You have to love Chevron leadership. There’s a certain type of leader who survives not through competence, vision, or respect — but through pure corporate osmosis.
You know the type: no qualifications, no technical skills, but plenty of buzzwords and a strong handshake. They promise loyalty to their teams, whisper about “getting rid of the toxic ones,” and then quietly align themselves with whoever’s currently in power — all while throwing their own people under the bus if it buys them another quarter in the spotlight.
Their career is mostly recycled air — living off the efforts of others, claiming ownership of processes they don’t understand, and spinning performance drops as “growing pains.”
The only reason they’re still around? Default setting. They’re not liked. They’re not respected. But they’re just… there. Like a legacy system no one’s figured out how to decommission without breaking something else.
Their best hope now is that people around them stay hated just a little bit more — and that higher leadership doesn’t have the time or will to dig too deep.
Eventually, they’ll vanish with a title like “Strategic Advisor” or “Special Projects Lead” and a post about “choosing to step back to pursue other passions.”
But everyone who ever worked under them will know: they were never leading anything. Just lingering.