Schlumberger Reviews

Pros

not so tough, causal working style, great people, great mentor ship, great resources, great benefits, great work place, great activities

Cons

company is too big, when I am working a product which is created twenty five years ago, it is always not so easy

Advice to Senior Management

not so much advice. the training is great, the colleagues are awesome. I like the work place, I love to be here

Pros

Great environment, lovely colleague, fascinating career growth.

Cons

Very hectic working culture, especially for the married.

Advice to Senior Management

Reduce stress for workers.

Pros

good pay and benefits, as typically seen in oil and gas industry

Cons

management bureaucracy, which is a big hassle at the place

Advice to Senior Management

Please allow your employees chances to shine, which is kinda hard at this place, especially if you are new employees.

Pros

Its a decent amount of money for a first job, you get to work outside and travel to a lot of places.

Cons

All the good people will leave the companies within 5 years, they have huge turnover every year. You have to go where they tell you to, and there is no work/life balance

Advice to Senior Management

Stick up and support your people. it's amazing how upper management completely forgets everything about the field as soon as they get out.

Pros

+truly international: in the demographic make-up of your team, opportunity for travel, or maybe even career placement.
+career path: schlumberger promotes internally. at the early/mid-career level
+good colleagues: mostly.
+flexibility/work-life: pretty good for desk employees; seemingly terrible for field employees
+perks/benefits: decent compared to most industry.

Cons

-flexibility/work-life: for field employees
-compensation: peanuts compared to operators
-perks/benefits: stocks? bonuses? health care? peanuts, compared to operators
-bureaucracy: fraught with typical bureaucracy. red tape, procedures. draconian safety policy.
-politics: fraught with politics and personal games
-management turnover: 1-2 year turnover in management means no long-term strategy/planning. no cohesive 'team' drive and goals and incentives: management success comes at cost of employee morale [i.e. focus on margins and cost]

Advice to Senior Management

-hse culture. ridiculous. absolutely makes no sense. (example: no north american employee allowed to travel, unless with exemption, past 10pm. not even if driven by a taxi)
-more transparency
-everyone sits and laments over attrition problem, yet make no attempts to do anything about it. glaringly simple.

Pros

- Well organised most of the time
- Generally in the right direction
- Plenty of money for projects
- Excellent quality of colleagues. Most of the engineers are brilliant there
- They're essentially excellent as a field service provider.

Cons

- MBA-like "management talk" becoming too much
- They utterly suck in NPD.
- "Seniority" in the company doesn't correlate to the outside norm. What counts is the number of years you have spent in SLB, so it's only the ones who have joined as new graduates who will be promoted (and often very fast).
- No sharing of vital information
- QHSE getting way over the top (e.g. 5m-long tubular mould can't be used vertically, helmet forced upon operators where no falling object is possible, etc.)
- Using field engineers (and other irrelevant ones) to manage practically everything including development projects
- Some managers are promoted way too fast
- Waste of talents through mediocre management
- Bulky bureaucracy trying to carry out lean manufacturing - two locomotives in opposite directions
- "Getting right first time" attitude, which is fundamentally right, leading to the system becoming too rigid (e.g. GRS) and causing wasted time in the end (no adjustment allowed!). It's never too late to fix wrongs, too!
- Not much real technology outside the research centre in Cambridge
- Seriously incompetent managers, albeit very few, not eliminated for many years.

Advice to Senior Management

Seriously, where the h#ll are you and what are you doing? I saw my boss's boss only twice in half a year or so. You can't give a title of "product manager" to someone who doesn't even know the difference between production engineering and process engineering and use him to run what is actually a development project. You can't be serious when you fail to remove a manager who is claiming to be a "polymer engineer", yet doesn't even realise for five years the obvious necessity of de-gassing resin before injection (and bullies everyone for failing to remove bubbles)! Stop believing in your own corporate culture so much and change before GE runs over all of you. Thank you very much for sacking me today!

Pros

Pay, Benefits. The bonuses are awesome but you have to remember that they are paying you to be on call all the time and away from your home. You won't spend much time there.

Cons

As a Field Engineer you are constantly away from your family. It is tough. If you are in a relationship and you want to be with this person do not take this job. I've just started three months ago and it was hard since I moved from another state. I still haven't decided on whether to staty or leave.

Pros

I felt proud working for the top oilfield services company in the world. They also compensate you well, and the experience looks really good on your resume. Their training program is excellent.

Cons

It's really hard to have a work-life balance. The jobs can last a really long time, and you have to be there when they're ready for you to start, but they often don't know when that'll be ahead of time. This means you might be sleeping in the bed of a pick-up out in the middle of a desert until they decide they're ready for you. Also, even if they tell you you're on a rotating schedule, you might never get the time off that they told you you would.

Advice to Senior Management

They should give their interns feedback throughout the summer, instead of waiting until it's over. They should also be clearer about their expectations and the time.

Pros

Good benefits, Good opportunity to advance. learn a ton of new skills.

Cons

Work 120+ hrs a week, not great pay for the amount worked. Always gone from home. lack of management leads to hectic and disorganized workplace. Advancement is so readily available, because attrition rate is through the roof.

Advice to Senior Management

make time management a priority.

Pros

international Petroleum company and one of the main players in the petroleum company

Cons

Have so little time to be judged

Advice to Senior Management

Plan a specific schedule for interns