Thread regarding ExxonMobil Corp. layoffs

Here is an idea - run the company like we can make a profit at $30 oil, pay every employee bonuses, put a huge amount into savings, then no layoffs when the price drops below $30.

EM borrowed money to pay dividends to investors yet not willing to do same to keep loyal productive employees. It was a valid choice that shows just how much the company values loyalty. Investors have no loyalty and will flip stock in 1 day to turn a profit, yet EM bent over backwards for them.

EM has just proven that we can turn a profit when the oil price sets record highs.

Action Plan:

Campus hiring
Keep too many layers of Management
Throw all excess profits away on stock buybacks
Do not build up savings fund for next downturn
Continue all policies that cause attrition
Keep PIP at 8%
Keep forced ranking
Continue favoritism and racism in ranking process
Continue to illegally push older employees down in ranking despite performance

@xqa+1dzDeYrH, I agree with you! In my category they got rid of all of the experienced hires. I'm the only one left!! Maybe I've been here long enough for them to have forgotten that I'm an outsider as well. LOL

All the cheerleading in upstream and IT about cost savings from India… and the BTC folks come in here and complain about poor pay, high attrition, bad expat management and overall low talent. Sounds like #winning to me!

EM workmanship and leadership is as pathetic in 2021 Q3, as it has been in the past decade. The Q3 profit is merely due to external environment/crude prices. The fact that EM is blindly and solely dependent on external changes without internal innovations for any semblance of success, speaks volumes about ignorance in the entire leadership (well …managers is the right word).

Fun Fridays.
A couple of stupid people in costumes and some LinkedIn post about it.
Solved!
Culture, trust, capability, and morale - all restored.
What problems are you speaking off?
The sycophants are all ok.

Trust between this company and its employees is gone. Forever. Even if next spring they will announce that they’re done with the inflated 8% PIP and going back to the “regular” 3%, nobody will believe them, now that they’ve got used to weaponising the PIP against older employees.
I’ll be RE in a couple of months and there’s a good chance that if the price of oil stays high they will again badly need my skills, but I can’t trust them.
After an entire technical career in the middle third, I got mysteriously dropped in NI, no doubt in preparation for the next PIP. Im not going to wait until the lump sum drops due to higher rates, which should happen by mid 2022, only to be PIPed and have to retire in November or December 2022. They can do that very well with a 3% PIP. So it’s going to be Good Bye EM. Just get the 10 ye people do my work if you can.

With high prices and return to normal in Upstream, is anyone left who knows how to get stuff done?

Many of the folks who stuck around for it... https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-modern-time-crunch/201403/corporate-stockholm-syndrome

These days, the management is busy celebrating the return of “business as usual”. It’s worth remembering the suite of events that led us here:

• 2017: top management admits that our upstream portfolio is not competitive, putting us at the bottom of the pack
• 2018: EM comes up with the “2025” plan, aiming to revamp the portfolio with competitive assets: Guyana, Permian and mostly hypothetical future discoveries in Brazil
• 2019: before the pandemic, the “2025” plan is in deep trouble with overspending when investors want returns now
• 2020: the entire industry is in turmoil. Everybody downsizes, a major layoff is understandable. However, EM stops even mentioning plan 2025 or any other effort to rescue the portfolio, that is to address structural problems. The only new plan to fix things is one to reduce personnel costs by getting rid of “expensive” employees (meaning mostly experienced technical workers) and shipping jobs to low cost countries.

This is a chimera, because it leaves the workforce devoid of vital experienced workers to anchor it, while the efforts to grow centers in low cost countries are half-hearted. Even in India, if you want quality results you need to pay top dollar to attract the best people, and to keep them you can’t turn them into contractors with the yearly PIP.
So, EM enters this upturn (if it lasts) with the same structural problems it had four years ago, no intention to address them, a decimated, deeply out of balance work force, and of course the usual festivist attitude that denies any problems and pretends all is good.
Just imagine what will happen during the next downturn.

Sorry, I deeply disagree that EM also has “great leaders and bosses”. Yes, there are many intelligent people in the management, but they all have to live and submit to a deeply flawed system, which never rewards or punishes real achievements and failures, while making everything dependent on keeping the people above “happy”. What’s the point of being intelligent and having initiative, when you can only direct your skills towards being a better sycophant?

so well said... this is like a dystopia playing out. cruelty is met with silence, people look ahead and move on when Co workers drop left and right (like someone referenced to Squid game)

when they remediate issues now, they spin it as if they were fixing damages from a hurricane or natural disaster, when in fact it's a man-made disaster from their mistakes. ALL the managers, and I mean ALL, in their minds, point to Dallas for all these mistakes, but no one will openly raise. and CEO talks about acknowledging some issues like he's a third party critiquing a company that he has no part of.

are these people psycho? Who is taking responsibility and ownership of the mess? no one. and their lives and bonuses go on as if thousands of livelihoods were not affected. this is da-mn f up

This is the key issue here- the CEO himself said that there exists a failure of leadership in this corporation, and yet many, many poor managers still exist and continue to serve in managerial capacities across every business and service line. Yes, there are also many great leaders and bosses, but until you can get the rot out at the core, it will continue to poison the entire place.

Commodity prices are the only reason for these results