Chevron's clearly focused on phasing out long-time employees in favor of younger, less costly ones. Experience and knowledge no longer matter as all they seem to care about is the bottom line. If you’ve been here for years, don’t kid yourself thinking you're safe. You’re in their sights.
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@pb+1jh774a1c
Your Comment “we have too many chiefs and not enough Indians”, well we’re going to have a lot more Indians very soon….
TCO is a great example, laying off experienced people could have been the cause, the thing is with our management, they don't typically listen to experienced people, they listen to the slickest and most convenient answers, so there is no guarantee we could have avoided all the delays and overruns even if we kept them.
The Culture problem is at the top, we fu-k up projects and finding oil because our management are silly buggers that don't try to understand or dig deeper into problems. They like to feel important, especially to talk about finance topics, but forget that we are an integrated exploration and production company, not a PE firm. We need to get better management that understands who we are and what we do.
There is an existential threat on the horizon with electrification of many things and regulations that may prevent use of fossil fuels. Competent management would have run the scenarios, and shared them with everyone, and have credible plans to address these things. We have some credible things, but some completely bullsh-t things, and nobody seems to be capable or evaluating or articulating what we are doing. All the questions on our CES survey about understanding our strategy should have an option "I really don't understand our strategy, the strategy seems to be made by racoons that found several shiny objects in a dumpster and decided they might be able to build a spaceship."
We need leaders who can focus, make tough calls, and share a clear vision. Yes there certainly are some really hopeless employees too, good management would find them and terminate them.
We have computerized many of our engineering tasks , so folks straight out of college can input the data and get an answer. Unfortunately, the new folks are too inexperienced to know whether the answer is correct. That takes experience.
“ Expert help can always be hired”… this is the key fallacy, but not surprising advice the management consultants. Sure experts can be hired to provide all sorts of technical advise, but if the staff does not have the competency to judge which advice helps address the key questions and to integrate any useful learning into everyday applications then the money spent on experts is wasted. The best managers facilitate the workers to get the job done, but if the Indians do not have the needed competency, or an incompetent micromanager just gets in the way of those that know what they are going, the desired results never materialize.
During the 2020 Transformation, I made the rounds trying to find another job within the refinery. We had four tickets to use. I was quietly told that I wasn't being considered. I was 62. I took the EOI then found myself another job. It turned out that it was the best move. I don't know everyone else's situation but 4 years later Chevron is going through the same thing. The oil and gas industry has been good to me but this is nuts.
It's not MW's policy, this is what is fed by the consultants. They have been preaching this since 2014. Their theory is: Expert help can always be hired, a company needs leaders to function not engineers. The case study given is of Apple and Steve Jobs. This is why it is emphasized that everyone can be a leader. I guess we have too many chiefs and no indians.
Yes, management doesn't have a way to effectively understand who is important and who is a BS artist. They assume all work can be done by anyone, since we are faceless worker drones to them. It is unfortunate but everything makes sense viewed this way, may as well replace with cheaper labor.
Chevron wiped out the older staff at TCO back in 2015, because older Expats are crazy expensive. They got away with it by laying off young folks in Houston to hide the age bias. The CEO at the time being an accountant, the solution was clear. Unfortunately, the older staff were the only ones that got the work done. TCO is still not done...,,, Think about how much money we saved.
The plan is simple now that we have reduced the size and complexity of our portfolio. Eliminate SBU's and have the favored grade level 29 plus control everything since they are brilliant. Lay off the majority of 23 to 28s to significantly reduce costs and eliminate the layered decision making. Outsource simple repeatable technical tasks to India. What could go wrong? It is going to get really ugly for blue chevron. Sell
The sad fact is line managers are completely incompetent is assessing the relative abilities of technical staff. Any petro tech (or another technical specialist, including folks experienced in operations) with the same title are considered equally competent to do the job, even when one has experience on multiple assets spanning multiple basins (real world) and the other just joined with marginally relevant academic achievements. We see this again and again, layoff after layoff, and then management can't figure out why we can't book any new reserves and are no longer considered partners of choice. It is getting almost comical in the pure stupidity of it all. What happens in a few years when the Permian begins to die: This could get very ugly as the depth of our asset base gets thinner every year. A Focus on AI and computer tech, rather than the traditional focus on the growth of booked reserves, is leading to a disaster that even a total staff purge can not correct. At this rate, the only expertise we will need in the future is the ability to turn off the lights and lock the doors. Call out to Larry the liquidator!
If you are any age, you are not safe. This group of managers does not seem to think a quality staff is needed to run a complex integrated energy company.
the fresh grads are the worst ones to train/work with. sure you can hire 3 young grads at the expense of one mid-career experienced engineer, but the productivity is probably at best, 10%.
I very much agree with @b3+1jh774a1c, this is not only a Chevron procedure btw, I come from the service company world, so I can testify on how brutal this game gets there.
In my case I was hired as mid-career at the very low-end of the salary range for my PSG, so I think this gives me a little bit more cushioning than my peer located at the top of the same salary range.
This is (and always be) about the never ending cost reduction process, they don’t quite care if you have one or two “expect more” over the last 3 years or so
OP is correct. Under MW's delusional staffing strategy (dates all the way back to downstream in 2010), experienced people are not valued, MW believes that some 22 yr old just out of college, now armed with AI and ML, can do a better job, and if they quit in 10 years, we'll just hire some more 22 yr olds. Now that the company as a whole has been under this direction for almost a decade, you be the judge if it is succeeding.
I'm early 40's and just got a job offer elsewhere. Pay is better, but no hybrid schedule and no pension. I'm concerned about sticking around here for this very reason.
It’s simple arbitrage. You can get 80% of the workload done, at 50% of the cost, by sliding a 20-30 something into the high psg roles.
It doesn't matter the intent but the effect.
This is not about age. This is about cost.
Design teams put in the boxes, and propose certain PSGs for each box. Then they cost that whole design out and if it doesn’t meet a certain magical number, it gets recycled, and the only way to do it is to lower the PSG of some or many of the boxes.
So naturally, the older people are generally higher PSG and it might feel that way.
If you were 50 years old at PSG 23-24, CVX isn’t actively looking to pick a 30 year old over you. This is just about cost.
If you were completely useless at PSG 26-27 at 50 years old and another person at PSG 24-25 can do the job that you’re doing, then yea, maybe it feels like discrimination to you. But this is just simply not in the minds of the design team to use age against you. It’s because you’re overpaid, not because you’re old.
They offer the package so people will agree not to sure for age discrimination. Otherwise, they are wide open.
Let’s hope so cause every time they get rid of the younger folk and keep me. I think I’m loved.
Come on - Most of the folks that age are just waiting for a package. How crazy is it that a company pays to get older experience to leave when it will happen naturally. Chevron has everything upside down. If they were serious about returns they would not give any packages.