They are attempting to move roles/workflows to the ENGINE that have been difficult to recruit for due to lack of competitive pay and talent pools in the US. In India, the talent pools are very small to non existent, with multiple companies pursuing these individuals, resulting in candidates leveraging offers.
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Every time senior management does a reOrg, they ask middle management for feedback, but all they want to hear is how great their ideas are. Those who suggested Agile was not fit for purpose for our industry were quickly pushed out or at least told to "get with the program." Similarly, now, if you point out any potential "challenges" with Engine, you will be shown the door. Someone high up had a high-priced consultant expound on how great offshoring worked for our competition for other industries (as they headed to the door with their big check burning a hole in their pocket). With that "decided", it is your job to make it work so your bosses can leave with nice bonuses. Good luck! Expect my EOI to be on the desk first thing in the morning.
Isn’t there conflict on interest on the guy running this engine? The dude is Indian and selected India as the hub. What’s more conflict of interest as that?
Our CIO doesn’t know anything that needs to be executed besides ENGINE. Cut down apps and send all jobs to ENGINE. Any high school grad with a GED can do this. Oh yea, just like our new general manager of data with no degree at all.
I am still trying to figure out why they are spending so much time on university recruitment, given that the plan was to create a "robust pipeline of experienced talent." It seems a bit odd, no?
An entire business unit filled with fresh grads, who are completely disconnected from the practical realities of the business, may not deliver the results they are expecting. But well, it’s their call. Let’s see how it goes maybe they are being having some masterstroke in mind. All the best to them, I suppose!
No part of the Boeing MCAS was outsourced to india
India is often used as a scapegoat, but the real issue lies closer to home. The problem is that our management seeks overly simplistic solutions and avoids engaging with the core, gritty engineering challenges. Many executives no longer have a deep understanding of what it takes to run an oil company effectively. They’ve abstracted the work to such an extent that it seems interchangeable and transactional, making decisions like offshoring to cut costs appear obvious, even inevitable.
Consider Boeing’s experience with the 737 MAX. They outsourced critical software development to engineers in India, reportedly paying as little as $9 an hour. This cost-cutting measure raised significant concerns about the quality and oversight of vital components. We all know the catastrophic consequences that followed.
This relentless focus on cost has even bitten us at Chevron. Over-optimizing design engineering to save money, rather than addressing the core issues and workflows that truly matter, has cost us tens of billions of dollars. Management often lacks the curiosity and willingness to delve deeply into these problems. Decisions are made from a distance, and much of the focus is on managing upwards rather than solving real issues on the ground.
Establishing a Bangalore office won’t address this fundamental problem—it might even exacerbate it. AS and others in similar roles are more skilled at navigating the corporate hierarchy than tackling the root causes of our challenges. They are focused on personal career advancement more than understanding and improving the business itself.
It’s disheartening, but this is the reality of corporate America today. Without a shift in mindset and a willingness to truly engage with the core challenges of our work, these patterns are unlikely to change.
This is just one small thing that happened the last time our CIO decided to offshore all his IT work as well as working with his data whisperer friend. And then they bailed on GM to start another fire at Chevron
https://whnt.com/news/general-motors-onstar-faces-class-action-lawsuit-in-data-sharing-case/amp/
Wait until ENGINE starts doing critical work for turnarounds and delays start piling up.
This one probably deserves its own thread.
But do BK and MN understand that the IT cuts in the US will literally cripple Chevron?
It is not just about not being able to hire the talent in India. It’s also how it is IMPOSSIBLE to hire quickly enough in any low cost geographies by Q1 when we will lay off half of our US employee population.
There’s actually business critical items (OT/PCN) and some are related to OE.
I’ve heard some execs saying that we will not cross the stupid line, and all these workflows or work activities moving to lower cost geographies are the repeatable commodity type work. But that cannot be further from the truth for the 100 working teams under NDA. LC is asking them to hit a magic number. Period.
And LC has ZERO knowledge of he business and probably no cajones to push back on his new boss. He just tells his FLT (MA, who apparently everyone loves), and they just do it. Because they are all in self-preservation mode.
IT is a fraction of the $2-3B cuts. But the capabilities, including commodity services, that will be destroyed in Q1 will absolutely cause some incident or cause the business to miss the mark.
If you have options today, it is really time to get off of this sinking ship. Each individual leader sees this dumpster fire, but they are all worried about themselves and assume that it’s gunna be fine. Talk about lack of role courage at the FLT and OPG/CTC LT level. And you can see right through it with that disaster of a townhall.
I will never forget during ImagineIT and other PDC cycles when my PDR or XLT/FLT mentors told me of all these roles that I’m not qualified for because of all these BS gaps. They say there’s a long line of people with these types of experiences that I lack.
How the tables have turned. Because all of them are now scared sh!tless in this upcoming ROM. No real skills and no real knowledge of Chevron’s business. I can count on one hand the number of IT XLT who are actually hirable outside of Chevron (without taking a massive pay cut) as they’re mostly grossly overpaid tu-d$
i would ask simple coding question to these guys.. like create a hello world on screen 10 times w a CR line feed - if they cannot do that… good bye!
unless u r in very senior IT leadership, but close to the ground accountable for IT support or delivery, u should know how to do simple code!
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The BU digital manager and platform technical manager are about the least technical people in the IT function. Give them a skills assessment and see how they do. Probably not even fundamental in any category besides corporate lingo
The BU digital manager and platform technical manager are about the least technical people in the IT function. Give them a skills assessment and see how they do. Probably not even fundamental in any category besides corporate lingo
Some Folks here are so clueless… reason why many have mediocre talent is becuse they do bot have a technical manager that smell too “green or d-mb”… - id u hire an electrician for your home and u have a background in electrical, u will know in a few minutes if they are legit
a few groups in CVX i worked w got get great talent in india, manila and US because those teams fire/release them right away if they seem to be too slow, or to green or lied on their interview - we released contractors within less than a week at times … so guess how many IT teams at CvX do that?… vert few as most technical managers and architects dont even have strong technical background and experience to smell “BS” (they say they know python) and too green… because they cannot even code if they have to
An army of cheap Data Engineers in a place where the best ones leave the country, aren’t much cheaper, or will only work for FAANG. Recipe for success
We hear cio lc wants to build a big data engineering army in india. Does he not know that we already have like 9 suppliers who provide data engineering contractors for us, and it is easier for those companies to hire and retain people than it is for us to do it?
He is in over his head and he doesn’t even know it.
AS truly is AWFUL. He is the perfect example of what’s wrong with Chevron. The fact that he’s been so highly promoted and now is leading this ENGINE thing is astonishing. The people who have worked for AS absolutely despise him. Terrible behaviors. It’s so disgusting to not only see him not fired but promoted.
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I agree 100.
Bro, you don't have to lie to kick it.
Another example of lying to dramatize ones life with an aim to portray an image to the public (and to themselves lol).
There is nothing wrong with saying the truth. The lie is obvious and everyone can smell the stench.
Reminds me of the honest med school applicant saying he was born with a passion for helping others.
What’s really going to anger you is when the offshore workers won’t be able to cut it and the U.S. workers left will be expected to make up the difference.
They find it cheaper to pretend they are keeping the workforce up and moving the jobs offshore, when the reality is those workers are stand-ins to make it look like they aren’t dumping extra work on the people that didn’t get laid off. I’ve watched it happen before. Offshore workers have no idea what to do and don’t seem to be able to learn, those who kept their jobs have to cover for the issues and are asked to work extra time and be on-call for when they need help.
If you read that dum--ss story about how the head of India AS is finally returning home as a promise to his parents, it is disgusting to use that story as he chose Bangalore, the Silicon Valley of India, as opposed to whatever slum his family was from. Living the high life, getting all his buddies to go on expat assignments with him.
And guess what, with that comes a location where it is just hard to find cheap talent, where labor rate is much higher than the other places we could have gone to. This is not to win for chevron. This is to line the pockets of yet another executive who was truly the worst manager and somehow made his way to the top.
talent in india? should be none. if there is any, they would already be in the US…
I’ve been told if you’re not on board with offshoring, centralization and more with less then it’s time to get out.
We all know offshoring doesn’t work that well. You say that to a manager and you get called not strategic. They don’t wanna hear the realities or problems with it. At all.
IF the 20% is true (big if), the only place it can come is advisors and CTC. Anywhere else and this house of cards rumbles
Former employee here but still have some dear friends who are in HR and pretty high up execs. Anyway they were all telling me about the upcoming ROM and how they hope it doesn't destroy morale when they start chopping the former "untouchables" (FE and PEs). Anyway they have all said the goal is about 20% of the US workforce and if it works out, the potential profit to CVX is in the billions. So buckle up and hang in there. So happy I don't have to go through that ROM sh-t anymore.
remember the saying......you get what you pay for! They better have the manuals written for all of them in Ind!a. Not sure they do anything but read from them = just look at all the corporate helplines
The most qualified candidates in India are all looking for overseas opportunities in the US, Canada or Europe, or won’t be willing to work for what Chevrons going to want to pay.
We brought up this same information to our management in response to their request for our feedback. The result? We were all gaslit by the people who asked for the feedback. They basically said, “STFU and get back to work. The only truth is what we say is truth”.