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    ExxonMobil Reviews

    Updated June 22, 2017
    1,531 reviews

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    Full-time Part-time
    3.7
    Star Star Star Star Star
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    ExxonMobil Chairman & CEO Darren Woods
    Darren Woods
    38 Ratings

    1,531 Employee Reviews

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    Pros
    Cons

    • It's important to set work life balance boundaries (in 92 reviews)

    • Tough ranking system and very competitive environment (in 144 reviews)

    More Pros and Cons
    1. Featured Review

      Helpful (6)

      "Excellent company to work for"

      Star Star Star Star Star
      • Work/Life Balance
      • Culture & Values
      • Career Opportunities
      • Comp & Benefits
      • Senior Management
      Current Employee - Advanced Researcher in Clinton, NJ
      Current Employee - Advanced Researcher in Clinton, NJ

      I have been working at ExxonMobil full-time (More than a year)

      Pros

      Excellent compensation & benefits. Challenging work environment. Excellent career growth opportunity. Work hours reasonably flexible.

      Cons

      Large corporate work culture can be seen as a little outdated, company attempting to improve.

      Advice to Management

      Continue to evolve work culture to attract new talent.

    2. "Manager"

      Star Star Star Star Star
      • Work/Life Balance
      • Culture & Values
      • Career Opportunities
      • Comp & Benefits
      • Senior Management
      Current Employee - Anonymous Employee in Houston, TX
      Current Employee - Anonymous Employee in Houston, TX
      Recommends
      Positive Outlook
      Approves of CEO

      I have been working at ExxonMobil full-time (More than 10 years)

      Pros

      Diverse, challenging assignments with significant responsibility and development opportunities

      Cons

      conservative, slower moving vs other industries

      3. Join the ExxonMobil team
      See Our Latest Jobs

    3. Helpful (6)

      "Excellent work, great place to learn, unhealthy culture, unsustainable work load"

      Star Star Star Star Star
      • Work/Life Balance
      • Culture & Values
      • Career Opportunities
      • Comp & Benefits
      • Senior Management
      Current Employee - Financial Services Professional in Houston, TX
      Current Employee - Financial Services Professional in Houston, TX
      Doesn't Recommend
      Negative Outlook
      Approves of CEO

      I have been working at ExxonMobil full-time (More than 3 years)

      Pros

      ExxonMobil is a storied American institution. Some of the brightest minds have walked through its doors. It has excellent institutional resources. The quality of work is unbelievable. Your job truly impacts the world. Oil and gas is one of the most dynamic and interesting industries. There is a lot of prestige that comes with working at ExxonMobil especially if you are in Houston. If you survive the next 5 years of retirements, you may be well situated for great positions (see below).

      Cons

      ExxonMobil is in a state of decay. It suffers from the demographic burden of having a mainly baby boomer workforce that is expensive, nonadaptive, political, and selfish. The organization is not currently staffed properly as half of its employees feel they should be managers and do not need to do work. As a young employee you will be asked to do all the work and have no authority to make a decision. You will report to 5 bosses. You must at all times be respectful and live in fear of those superiors because every year you are ranked without your input. Management sits in a room and ranks everyone. If you have done a good job managing personalities, you will do well. If you have been unable to stomach the intergenerational unfairness, you will do poorly. Your contribution to ExxonMobil's success will play a limited role due to the rankings political nature.

      Salaries have been frozen for everyone besides the top 20% during the downturn. People under 5 years experience have been leaving in droves and the problems highlighted above are worsening as a shrinking young productive base supports the entire organization.

      On top of it all, you risk getting nothing for this sacrifice. Exxonmobil's compensation if heavily deferred (7 year stock vesting periods and pension). The 5 largest us coal companies went bankrupt in the past 5 years. A similar transition away from oil will bankrupt the company and you will be left with nothing but resentment.

      Advice to Management

      Management has finally begun to listen to the young and try to make the culture more millenial friendly. However, the culture will never change while the middle managers retain so much influence. Resources need to be redistributed from old to young. Management should remove the limited salary program for people with under 10 years experience if they want to retain. Management must cut pay and power of middle managers such that the young can develop a sense of ownership and loyalty to the organization.

    4. Helpful (15)

      "Stay away from the finance function"

      Star Star Star Star Star
      • Work/Life Balance
      • Culture & Values
      • Career Opportunities
      • Comp & Benefits
      • Senior Management
      Former Employee - FINANCE STAFF in Spring, TX
      Former Employee - FINANCE STAFF in Spring, TX
      Neutral Outlook
      Disapproves of CEO

      I worked at ExxonMobil full-time (More than 10 years)

      Pros

      Benefits plan, median salary compared to other majors.
      You get to meet a lot of people.
      On a very rare job you might get to travel somewhere.

      Cons

      1. Extremely long hours. Pay on a unit basis is lower than the other majors. No job I have been in in years has allowed me to leave on time. No matter how long I have been there that day. This is not like what you see in the rest of the business or with the engineers.
      2. Volatile inconsistent management across the organization. Threatening to fire someone because they took their 8 month pregnant wife to the doctor is not a sign of good management.
      3. Old management styles, reluctance to look at or consider anything outside they have not come up with. From the top to the bottom in the management rung the story is the same, everyone is empowered but nothing is changing and everyone is waiting for someone else to act.
      4. No balance in financial jobs. Understaffed and they keep promoting managers who reduce headcount
      5. Little opportunity to work in other countries if you are US staff and not part of the golden boys. The recruiting slide will try to play this up but in reality you will be stuck most likely on the campus for your career.
      6. If you are on US staff and diverse they are only using you as a workhorse with not a lot of upward mobility.
      7. US executives are not very diverse. The ranks of the executives are not representative of the actual US workforce and these is no desire to change. All you have to do is pull the last 10 years of job rotations and promotions to see the organizational bias. The mentoring, promotional and ranking system are not designed to promote or value diversity. If you mention this to management the excuses start coming up and you become the problem.
      8. Little reward or recognition given to staff on a consistent basis. You will get rewarded and promoted if you do a mediocre job on your desk and talk up United Way faster than if you really make improvements to your actual job and base business.
      9. Little upward mobility for short service people as you basically have to be grey or near dead to be considered for promotion to executive in the US. The senior managers don't retire and the rest of staff are left on hold / do not get the managerial experience until these people leave.
      10. They will tell you you own your career at the finance career forums but at the end of the day what you want to do and where you want to go makes little difference. The secret job committee controls where you go next and if you do not fit the mound, the direction tends to be down......In all my jobs I have been put in the things I have said I do not want to do EVERY time.
      I could write more and give specific examples but it will not change anything.

      Advice to Management

      1. Listening at the Controller panel, making excuses and telling the new hires to email you if things do not change in 6 months will not change anything.
      2. You froze wages for staff telling them they were overpaid yet YOU got some really nice shares. The SEC has some good records....
      3. The system was designed to recognize and promote people who are exactly like you - no one else.
      4. You are not the only one who has a defined benefit retirement plan and there is no guarantee this company will not be like GM in the future. The pension accounting board has some nice records....
      5. If you do not want people treating your kids like this why are you allowing and promoting others who do?
      6. For every "good" story you can come up with we can come up with multiple rebuttals because we have seen real time how you actually work.
      7. Why are there so many for life expats in the US?

      If you do not see a problem with this then you will never get why the new hires are leaving.
      If you do not see the need to change then you are part of the problem.
      You and the people in the highest CLs need to leave. Else continue to milk the system - it worked for you.

    5. Helpful (1)

      "store clerk"

      Star Star Star Star Star
      • Work/Life Balance
      • Culture & Values
      • Career Opportunities
      • Comp & Benefits
      • Senior Management
      Former Employee - Store Clerk in Greenville, MS
      Former Employee - Store Clerk in Greenville, MS
      Recommends

      I worked at ExxonMobil full-time (Less than a year)

      Pros

      You get the hours needed because the job is demanding

      Cons

      stayed open all night and only one person at the store.

      Advice to Management

      pay more because the store stays open all night and the job is very demanding

    6. Helpful (1)

      "Manager Retired - now in retrospect"

      Star Star Star Star Star
      • Work/Life Balance
      • Culture & Values
      • Career Opportunities
      • Comp & Benefits
      • Senior Management
      Former Employee - Anonymous Employee in Houston, TX
      Former Employee - Anonymous Employee in Houston, TX
      Recommends
      Positive Outlook
      Approves of CEO

      Pros

      Great company with the smartest people, good processes, support if you use it right. Lots of varied opportunities. Good long term pay package.

      Can experience lots of different jobs, businesses, and locations without leaving the company.

      Cons

      Can be bureaucratic, very process oriented. Pay review system can serve to demotivate.

      Advice to Management

      Consider a less rigid performance evaluation system that does not demotivate and provides managers with more flexibility in raises and mobility of staff.

    7. "Fantastic"

      Star Star Star Star Star
      • Work/Life Balance
      • Culture & Values
      • Career Opportunities
      • Comp & Benefits
      • Senior Management
      Former Employee - Business Analyst in Houston, TX
      Former Employee - Business Analyst in Houston, TX
      Doesn't Recommend
      Negative Outlook
      Disapproves of CEO

      I worked at ExxonMobil part-time (More than 5 years)

      Pros

      A great corporation! loved it.

      Cons

      Pay could have been much higher

    8. "Oil and gas"

      Star Star Star Star Star
      • Work/Life Balance
      • Culture & Values
      • Career Opportunities
      • Comp & Benefits
      • Senior Management
      Former Employee - Process Technician in Baytown, TX
      Former Employee - Process Technician in Baytown, TX
      Recommends
      Negative Outlook
      Disapproves of CEO

      I worked at ExxonMobil (More than a year)

      Pros

      Variety of culture to work with.

      Cons

      Women have the end of the stick.

    9. Helpful (13)

      "Analyst and Technician"

      Star Star Star Star Star
      • Work/Life Balance
      • Culture & Values
      • Career Opportunities
      • Comp & Benefits
      • Senior Management
      Former Employee - Anonymous Employee in Spring, TX
      Former Employee - Anonymous Employee in Spring, TX
      Doesn't Recommend
      No opinion of CEO

      I worked at ExxonMobil full-time (More than 10 years)

      Pros

      Many of the employees are great to work with and the company does offer good salaries and benefits.

      Cons

      Horrible performance review system. You are ranked in groups. A few people are at the top, a few at the bottom and the majority in the middle. It usually amounts to a popularity contest, rather than based upon your actual performance. You end up being ranked by some supervisors who don't even know you and the jobs included in the ranking groups are often very different. This makes it very difficult to rank people correctly. I was in the top ranking group for most of my career but was transferred to a new group. In my first ranking session in the new group I fell down two ranking groups and was told that I was a poor performer. Instead of helping me to improve, they gave me more assignments so that I fell behind. No matter how hard I tried, they kept putting obstacles in my way. I was told that I could separate or be put on a two month performance improvement plan and that if I didn't improve during this time period, I would be terminated. I chose to retire early since I was planning to retire in a few years. For most of my 32 years of employment it was a good experience, but it shouldn't be so easy for a new group to drop someone two levels in the ranking. The new group that I was transferred to had employees who would sabotage and lie about other employees so that they would remain in their current ranking group. It was ironic, considering that the company wants employees to be team players and to have to have integrity. Yet, this ranking systems pits people against each other and employees who feel threatened often resort to sabotage so that they retain their ranking. Also, my group lead had 49% input into my ranking and was in the same ranking group that I was in.

      Advice to Management

      Don't ever allow an employee to drop more than one ranking level. Better yet, do away with this archaic ranking system. Also, a group lead should never be in the same ranking group as their subordinates.

    10. "Excellent Company to work for!"

      Star Star Star Star Star
      • Work/Life Balance
      • Culture & Values
      • Career Opportunities
      • Comp & Benefits
      • Senior Management
      Current Employee - Senior Engineer in Cypress, TX
      Current Employee - Senior Engineer in Cypress, TX
      Recommends
      Positive Outlook
      Approves of CEO

      I have been working at ExxonMobil full-time (More than a year)

      Pros

      Wonderful people and company culture. Feels as company really values its people. Strong sense of security during recent down turn

      Cons

      Pay is noticeable less than competitors, very antiquated performance evaluation process, struggles to value experienced hires, rigid dress code for men

      Advice to Management

      Current ranking process needs to go as it does not adequately recognize and promote top performers.

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