Thread regarding Shell Oil layoffs

pulling the knives out of my back and moving on

The first step to getting a government job is to sign up for USA Jobs. Use the search function for oil, gas, petroleum, etc.; the Department of Interior, Department of Energy, and FERC all hire, at times, O&G professionals. Another approach is to consider your basic skills, for example, project management, regulatory, analytics, and search for openings requiring these abilities, irrespective of industry background; this results in more openings but lower probability of being selected. At any rate, precisely answer the questions in the application, and be honest, but robust in stating you qualifications.

Sounds great, considering all political candidates call for “infrastructure “ jobs and spending. But how does O&G skills translate to a government job?

Just curious as someone whose resume is 100% O&G experience with a Petroleum Engineering Degree.

I agree with the comment about finding a federal job. I did so myself at the age of 43, after almost 20 years in O&G as a reservoir engineer, business development coordinator, business planner, etc. The federal government is an amazing employer: nice people, GS15 salaries exceeding $160k, good pension, no layoffs, interesting work, matching thrift contributions, and outstanding health insurance.

Take it from a lifelong shell employee taking the SVS after 44 years at the pectin. You young people should plan on not working your entire career at Shell. Not the company it was years ago. These days they don’t treat people fairly.

Actually, if you can get a nice federal government job, that could last you till retirement.

maybe... MBA, FBI, DOD...

Programming is more than just “learn to code” or learning a couple of languages. Today most companies rather hire a h1b over an american because they work cheap. Many of my colleagues left the industry after being replaced by h1b. This problem goes back 20 years thanks to over government that allows importing close to 300k h1b and h2b a year by corporate america. There are over a million h1b in the country and they can also work remotely just like the rest of us. I have worked with these young h1b, and they don’t represent was on their resume. Sad for the millions of Americans that lost their jobs to these folks. The technical fields are being outsourced to India and China. I once heard a manager say “Shell is not in the IT business”. That says it all. In mi opinion, if you want a stable job, make sure it can not be done with a computer. Good luck

At 30, you are looking at good ~30-35 years till retirement. Choose wisely this time!

Data science could be be good if you got the aptitude. With h1b hurdles raised, there maybe some future in that.

Probably a good idea to plan NOT to be in oil and gas, considering the presidential nominee announced his goal of 0 carbon emissions from the energy grid by 2035.

I made the decision back in March that I was done with oil and gas, and recently secured a job doing something else. I’m grateful to Shell for fully funding my job search. I plan to milk the cow to death though and will delay my start date until my time at Shell comes to an end.

29 here. I'm fortunately still employed but taking big advantage of the work-from-home situation to learn some computer programming. Started with some comp sci fundamentals and then moved on to Java, going to tackle C# next and go from there. Lots of great online resources to use for this sort of thing. I want to write software programs or at least work in software architecture. And as soon as I can get out of this industry I absolutely will.

For those of us who are our age, we basically did the career equivalent of buying at the top. It's been a ride down this entire time, straight out of school.

I’m in the same position as you, going to keep my options open and looking to retrain either through school or develop skills on the service side.