I left with the "V" (voluntary) retirement of the (sadistically named) "VIP" program, having already found my next job. No one bothers with an exit interview anymore, it's a survey so that they can work up the data, but there is a free-form space to write. Not that anyone there will read it, but I wrote for my own closure. Sharing with y'all for the same reason. Good luck!
I would have liked to stay and contribute at a higher level, but, frankly I could not see any future for me at ExxonMobil: while I had a pretty good run that I am grateful for, my career flattened out after I hit 50, no matter how hard I tried. As a working engineer not in management, I felt invisible and underappreciated; all the good assignments, raises and promotions are going to the folks on the management track and the younger folks.
I have a lot of life left in me: I am a better employee now in my 50s, having raised my family, than I was in my 30s and 40s, where I was torn between work and home duties, without all the wonderful work-life benefits programs now available. But there is only a career "ladder", not a "lattice", where you can take a pause, move laterally for a while, and then resume climbing. At ExxonMobil my future is spoken for: flat to down. I can only keep climbing if I change companies, and so I did.
I see that same disappointment in the engineers of my generation hired in the 90s. Those not in management feel left behind, as younger folks are showered with attention and benefits, while we feel shut out of opportunities because we did not make it on the management track early on, often due to work/family conflicts, and there is no entry point after that.
A major contributing factor for leaving which was not addressed in the questions was a profound misalignment of my personal values with the company values as practiced. Straightforwardness, clarity and, especially, courage are very important to me - it is the reason I became an engineer. As I rose in the company, I noticed that politics became a bigger and bigger determinant of decision making. Meetings upon meetings upon meetings to produce consensus and endlessly finesse PowerPoints with just the right verbiage, became a big part of the job. Sometimes it felt like we were working towards a desired, predetermined answer, instead of taking a clear-eyed look at the information and come up with a fact-based proposal that could prove unpopular. Sometimes it made me wonder what's the point of being a good scientist and engineer, if everything became politics. For one, it felt like being in an echo chamber, where we often ended up with the answers we knew when we started. At the very least, it s—ed the life and momentum out of every effort: it takes an unbelievable amount of time to decide to do ... nothing, most of the time. It doesn't feel healthy or sustainable in the current and future economic environment.
Lastly, as the years went by and the energy transition became both imperative from a climate emergency perspective, and desirable from an investment perspective, as evidenced by the relative valuation of oil companies vs. new energy companies, it became harder and harder to justify an unrepentant fossil fuel stance to my conscience. Granted we've come a long way since the Lee Raymond years, when we were vocally ambivalent about global heating, but we are clearly not leading in this space. While, under the pressure of big bank shareholders and activist investors, we are increasingly engaging the press with efforts such as algae or carbon capture, our strategy and R&D is geared towards making fossil fuels safe for the world (and/or the world safe for fossil fuels), more like rear-guard action than confidently leading to the next horizon . Sometimes it feels like being in the echo chamber I described in the previous paragraph: as if we are working our way backwards to the answer we already know, which is our current business model. This defensive, rear-guard stance also saps the energy out of proactive, intelligent people who want to make a difference in the world, and leaves us populated with the opposite - reactionary people who value the status quo and will fight hard for it.
In closing, I am grateful for the opportunities ExxonMobil provided to me, and I am leaving with a clear conscience that I gave back as good as I got. I look forward to more professional adventures away from ExxonMobil in my future.
Good luck to all