Good company if you work with the right leadership team
Pros
- Flexible environment and culture, promoting new ideas like startup company, which is rarely seen in a corporate of such large scale - Great benefits, probably among the best in the industry - Training, rotation program, and clear career development - Competitive salary
Cons
Too political, especially those who are expats from China and India. We used to have a technology center that was innovative and productive. Since the leadership replacement with those from China and India, lots of capable engineers were let go. Those who were favored stayed, among which many were incompetent to do the job. Favored projects/people kept missing deliveries, yet they were promoted and highlighted in quarterly reports. The new director from China did not do a single thing to improve the technical quality of the center. During her 2 years at the center, all she did was coming up with social events at the center, forcing employee to fill out all the unnecessary surveys to meet her target, fabricating reports to show promising results while projects were missing deadlines, and manipulating managers to grade employees the way she wanted. Similar stories were told about other departments. Bottom line is if you are lucky to work under a good leadership team, SLB is a great company to work for. Otherwise, it can be frustrating. These kinds of problems happen in every big company, but it's worse at SLB due to it's too liberal policy on using expats in leadership for centers in the USA.
