Succeed by pleasing your boss - Senior Engineering Advisor ExxonMobil Employee Review

Performance assessment is subjective, conducted in secret, and lacks any elements of due process that American defendants expect in our criminal justice system (knowing the charges against you, trial by impartial jury of your peers, seeing the evidence against you, representation by an advocate, cross-examining witnesses, calling witnesses in your behalf, etc.). Instead, your ranking is determined by a brief (one or two-minute) discussion among a few supervisors, and the outcome is of course mainly determined by your supervisor, unless you have impressed or offended a manager to the extent that they override your supervisor. A month or two later your supervisor tells you the outcome. You hope to survive to work another year. But you might be told you were assessed in the Needs Significant Improvement (NSI) category because of your behavior X, even though in reality you were not guilty of behavior X. Your innocence is irrelevant because the assessment is in the past. NSI means you’re fired. Just like that. Your supervisor or manager doesn’t like you for whatever reason (a remark you made in a meeting, you’re too old, someone else needs your position, …). You will never know. The successful employee quickly learns (and acts on) two things: job security is only guaranteed for supervisors or managers; and, you compete on an individual basis (teamwork is not rewarded). Other factors that a prospective employee should consider are, the company exaggerates the consideration of DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) when filling management positions, and the company has for the least eight years or so been moving the work outside the USA to locations where they can pay lower salaries. Bottom line: If you want a stable career doing honest technical work in a pleasant, team environment and you are not in a group that benefits from DEI, ExxonMobil may not be the place for you.