I actually believed there was a technical ladder until I saw the highest technical role in my organization the chief be filled with someone who had spent his entire career in RTD and management roles. Has never left Houston and never been on a project.
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A shame this thread is sputtering... it is directly related to the 'layoffs'.
Senior Technical Professionals in EM are typically failed management types, with long faded skills in their areas of 'expertise'. That is repeatedly confirmed in this thread.
But they have authority to make judgements on future values / skills / directions.
I also have personally interacted with almost every CL33 in this company (US).
These are fat cats fed intravenously - and relieved by suppositories.
And yet they lead.
I will share my experience. As a new hire I went to talk to my groups STP to share ideas I had for bringing some outside tech into our group to improve our performance. He was dismissive of the ideas I had. Fast forward six months and he has taken my ideas, sold them as his own, and is flying high. To this day he hasn’t acknowledged it was my idea.
Anger you say? Hmm any thoughts why genius? Shouldn’t the highest technical role be filled by someone who is technical not just technical when it is convenient to be so?
Lot of anger in this thread. The Chiefs I know (and I know ALL of them!) are well informed, well respected folks with technical judgement and acumen ... oh, and a CL33 is a very high level for the record.
Don't forget about the 'Technology Integrator' roles that were created as part of the Upstream Strategies reorg. Their jobs are to facilitate communication between people from different organizations. We have a technology for that these days ... it's called e-mail.
What you wrote: "I actually believed there was a technical ladder until I saw the highest technical role in my organization the chief be filled with someone who had spent his entire career in RTD and management roles. Has never left Houston and never been on a project"
Well we think that exact scenario is about to play out in our organization if (high probability) our Chief retires.
We all suspect the person to replace him has spent most of their career in Research, has only been in Houston and has NEVER, NEVER, NEVER been in Operations. And, will add they are arrogant who only helps their buddies.
Next couple of years are just going to be fabulous.
Advisors - A fake designation. It is not an official title but highly abused. e.g. when a useless employee from an organization like CSR arrives at RTD and no one knows what to do with the useless person, they name him/her Advisor of some sort.
STP-A Senior Advisors are people who do not want to do any work and interested in showing off
STP-C Senior Technical Consultants – mixed bag of failed low level management or few technical folks who have no interest in producing significant focused technical work
Chief Scientists/Engineers: Utterly failed second level managers
The company is run way too long by management hubris. The scam will run out of steam at some point of time,
The Chief Geoscientist is one of the biggest jerks this company has ever produced and that’s a tall order.
What irks me it’s not so much the ego and arrogance but the hubris they exhibit upon appointment; as if by virtue of title, they get implanted a chip of technical expertise which trumps years of experience of subjective matter experts.
A “peer review” by one of those clowns is the epitome of creating unnecessary work for the sake of it - the endless “bring me a rock”. No value added, no unlocking of new potential, just appeasement and a– covering.
chemical has also been promoting people who've been managers for 10+ years to become chief. I find it hard to understand, don't they even care what people think? no wonder we cannot keep young, capable people.
Whether they reach 33 or not, whether they are failures as management or not, the point is that these people are always ahead of the technical people because they rank high by definition and, after a career in powerpoints, their other management friends proclaim them technical experts as well because apparently there are not good technical people around. Of course, when they don’t find these people in their organization, they bring them from outside. This is how much they value technical careers and this is the bs that keep feeding the younger folks!
I would not call a CL 33 chief a failure. The failures are those of you who get laid off or PIP'd., mostly LOSERS
Several years ago they had an event at the old training center on Buffalo Speedway, where a bunch of STCs and Chiefs (geos and engineers) were available for lunch time chats. They were presented as examples of technical career people. I spoke to all of them. Without even one exception, they all had been managers or VPs in previous roles. More recently, some geos with a pure technical background became STCs. Nevertheless, the majority appear to be failed and demoted managers. What a joke!
Senior technical roles are simply a parking for management that reached their level of competency.
Seriously? Welcome to reality, OP! I also have a bridge to sell you!
There is no career for intelligent and technically competent people at ExxonMobil. Find me a single one person at EM who is operating at their full intellectual capacity and making a true difference. Those who needed to do anything meaningful, left this poor company a while back.
There are pitfalls to both “ladders”. On the management side, if a young supervisor/manager does not succeed, they can be shunted to the side rather unmercifully into roles that lack true impact, to put it kindly. On the technical side, the opportunity for advancement is much more limited and difficult, as you are left to “influencing without authority” to stay in the upper rank groups. You may not rise as far as you would on the management side, but you will always have marketable skills.
I have observed in the upstream subsurface functions that they have made a good effort to greatly reduce the management ranks over the last two years with supervisors & managers having more appropriate
(large) “spans of control” that allow for more decision making for to be pushed to the technical people by necessity.
ExxonMobil stopped paying attention to facts and science. Only yes men and women matter. So technical competency is irrelevant - technical ladder roles are just more sushy spaces for management cronies
Over time, people begin to learn how career planning “really” works at EM. Surprise!
The only purpose of high CL technical people is to fill the bottom of the high CL rank groups and feed the required PIP NSI percentage bucket
We treat technical career people this way and wonder why we are #winning. Why is someone who wants to be a good technical engineer rather than trying to be the next CEO punished in the rankings? We need technical people but management thinks they are the only ones who add value.