My perspective: this site can serve as a useful tool for frank anonymous airing of otherwise taboo convos and go a long way in helping employees share analyze and process their experiences. To that end harsh critique of company strategy, leadership, compensation etc. can all be fair, constructive game. When that critique crosses a clear line into vengeful/ jealous vitriol, it’s just embarrassing for the poster - not the company. If the company is that bad for you, then leave? Nobody is making you stay. Just kinda weird for me as a relatively recent-ish hire who is starting to see some warts and has already decided I probably won’t be here for the long haul - to see folks seemingly more bitter about their own life choices than anything the company ever did to them.
16 replies (most recent on top)
OP: if you stay long enough you'll start seeing some aspect what the long essay guy said. Not all 20-30 years experienced employees are good but the majority are. Company needs good balance between retaining experience and grooming new blood. I think the main idea is that the company sells themselves for long haul but reneged on that when people past the point of no return (they know these propel have limited options).
You keep saying it's easy for 50+ people to find a new job that showing something. Until it actually happens to you, it's difficult to imagine.
OP (who also wrote at least two other posts here):
This site is UNAVOIDABLY full of vitriol for two reasons:
- the company offered for a long time a deal, and respected it for a long time. Then the new management decided to renege on the deal and scr_ewed up royally a bunch of people who had invested decades of their life in the deal they took.
- Every once in a while comes around a newbie idio-t like you who throws insults around and pretends he doesn’t believe what is honestly, sincerely said by people who actually experienced things over decades.
I don’t know if you’re a highly sponsored HiPo or just a mean-spirited nobody, but the result is the same.
There are too many personal attacks on this site for sure. Company policy is fair game but the comments about individuals who have no more power than you to change the system are ridiculous. Supervisors are frequently a target but supervisors have to PIP someone. I guess all the posters who criticize their supervisor are saying their supervisor picked the wrong person. The supervisor has to pick someone for NSI.
@nwt nailed it. couldn't have said it better myself. Hate this MF'ing company. Been trying to find a job. The biggest "acceptable" discrimination is ageism. Good luck proving it.
You said it perfectly. Wow. 100% true. Everybody that is young and fresh out of school now will eventually be old and it'll happen to them. It's just a matter of time.
It seems to me that in EM now, everyone I work 'fkr', supervision and above, have opinions that are fact. And they all paint a negative picture of me... Which contradicts completely with my peers, who all think I'm pretty good.
Only the negative opinions count in EM now.
Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan was famous for this statement. "Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but they are not entitled to their own facts."
Fact #1: The world is rapidly moving toward a "green" economy, especially electric vehicles.
@1kfn If you choose to explain away what’s going on here, that’s on you. Blame the victim today. Be the victim tomorrow. Have a nice life.
@1kfn+1rg94v32 How old are you? How long have you been around?
Thanks for your perspective but I don’t buy all of it because a lot of the assumptions and accusations you paper over smell like dead fish immediately. Either you’re the most gullible person or a very special case both of which I doubt and the first of which would be your fault. Of course Exxon will eventually age you out. What did you expect? To make C-suite? To hold down all the up and comers forever in the name of glutting your own glory and salary? You profess vitriol against the youth taking your job or whatever. You don’t want the company to take on and promote new blood? This place has a lot of old geezers running around as is.
If you were at the company 25 years, you should have built up fantastic pension and savings plan benefits. Now you want to cry about not being able to put your kids through college?
You also conflate looking for a new job at 50 with looking for a new career. If you built a good resume and skills, you would be able to transition to a roughly equivalent job in most cases. 50 is the new 40.
Again, I can appreciate some of the su-kage and double speak you’re airing, and I can see the pitfalls of the artificial up or out system, but I just don’t pity you or buy the half of your story.
NWT has your answer. If you are so foolish as to think that you come here for positive comments then you probably should stay at Exxon you are managing material.
@nwt Amen brother. Truest post ever made on this site.
is this your first time on the internet?
Vitriol - is that the new branding for Creosote?
the foot-bath and dandruff cure?
Why the vitriol?
Pull up a chair.
The company has really hurt a lot of people (spiritually, mentally, physically, financially) and you see that on full display, here.
My “life choice” was that I gave 25 years of my prime years to ExxonMobil and genuinely believed that my hard work, commitment, loyalty and sacrifices that I made including moving my family all over creation, away from family and friends (multiple times), would lead to some big reward at the end. I’d retire from a career I enjoyed, and stay in touch with colleagues I considered my family.
The vitriol is because that’s NOT what happened. Scores of current and former employees are incensed that they may have spent the better part of their professional lives, giving their ALL to ExxonMobil, only to be treated like trash because of the “process.” Had they known sooner how things would ultimately shake out, maybe they would have played their hand differently. But if you haven’t realized it yet: ExxonMobil is less transparent than the oil they refine.
Do you understand the process? Probably not if you’re relatively recent-ish. There’s some great info in the archives on this site, but in a nutshell:
You start out ranking high, raises come every year and it is great! But over time, your performance starts to slide, or so you are told. You don’t understand - you did everything you said you would do and then some, but, it’s not enough.
Management tells you there is so much competition. Everyone is working just as hard as you - and obviously some even more so, because you’ve slipped in the rankings yet again. But it’s all really vague. All you know is that you will strive to work even harder. You’ll get that high ranking back again, doggone it.
Little do you realize there is no overcoming gravity. Unless, you get a golden ticket (impress the right person at the right place / time — you never know when this will be, the window is EXTREMELY narrow), it really does not matter what you do - your rankings will continue to decline until you hit 50-something and you are told that you “Need Significant Improvement.”
The delivery of a NSI is often matched with a WTF???
What really makes it bad is the person delivering you the NSI was an INTERN that worked for YOU 12 years ago, and you remember thinking this kid had some rough patches that could probably be ironed out. Wrong! You never should have recommended them for a job, because one day - they’ll take YOURS.
Before you is the option of a PIP or PIL: Do you take a risk and stay with the company knowing you might fail and get canned at the end of the PIP, or if you pass, have to go through this demoralizing process again NEXT year?
Or do you jump ship and take your chances with the PIL, hoping that you find a new career in your 50’s, right about the same time your kids are starting college?
Hmmmm. Choices, choices!
Either way it is awful and guess what? EXXONMOBIL DID THAT TO YOU. You didn’t do that, you poured your heart and soul in to your job saving (or making) the company millions, and they took it all. They may have even tossed some awards your way for how AWESOME you are, all the while lowering the guillotine on your career.
Of course the company needs to turn a profit. But surely there’s a better way to do that, than creating a swampy “process” that does not VALUE their employees, but instead, leads to a toxic work environment that demoralizes their personnel and makes people physically sick.
In the end, all those people you thought were family? They aren’t. In fact, some of them may have given you cr-ppy feedback to save their own hides, because that’s how you survive at ExxonMobil. Ever played magical chairs? It’s just a numbers game. Aww, don’t take it personally, it’s just business.
And so it is. Until it happens to YOU. YOUR livelihood. YOUR family.
Any questions?
why do people keep making trash posts?