Can someone tell me what our 50 or so VPs and SVPs do on a day to day basis (this is not a rhetorical question, i actually wanna know).
If the 10-12 advisors that work under the VP are doing all the heavy lifting then what do our VPs do, why do they get paid all this cash if their advisors are serving them all the information they need to make the "decisions".
Also WTF do these advisors and planners do ?? WTF is this man. What am i doing, spec'ing pumps doing MOC all day.
:@p6+1jgqgr9hm
Who wants to be VP these days? If you talk to many young people, they are not impressed with the idea of VP in a dirty commodity business.
Pay may be good but I think it’s a horrible job. VPs are a dime dozen. I’m not sure going into this, people who got the job really wanted it.
If you are chasing money you can do as well if you invest wisely. If you are looking for a title, then work for any smaller company or yourself. Titles are cheap and a means to get the job done. But if you want the respect of your peers, then that has to be earned.
@p6, the people under those EM VP “tombstones” are still doing quite well for themselves. Everyone DH up is paid a hefty salary+ for the “work” they do. I’m with the OP…WTF?
I think they call them fluffers
The Dean of the University of North Carolina Business School Management Course that ExxonMobil sends potential managers to each year once told the ExxonMobil audience at the end of the training course that for every ExxonMobil employee that makes it to the V.P. level, there are 3000+ tombstones in the cemetery of employees that tried to make it to the V.P. level and failed.
Do you really want to bet knowing that the odds are 3000/1 against you?
Like external consultants, there are two types of planners and advisors.
The first set of planners and advisors tells management, especially V.P.'s, what the V.P.'s want to hear and those planners and advisors continue to have an accelerated career development PDP.
The second set of planners and advisors tells management what they need to hear and those planners and advisors are eventually NSI'd.
They are also know as ‘Planners’ and receive specific training on how to lie and accept whatever upper management wants. The ones who comply, get to go to bigger roles and are typically sociopaths who’d do anything for that promotion. ( e.g MB) The ethical ones either burnout or don’t even get picked becayse you have to be an absolute yes man/woman to even get in.
Overall they do not do any value added work, just gather and plot information from other peoples hard work. They are protected in ranking session. To me this is the biggest scam which all employees easily accept to be okay. You should be questioning your ‘leadership’ how planners are selected - it is the root of corrupt EM management selection and promotion system. If you are not picked your career is toast.
Formal managers who had to step down to become advisors since the reorg.
After making PowerPoint slides for a few months, those advisors are given high level jobs for which everyone knows they are not qualified and cannot perform. Their new Supervisors will be verbally instructed to cover up every tragic blunder the advisor makes. After a couple of years, those advisors that hoped to become a VP are bypassed for a new hire outside the oil industry.
They make pretty slides for the VP.
A few like to pad their LinkedIn profiles and resumes to overinflated what they actually did. Typical progression is to hop around jobs every 18 months. Unlikely to be “advising” on billion dollars deal.
VPs primary job is to belittle the advisors and keep them in a constant state of confusion so they will accept the chasm of status and pay between the overlords and the vassals.
Here’s a rundown:
As for the advisors? They prepare the spreadsheets and PowerPoints that make the executives’ pre-decided choices look 'data-driven.'
Sit in zoom meetings all day blabbering at each other, making it a contest of which person can string the most buzzwords together
The VPs and SVPs worry about looking good in the eyes of the Ps and MC and the Advisors deliver the work