Is Baytown - BTES going to see many layoffs? I was told that 80% of BTES is going to be axed to India and Malaysia. Is this true? Any information? I am worried.
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This year only 20%...but jobs will be rapidly migrated to low cost technical service centers in Asia over the next 10 years. US employees just cost too much relative to their value add. COVID and low oil price accelerated the change. Can easily cut 2500 in the Houston area and reduced new hires and ongoing retirement will trim Houston office staff by 400 per year thereafter. ONLY HIRE IN INDIA, KL BA and HUNGARY. IT definitely moves to India quickly.
Thanks @tjl+17EI9gMY, this is OP. Appreciate your honest and I think very accurate, reasonable forecast and estimate. And thank you @fmc+17EI9gMY KLGBC also for fair and honest information. If this trend continues due to Zoom, Teams, GoToMeeting, what will happen to all the new graduating engineers from so many universities in USA? Future for USA engineers does not look good. Why would not just ExxonMobil but other engineering companies cut jobs in USA and beef up India, Malaysia etc.? Ohhh need to look at transitioning into another major.
I think it's fair to say ALL of the site engineering positions are potential candidates for outsourcing to KLTC, BTC, or somewhere else (thinking about having a plan in place to leverage demand surges with contractors). There has been significant effort on determining how to reduce and eliminate process engineers in the Operations Support Department (OSD), so I think BTES is definitely on the block for a heavy cut. For clarity, I'm not saying OSD is more important than BTES. The OSD engineers are direct operations support, day to day, and they get even heavier involvement during abnormal events. The fact that I heard heavy cuts are coming within OSD and how KL / EMRE making up the support needs gives me serious concern. Look at each section / function and make an assessment to determine if 80% or perhaps some other number makes sense. In the end, it's a guess and I wish nothing but the best for everyone in these uncertain times. I also hope someone at the site leadership team recognizes it takes knowledgeable people to run safely and reliably, so there may be a point at which the headcount reductions jeopardize the license to operate.
Within BTES, consider the reliability engineers as the first section to go away. Not sure if KL is picking up their work or if it'll be effectively restructured into other business team members. I would think the equipment strategy engineers will all be gone since KL has been training heavily on those jobs in the last two years. Materials engineers are next on my list for outsourcing. Specialists like electrical, instrumentation, rotating equipment, fired heaters, etc. are on the bubble for me, as you need those folks putting eyes on equipment in the field. A picture helps for remote troubleshooting, but it's not always effective to ask a technician to photograph everything on the unit or describe a noise to fix a problem. I see a reduction strategy that could work, assuming everything is running well and not upside down or broken. They'll just have to leverage mechanical more or change some job responsibilities. The fixed equipment engineers are likely the safest BTES function due to the ever growing need for asset support. Perhaps the lead mechanical engineers get reduced further. The control systems and applications engineers are also on the bubble in my eyes, as a lot of that work can be remote. Again, all bets are off when a unit trips and it's all hands on deck. Skeleton crews spread thin don't manage abnormal events well when they've never seen the upset before.
Whatever cuts are made, I would expect to have a handful of up and coming late early career engineers (CL 25) left as subject matter experts and the backbone in a more centralized organization structure. One or two engineers for a whole operations department, maybe two in some areas. They run to chase whatever problem pops up. This assumes the select few with the right skillset and flexibility didn't get forced out or disenfranchised with a false PIP / PIL a couple months ago. Also assumes they don't run away given the churn at the site and become regretted losses as one BTES DH called them.
You can look at XOM job postings on the website and Linked In to get a flavor of the jobs being recruited for KL and Bangaluru Technical Centers.
80% is total BS, the real number is the same as Spring, 100%. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.
Hi, KLGBC folk here. I can only confirm that KLTC is looking to increase headcount by approx 200 by 2021/22 to make KLTC the ‘equal’ counterpart to Houston.
I am truly sorry for any upcoming US layoffs associated with this plan. To me it does not make sense to have a KL engineer supporting a faulty equipment halfway across the globe.
On a side note, I do not see why KLTC folks should be grossly overpaid relative to what EMIT does - when we mostly refer to manuals to do stuff from our workstation.
No, not 80% maybe 20% max of xom staff.
But 80% of contract staff seems likely if it hasn’t happened already