects you worked on are very valuable (vs someone who did not get those experiences. You are being given the signal to resign...If you are disciplined in your job search and prepare for your interviews, you can land a great job and get a career restart.
@jp Classy.
@hw yes, you’re an arrogant to-ser
Most ExxonMobil job descriptions are considered "commodity" positions. Commodity positions are a dime a dozen and pay a lot less than historical ExxonMobil positions.
@ht Yeah, I never really understood this.
I’d get on calls with EM engineers and they would say they things that were totally bonkers, or run-off on weird tangents about how politics somehow caused a component to fail. I’ve never seen/heard an EM engineer correctly identify a technical problem or discuss an actionable solution.
Can someone explain to me why I keep getting downvoted? Going through my posts I don’t see the issue here.
Am I somehow offending some of you by successfully navigating the current job market? If so that’s your problem, not mine.
Happy Holidays
-@fk/fy
Exxon employees are very arrogant, they think they are the best... clearly not the case anymore
@fw Jumped mid 2025 after 3-ish years with the previous company. Got a 20% bump in base comp plus two more weeks of PTO (total of 6). Benefits are meh. Kept my side-hustle. I’ve jumped twice in the past five years and I’m up more than 45% in base comp from where I was back in 2020.
The job market doesn’t operate in the same way for everyone. My skill set is in high demand and very few people can do it. I’m guessing it’s different for the typical office drone.
The downvotes aren’t from me BTW.
read the post again, but carefully. it is about the current job market. when was your last hop?
@f7 I’ve never received less than a 20% bump when jumping jobs. Benefits are usually a wash though.
Do what works for you. I’ll keep doing what works for me.
It’s not 2020. You need to update your outlook. A job hop is no longer 20% more money and a level up, it’s 5-10% and far likelier to be lateral.
Also, laying off in short constant bursts and outsourcing to India are not threats inquire to the oil and gas industry. You’re far better off getting fired with a package than running away in the current era.
I would advise anyone leaving to change industries to someone in thoroughly based in their country and to shoot for 10% more if we’re being realistic. Obviously you can always apply for ambitious things and see what happens but it’s important to temper your expectations with new data.
@d2 A company only needs one technical SME per discipline.
It’s also true that a lot of people who think they’re SMEs…aren’t. I’ve been in calls with EM engineers who self-identified as SMEs and heard them say things that were laughably incorrect, even doubling-down when we tried correcting them. I’d give examples but I’d have to doxx myself. All I’ll say is that very few of you seem to know anything about how a machine actually works.
@ed TMI….U doxxing ur self bruh.
@ew The fastest and easiest way to get a pay bump is to jump jobs.
It’s not uncommon for someone to leave a company, make their way up the value chain, then boomerang back to their previous employer for significantly higher pay.
Way too many of you are waiting for someone to come and slide success under your door. The world doesn’t work that way. Instead of complaining try making the best of a bad system.
Also EM will re-hire an ex EM employee at 4 to 5 CL levels higher than the equal EM age employees that stayed with EM.
Really insulting to the employees that chose to stay, getting extremely passed over for the disloyal guy that quit EM.
I don’t think people understand the game anymore old timer.
If nobody can do the task, it goes external.
If too many people can do the task and are similarly competent at it, it goes political.
Be good at key tasks. Helps no matter what.
Depends, I got hired away from BP as an experienced hire engineer. I was 49 years old. I was hired to run subsea tress off the back of a crane PSV (M Winner, N Nomad). I did that for 15 years (Nigeria, Western Oz) then took the EM retirement package. I got several promotions mostly because no one in EM had the specific experienced I had. Operationally,, things have changed, but not the reasons for promoting an EH over an long term employee,
So, it depends on your talent. But, surely you folk now this. Peace. Good luck.
Ask yourself, why does XOM have to hire outside for deep technical experience. Your question should answer itself.
I think some people expect to move up every 3-4 years of their entire career like clock work just for meeting the bar.
Considering that non-technical EM experience isn't well valued outside of EM, is this really surprising? The company only needs so many OIMS SMEs.
Look a few posts back for the people complaining about experienced hires not having opportunities to advance at EM.
If you aren’t that good it doesn’t matter whether you’re an EM lifer or experienced hire, you won’t be offered good opportunities.
You can claim that management is overlooking its own talent. Or you can be honest and admit that some people only have the skills needed to not get fired which are highly political, company specific, and useless for moving the needles that matter.
This is so true!