Projects are unable to progress due to insufficient resources in Houston to progress the work. Fired the wrong people or too many.
27 replies (most recent on top)
@yx Spot on. Seem to be just going through motions now
@13b So in other words…
You haven’t had competent technical leaders for over two decades, which is longer than the tenure of many employees.
You just told the internet that nobody there in a technical role has had proper training or mentorship for most if not all of their career, and therefore probably has no idea what they’re doing.
Do I have this right?
Exxon and Mobil now ExxonMobil used to have a system in place where each manager had to be technically competent in the group they were managing (i.e. they had to have punched their ticket as a technical person in the group they were managing).
Sometime in circa 2005 we started with a system where the "manager" no longer needed to be technically competent in the group that they were managing. You qualified for management if you had "good" people skills only.
We are now reaping the rewards of a system where management does not need to be "technically" competent to manage.
It's a complete s###show these days.
@v0 I once chatted with a “principal engineer” who had less than five years of experience. I think he used the phrase “rule of thumb” at least six times during a ten minute conversation. He was clearly out of his depth in every way thinkable.
I had another call (as a vendor) with some “plant engineers” based out of Montana. The lack of basic technical knowledge was utterly astounding. I couldn’t believe that these people were charged by the company with making the decisions they were at their level.
Your engineering workforce is a joke, and you people are the punchline.
Managers that have no clue about what a department does are especially dangerous to the experts in the group.
The experts do their work and expect reward for good work but their manager does not know good work when he sees it. Such managers are easily manipulated by brown nosers making extraordinary claims of greatness, and take credit for the work of others. The id--t boss puts the most useless people at the top of the ranking.
@v0 Oh, I thought it was just my spineless manager. he always says “I’m not technical.”
The more senior people on the team are the ones making decisions about
project assignments, hiring, and even firing. So the same people who are supposed to be evaluated against you end up having a huge influence over shaping your entire journey in the team.
EM seems to have id--ts or just place people into roles that exceed their abilities.
It is bad when your Manager instructs people not to email him because he does not understand the email content then assigns one person in the group to receive all emails and translate/summarize them for him.
Unfortunately he chose an absolute brown noser that translates everything to make himself seem like the savior of the team.
@hr What do you think is says that someone sitting in Spring with a role that pays into the mid six-figure range is replaceable by a large-language model?
@pf Help is out there:
https://www.cdc.gov/mental-health/caring/index.html
We have the right headcount but we have DEI Planners that do not understand basics and Project Managers that form less coherent sentences about the work scope than a methhead.
I disagree - too many in Spring/Houston and not enough at the sites. Procurement for example - I have 1 or 2 people supporting a muti site refining and chemical complex, but have hundreds of "advisors" and "chiefs" sitting Spring, BA, India, etc trying to squeeze the site resources even further. All while pedaling fictional cost savings that never hit my bottom line. You can scrap that whole "Global" org, and give me 2 or 3 more people at each Big B complex and actually provided real service/support.
170 dollars a share. As far as management is concerned, everything is going great and the changes are outperforming. More HC10 layoffs for this year!
Expats not enough, huh? Then bring in more expats and afterwards have them take away all the Houston jobs.
more layoffs to come:Goldman Sachs: Oil Prices to Slow US Job Growth.https://www.storyboard18.com/amp/how-it-works/goldman-sachs-sees-10000-monthly-hit-to-us-job-growth-layoffs-to-edge-up-as-oil-prices-rise-93419.htm
I think they will replace every job that they can that works from a computer. Why pay top dollar for an employee when you can get AI or BTC to do it for cheaper. It will be hard to replace the employees in the field that can’t be easily replaced.
@dv Then don’t do it. Works for me.
I straight-up told my boss that I get one paycheck and I’m only doing one job. Shut them down pretty quick.
@e6 Oh wow, that’s intelligent. I’m guessing you went to college in Texas?
You must be another “indispensable technical expert” who edits PDFs and builds slide decks for a living.
@OP Not enough employees for…what, exactly?
This is what happen when senior management use KPI and PDS to coerce people into saying great things about TC's, and futher leading to additional layoffs....
Only have more plans to hire more durka durkas in btc.
"leadership" keeps pushing for headcount reduction, asking the remaining staff to do the workload of two or three people. Not sustainable.
Getting rid of lots of Europeans, should've moved the work there. Decent quality too.
They made a big deal about hiring like 100 or 200 people last year. Mission accomplished wth
GBCs are effing useless
Yes, even Polaris has a bottleneck. Only so many ‘low cost’ resources one can throw at the problem and still not be successful. Alternatively, bringing in consulting firms is an option but the time it will take them to ramp up isn’t enough. Oh and all the retirees… they don’t want to return after how you treated them… grab the popcorn, Woods will reap what he sowed.
@OP is this Global Projects?
Serious need to cut BS and start lowering costs/not show biased benchmarking data