Thread regarding ExxonMobil Corp. layoffs

Different Management styles at BTC :

1. Scream and shout, rule by fear. Helps to speak loudly and fast to impose authority. Look stressed all day to ensure your entire organisation is miserable in your presence. Surround yourself with few sycophants and disconnect from reality. Claim to know everything, while it is clear to everyone that you actually don’t know anything about human beings.

2. Smile all day as if nothing is wrong. Passive aggression and making inhuman decisions while smiling is my forte. Bring up unecessary and excessive inclusion, diversity, safety, fun and games instead of talking about actual issues. Promote people who can crack terrible insensitive jokes in every meeting, thats my definition of fun at work.

3. Dead face zero expression, no personal life, work all day and expect employees to do the same. Take rounds to check who is doing what, act like a fascist and take pride in it. Blank stare and robotic voice helps.

4. Find opportunities to malign employees and claim credit for being “culture warrior”. Thats about it, don’t do much else.

5. Best for the last - recite poetry! Pretend employees are pretty much stupid and use your position to say anything without making sense. Give long answers with too many corporate words thrown in. Pat my own back, thank me for you having jobs.

Its actually fun having monthly management towncenters and watching everyone pretend and give lame answers. They shut down anonymous questions because employees started to enjoy asking REAL questions and watching management struggle.

BTC: We have sent many of our Upstream jokers and fakers your way as so called supervisors and managers. Enjoy the misery!

Using the Bangkok BSC as an example, you probably will need about 10 years or so before you will start to see a meaningful number of local leaders. Even then, the first few batches will be those that unquestioningly follow orders from Houston and parrot whatever corporate buzzwords or trends that are throw down from above.

Unfortunately I cannot help since this is a similar problem in the Far East as well. My opinion - New leadership is the only solution. For this to happen, it will take a long time to find a Leader who really value good employees, make good decisions, honest and is well respected, besides putting shareholders interest ahead of everything ( I am willing to lose a bit as a small shareholder in the short term and gain in the long term.). We also need Technically very strong leaders down the line (at working level) who are not “yes” man but they put their skill to the best use.

(Caveat - not all the leaders in EM are no good but the not so good ones overwhelm the good ones and it has led to this decline.)

Get trained by Exxon and then leave to better paying job is what me and my friends at BTC are planning to do. Most everyone has this plan.

When these visiting bosses speak with the corporate 'code words' - meaningless and memorized.

Have multiple people ask 'exactly what do you mean'?
'Can you explain it further, the meaning of 'this' and 'that'?'
'Yes - I would also like to understand 'that' further.'
'I would also like to understand 'that''.

It will drive them to insanity.

Sounds like you are getting a taste of the Houston culture / dealings at the BTC. Welcome, it’s normal. And w more expats coming- it will get worse.

To get rid of pesky expats, gang them up. In big groups, speak your native language that the expats don't understand and annoyingly laugh. Or bring them to places that would disgust them. Don't patronize them and treat them like garbage. That's how you get rid of them.

You got me with 'culture' and 'Houston' in the same sentence.
I guess it used to be 'Manchester' or 'Belfast' back in the Raj days.
Culture is not what it used to be!

The experience is somewhat different in Curitiba center (Brasil).
For the most part, our immediate management is local at first and often second level up.
This takes some of the 'colonial' edge away.
However, the poor management from higher up (both US and UK people especially) is the primary cause of the disease and slowly spreads through it all.

My understanding is that US employees (and far away as Budapest) are also very badly affected.
Or infected. ha.

At any rate - from a technology point of view, ExxonMobil is not really a competitor for many skills of the BSC resources.

Consider the engagement with ExxonMobil as a stepping stone.
And only that.

Once the current chaos of Covid and related global issues are resolved, there will be many other opportunities in Curitiba, Bangalore, etc.

Sadly no my friend. Telling this from a successful 15+ years in a BSC (now GBC) from the first days and job migrations to the depressed present. True is that when expats are gone the site is gonna thrive for a while. But then it's the EM culture that kicks in and all locally brewed "leads" will become "Managers" and simply apply what they've learned from those expats or what they see it will grant them an expat assignment to Houston.

The young American supervisors at BTC lack basic manners, affect and are socially r—ded. They see their roles more as colonial masters ticking a box rather than serious work. Dont worry they'll get pulled back soon enough and have their comeuppance.