For those who have been with the company for 15+ years, what was it like when EM was truly #1?
Am curious as a younger employee who just left. How many of the sales points were true?
Thinking specifically of long engaging careers, adequate promotions / upward mobility, travel, training, morale, etc.
Not trying to look at the past with rose-tinted glasses, but how many orders of magnitude are we off from those promises today?
1982 was different, but I can’t say it was the company. It was the people. More folks treated this as an opportunity and they contributed. Sure there was bickering and backstabbing, but it was like a sibling, tattling. Nothing personal.
Today’s colleagues are too thin skinned, entitled, lack loyalty to anything. The younguns will never be happy, me thinks, which includes my grandchildren.
Well 40 years service will come next year and me and wife will be outta here. Y’all have fun!
Management used to have respect for technical quality and expertise. These once valued resources were considered important to the business, particularly when manufacturing plants had issues which acutely impacted the bottom line (e.g., lost production). There will be a rude awakening the next time one of the gulf coast plants has a fire or explosion requiring rebuilt facilities on a fast track basis. Hard to do this effectively with overseas engineers or campus slide deck jockeys.
Back in the 1970s, you were a respected community member if your employer was Exxon. It was known as an ethical company because the management at the time was highly ethical. There were no "gray areas." Things began to change in the late 70s and into the 80s. There was a big surge of MBA hires, and very shockingly, some experienced hires were brought into company management positions. Then sporadic layoffs began happening. Well, you know the rest of the story.
The company changed but so did people, society, politics, business and media but most of all, technology has changed everything, and that means the business models we still pedal are likely to die very soon - we might have decades, if we are lucky.
Imagine this, during the hunter-gatherer period the global economy doubled over a 220,000 year period, then during the farming revolution the economy doubled every 900 years, then during the industrial revolution global GDP doubled every 6 years... and now we are faced with technologies we barely understand ourselves, and we entrusting our future to general intelligence to define our future economy - the singularity is truly upon us.
Who really knows where we are today but let's just say when the doors swing open and our business model is ready to be thrown out of the world's economic makeup it'll be brutal and quick and no matter what our history was will change a single thing.
Change is the only constant and resistance to change is utter folly. There is a sad inevitability about the coming end to our industry and ExxonMobil...
But while you ponder this remember all those monster sized tech companies boasting about their future proofed business models today - Amazon, Apple, Meat Face (or whatever that nonsense is called) - will also die out probably more quickly than anyone could ever imagine.
So be ready to adapt people.
And be nice.
I was hired in the 80’s in an affiliate. Things were good. You had to get stuff done so there wasn’t much tolerance for excessive meetings. Worked globally including great expat assignments. Overall a good career.
I hired on in 1999 at the age of 50 years old as an experienced hire (engineer) working Upstream (Drilling). I retired +15 years later at the age of 65. EM told me that I would have a challenging career working numerous world- wide projects making a good salary AND requiring that I only work every other month ( i.e., 6 months per year). . EM followed through; that is exactly what happened. Thanks EM!!! Now, every day is a weekend, ha!
bzj+1dR7fQ8I
Just like everything else at EM, the fake positive postings on LI are about internal perception, not about results in the real world.
Yes, those LI posts scream “fake” from a mile away, and they sm--k of desperation and rejection of reality for anybody outside the company. The people posting might be aware of that, but they score the needed points with their managers, so who cares about the real world impact as long at it buys them something inside EM ?
This way of doing things is what brought this company to its knees and will eventually burry it.
Can anyone explain why all of sudden you see a lot of social media posting on LinkedIn by Sr. VP, VP and Executive ? Some posting look so "fake" that people can tell that they are pretending. Didn't they know by doing that they just make the younger generation more fed-up with the company ?
Good luck boomer👋🏼
@zbz+1dR7fQ8I bit all the posts on social media, especially on LinkedIn paints the picture in an opposite way with more of a positive light.
25 years ago Exxon was very different. You still had the absurd HiPo to management system, which eventually brought the worst to the top, and the fake ranking system, which reserved the upper third and upper middle third to HiPos/management.
However, for technical people there was room to breathe; those who proved themselves would be respected, valued and had a clear way to a nice retirement, even if after 50 and especially 55 their ranking would be faked down to make room for young managers.
There were two separate hierarchies; the management was getting the bulk of the goodies, but there was something palpable in terms of appreciation/reward for people on the technical track.
The Great D-mbdown started around 2010; the great training and learning opportunities from experienced people were the first to go. During the downturn, in 2015-2017, a lot of older workers would not retire just when the company was desperate to reduce head count without a visible layoff. They used incentives for early retirement, but the damage was done: complete disregard for the experience and expertise lost, emphasis on number reduction became the norm.
The pandemic has put this trends on steroids. Now there’s an entire new business model based on cheaper inexperienced hires (5-10 ye) or low cost county workers, led by a few “technical management” people who think they’re universal experts, submit all work to their biases and always have their eye on what the people above like, not what the technical work shows.
This is the sweatshop model applied to a company who is structurally sick. If you are one of the few experienced people left, you retire if you can or desperately search for anything else before they target tou with the next PIP, just before you get to 52 (protected NRE).
If you’re young, you may work a short while for some cash and a bit of resume padding, but forget about the career-long employment that used to be the foundation of Exxon/EM employment.
Back then it seemed that any productive person was able to stay until retirement and feel pride in working for EM.
Management has cancelled out both of those.
15 years - not much was different. Even if the CEO was on PBS weekly, the decline of employee treatment was evident within.
25 years ago - the underlying methods were the same, but the specific promises you mentioned were possible for a professional. At least for Exxon, and probably at Mobil.
35 years ago - going way back. You could still have a scotch at lunch.
But overall, from the deep corporate perspective, it's the same as it ever was.
Big question...
I started in the 80s. For me getting hired by Exxon meant my whole life would be at least "ok" and likely much better. It has been.
The biggest difference is that we never seconded guessed the strategy of the corporation and the leadership capability of those in charge … now, we have strategies changing daily and leaders who have lost touch with the organization … additionally, promotions seem to be made on different bases than before … gone are the requirements of technical excellence and clear achievements as the ticket for promotions and leadership positions … new we promote based on what our leaders might do, not what they’ve done in the past to justify the new position … I’m glad I’m retired and got my $$ out this company
Upstream old timer here - there was definitely more of a “family” atmosphere, especially when you got away from Headquarters. I feel like the sterile campus was the final nail in the coffin for that environment which had been declining for years.