Everyone with 30+ years needs to go - "old school" is not "an independent". Let the younger more risk tolerant take over and show you how business gets done. It's not about just getting oil out of the ground - we need well educated business mined people running the show. How many of the 30+ year employees have advanced degrees, how many know how to use the computer?
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Managers are a dime a dozen. The technical staff get oil/gas out of the ground. Management is a cost center, and a large one at that. Maybe they should have started the layoffs from there......
you can cut all the managers you want out of the organisation but in the end it won't make any difference if NOBODY will every make a decision on anything. In independents the staffs and managers make decisions and do so often. Here, we hand wring and worry and let outside forces or the market make our decisions for us. This isn't fixable by just cutting people from payroll.
A manager pushes. A leader pulls. And I think we have struck oil on that note. In reality leadership is more interchangeable. Technical skills require lead time; and the more technical the skill the more lead time. An organization with a culture focused on management at the expense of the staff is dysfunctional at best. A competent team requires little if any management.
Okay 169369, using your own words, "Managers are the ones that push projects through. That's where the money is." Notice your words do not say, "Managers generate ideas", or "Managers lead business decision making." No, push projects (they did not generate) through (other levels of managers who neither created nor generated), and somehow this "paper pushing" creates money. Actually, the inverse is true, this paper pushing typically devalues what might otherwise have been a good idea or project because the managers screw it up. Managers stand on the shoulders of giants and then defecate.
Managers are the ones that push the projects through. That's where the value is. IC's just are not as valuable. That's the facts. Sorry.
True, they are incapable of real work. Thus it is time to restructure management, and preserve the dividend! Trim off some fatty management! Time for them to put in their time in line at the soup kitchen too.
Managers and supervisors may make the right noises - but on their own they can't find, assess, drill, appraise, engineer, produce, refine or market a single damn hydrocarbon molecule. Without the technical staff there is no one for them to manage, and its a long while since most of them last did any real work
I don't work for ConocoPhillips, and I'm sorry to see that COP management is so useless. I empathize with the hardworking folks who make the company. Other companies are grabbing talent right now, keep your head up.
Ohhhh!!! Burn!!!!!
The issue is managers and supervisors are the better employees. The company does not wish to sever its best employees. Sorry individual contributors you should have accomplished more.
I guess you have not seen "The Party" with Peter Sellers?
Good luck to all the hardworking people, and F*** every single manager in ConocoPhillips who does not have integrity/ethics.
Yep...making noise about how "we need to operate like an independent"...and...
...every senior member of mgmt who elects to retire is replaced by someone else equally senior (now) in management...
...the announcements today that were mostly "and this-person stays in the same position...", "and this person stays in the same position..."
Upper management does not have it in their DNA to be able to operate like an independent, and it shows. So...we are supposed to operate in a fundamentally different manner, yet we are keeping essentially the same upper management structure. WTF? What kind of f***ing idiots do you think you have working for you? The plan is "preserve ourselves as long as possible, and then golden parachute out when we have to liquidate the company".
It's been a good ride to work here, but the ride's about to come to an end. If you believe upper managment is the reason that we get oil & gas out of the ground and to market to sell, then you're probably part of upper management.
Hell has a special place for those who sacrifice others for their own benefit, and alot of folks are about to know that hell (metaphorically speaking, of course, as I'm an athiest).
FU, COPC...and good luck with what thou hast wrought.