Engineering Services just had another round of layoffs yesterday. 3 from FPD, 5 from P&CSD, and I'm afraid this is not over yet.
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looks like there have been layoffs in houston today
What large number of resignations? You mean retirements? What do you call a large number given the size of Saudi Aramco?
The large number of employees who resigned this summer was predicted a year ago. Why layoff now when so many are packing and leaving your dump
Sorry folks, no news about layoffs because the resident disgruntled ex-employee who keeps smearing all things Saudi has no insight and neither do the disgruntled current employees who cannot bring themselves to quit because it’s the best job they ever had.
A retard might be really concerned about that. The occupant? Less so.
Since your tombstone may be around for awhile, make sure they spell it right.
My tombstone will say:
My pointless existance payed really well
Smile and nod. Throw in a "great idea" now and then. Sit back and wonder how your life got to this point. Then check the accounts. Oh. That's how I got here.
There must be some kinda way outta here
Said the Joker to the Thief
There's too much confusion
I can't get no relief
No reason to get excited
The Thief he kindly spoke
There are many here among us
Who think that life is but a joke
But you and I
We've been through that
And this is not our fate
Let us stop talking falsely now
The hour's gettin late
We used to reject their ideas. Now we hand-clap and encourage them, not matter how idiotic they are. Aramco is boring and it is very (hugely) entertaining to watch Saudis scramble to implement and measure and show benefits for silly and unworkable ideas ++ we get rewarded way more for supporting silly nonsense than we do trying to do the right thing anyway. Win/Win.
The sooner an expat figures out that the only thing that matters is smiling and nodding at and encouraging Saudis the more successful that expat will be at Saudi Aramco.
He probably has a villa in Dubai written into the "informal" section of the contract.
Funny they never ask for a villa in Saudi Arabia. Saudis must also think Saudi Arabia is a shthole.
As an example, we recently had a case of an engineer who had just returned from an assignment with a European vendor. He made presentations to his management about how many millions we could save if that vendor’s technology were implemented and then tried to force it on Producing. Vendor, once he understood how our facilities were set up, said we were doing it the best way and that his technology could not work in our case and would cost much more to implement. We thought that was the end of it. We were wrong. Midra still insists that we do it even though it will cost hundreds of millions more. It was like they were in an entirely different meeting than we were. We are still fighting it over two years later. Once they made that PowerPoint to their management and it was approved as an Innovation idea, the juggernaut can’t be stopped. Midra should have a KPI hokding them accountable for the money saving ideas they come up with. If money isn’t saved, they should answer for it. That isn’t the case. They are great a spending someone else’s money.
Midra needs a Wall. A Great Wall. They do not send their best people out to the operating and production sites.
Not only does Midra need a Wall, Midra employees should Pay For That Wall. Make Aramco Great Again!
OE has created a Great Horde whose only function is to sort, shuffle, staple, and stack reports about OE. The OE horde has achieved critical mass by creating hundreds and hundreds of directly contradictory KPI’s ensuring an eternal and endless trail of action items and updates.
The ideas program never had a chance. Fire, close, forget pales against the reports, presentations, and meetings that constitute the OE War Machine.
OE is great for job creation. So if the objective is to add employment opportunities for Saudis, get rid of Innovation because it doesn’t allow as much useless job creation. OE also creates more new KPI opportunities so there sre more things that can be reported on.
If you had to choose which one of the two to drop due to no added value, would it be the Innovation Program? Or Operational Excellence?
The name Central Engineering is a misnomer. It sounds like they should be at the core of the business (i.e. oil) but the reality is they are very much removed from it. Now they are trying to get involved in anything they can in PE but they are clueless as to how the business works and to what it needs. More money is wasted on their intervention than any small help they could give. They operate in a vacuum. If they would just keep to themselves in Midra giving powerpoint presentations to each other, we could produce oil much more economically. I have never once had Engineering come and ask what we need or how they could help. Instead they convince their management how good some project would be that, coincidentally, comes from a company they just did a 1 year Chapter 8 assignment with. Conflict of interest? They never even ask if it is needed. Their economics are pure fantasy. How do they calculate cost without asking anyone what things really cost. Put a silo around Midra and just let us make oil.
CRM is an excellent tool to refocus central engineering on facility problems rather than courses, seminars and toys. Central Engineering have forgotten that Saudi Aramco makes money from selling hydrocarbon, not engineering services...
Thank you for submitting this innovative idea. It has been accepted and marked Closed/Complete.
Submission of these innovative ideas maintains our Highly Critical KPI #1150 "Number of Ideas Submitted".
This has been added to the other 258,000 innovative ideas in our Idea Bank and moves us forward to our goal of One Million Ideas By 2025.
Our KPI #2685, "Number of Meaningless Awards and Certificates Per Employee", requires us to award you with a certificate of appreciation. To receive this award please create a certificate, fill it out, and bring it to the Ideas Awards Committee for review and signature. If you fail to complete this task the request will be escalated to your supervisor, his manager, and the VP for executive action and your PMP will be affected this year.
This is just to let you know how valuable you are as a loyal Saudi Aramco Expatriate employee.
Thank you so much. Make it great. I just put that on the Innovation website so I don’t actually have to do anything to help develop and implement that but I will get all the credit.
This issue has been recognized and addressed. Auto(TM) does not incorporate a chain of anything and prepares the way for the future of central engineering: By 2030 A single nationalized robot can continuously monitor and report on the single and only most important KPI of the organization: Closing Customer Requests For Technical Support Within 72 Hours. 100% Saudization. 100% KPI compliance. Billions and billions of tasks closed and not a single stroke of work required from a single human. Game/Set/Match. Checkmate. It is brilliant. I expect cheap copies of this from Pakistan, Korea, India, and China to flood the middle east any day now.
By eliminating the need for review, discussion, meetings, clarifications, and execution / completion of the requested work that has plagued the organization this single small App has paved the way to complete and total elimination of outside resources and technical expertise in central engineering.
Next App: Simplify the customer feedback cycle by providing one box to check "Highly Satisfied". If not checked within 30 minutes the app will auto-check the box, close the item, and report the customer's failure to the customer's supervisor and 6 levels above him. These failures will be incorporated into the customer's PMP rating at the end of the year assuring alignment with the vision.
Sorry but auto-close(TM) is destined to fail. By definition, it depends on a chain of approval which, by definition, is nearly always broken. At least one of the people in the chain will be on vacation or temporary assignment but the e-8000 has not been updated to reflect it. If it goes to the right person who is on a temporary assignment, he won’t approve it because it is not temporarily his responsibility. It could take two years of resubmissions until all the stars are perfectly aligned. And even if the chain is intact, if it sits with one person too long, it will be rejected because the delay would go against his personal KPI. Resubmission will allow him to approve it faster the next time.
The other problem with auto-close(TM) is that, while it will significantly improve closing CRMs, once fully implemented, it will be impossible to improve on the KPI benchmark that was set in the first month so it will be Ms all around at PMP time.
CRM is the job creation machine of the century
The auto close(TM) function eliminates all need for confusing colors and dials and needles and pointers while assuring that all goals of the new organization are met with minimum effort.
Should be two screens. The second screen should have 8 or 10 gauges. Labels on gauges won’t be necessary. Only colors. The first screen would just be one giant gauge that averages the gauges on the second screen. If that big gauge is green, no need to go to page two.
Yellow is confusing. Just red or green.
If IT develops a one screen dashboard consisting of dial gauges with bands colored red, yellow and green, the expat positions won’t be necessary.
I heard a rumor that the engineering CRM system was being automated to auto-close all requests within 3 days with closure note “Does not fall under responsibility of requested group”. This ensures that every single request will be addressed multiple times but the need for the system to process them and people to track them will always increase.
Then Midra will be filled with 5,000 “unplaced” managers, division heads, and executives with 2-3 expat clerks assigned to summarize CRM request response KPI’s daily, weekly, and monthly and present it to them on powerpoint using simple tables and charts. As request numbers accelerate more unplaced leaders will be brought in to review them.
It is the best pyramid design since ancient Egypt.
Am I correct that they also hit HR?
Stop spreading rumors. The layoff CRM request was closed on time and was handled correctly.
It was simply rejected over and over while it was bounced from department to department because nobody knew which group was supposed to do the work.
So it took two years to get started. But the CRM KPI is great. Based on number of closed CRM requests they are actually short handed.
They just dont need technical staff for CRM request processing roles when anyone who can crawl in and push a button can close/reject work without doing anything else.
A building that houses three of the worst tech service organizations on the planet didn't happen by accident. They need to send the whole disconnected management team out the door with them.
Okay new acronym. MIA. Mass Involuntary Attrition. Start counting MIAs. We salute you.
Normal attrition. They were just hired help. There are no layoffs. Stop spreading rumors.
Nobody was laid off. This was mass attrition.
As long as we acknowledge that saudi supervisors can predict employee ratings two years in advance then yes they probably were part of the M club
Were those downsized members of the "M" Club? I heard that was the case with Finance a month ago.
Engineering services had a list from over a year ago. Really thought they would get hit back then. Someone probably just closed the CRM request without doing anything so it’s been languishing.
Saw that coming.