[RichieRich]

Originally Posted by boogerz

Are you white, male, and well connected within the industry? If yes, of course your experience has been consistently great in O&G regardless of the company. I don't mean that in an antagonistic way, it's just the reality of the "old boys club" mentality that's still present in many parts of O&G.

My wife is a woman and a minority that still works at one of the majors, and her experience over the past six years sounds similar to OldDutch's wife with respect to unequal treatment (e.g. slightly lower pay than male peers for the same roles, getting treated differently while she's at site, mansplaining, unasked "chivalry", etc.). Not that she wouldn't necessarily encounter similar treatment at any other company, but there are a lot of dinosaurs in management for corporate functions that dictate the corporate culture and have an "old school" approach. Plus, the closer you get to site, the less progressive O&G gets.

As far as people and technology goes, O&G has been lagging other industries and still does...more-so since 2015 when the money for things that weren't value-added started getting cut. Some examples:

• Technology. It took a pandemic for Suncor to roll out new devices (e.g. Microsoft Surfaces) and new(er) enterprise collaboration software like Teams and OneDrive, as well as accelerate digital strategy development (e.g. enterprise cloud strategy). Some companies like CNRL still don't even have that. The City of Calgary, which is notoriously behind on technology best practices had rolled out Surfaces two years before the pandemic, Teams + OneDrive about a year before, and stood-up a cloud business office four years prior. There's also VDI and other remote work software options. A lot of O&G companies still don't have strong offerings for those even though a technology laggard like the City have had those in place for staff to use for years. It's no coincidence that the majors are all undergoing major technology transformations right now to catch-up on years of underfunded IT infrastructure.

• Flexible Working. Companies that skew to a younger demographic like ATB, Benevity, WestJet, etc. allow flexible work options to pick where you want to work, flex time for occasional life events (e.g. appointments), compressed work week options, etc. O&G still has good vacation policies, but the prevailing flexible work options at Suncor, CNRL, Whitecap, etc. are "butts in seats" between 9-5 every day of the week. It took a pandemic for them to consider allowing some WFH options.

• Fringe Perks. O&G used to be known for awesome benefits plans, corporate discounts/partnerships, paid education and professional development, etc. A lot of that has been pared back and is worse than other industries. I know for fact that CP and Shaw have more flexible and better benefits offerings than Suncor, CNRL, Cenovus, etc.

• Inclusion and Diversity. I don't know how to qualify this, but O&G still skews quite heavily towards certain stereotypes of people. Anecdotal, but my company's I&D team has been running diversity workshops and have outright said that the presence and tolerance of other races, creeds, sex, etc. isn't as good as it needs to be.

O&G has slowly become more progressive over the years, but it has not been keeping pace with the rest of the corporate world, even just within Calgary. For anyone that has stepped outside of O&G since 2015, there are an ever-increasing amount of reasons not to return.

I'm not trying be overly negative about O&G. Producer wages and bonuses are still good, and certain companies like Suncor are still objectively good employers. However, the industry as a whole is not progressive, particularly for people that want stability and/or aren't solely focused on getting big bonuses.

Good synopsis of experiences and pretty much align with my ~20+ years in O&G. As far as O&G has come, it still has a lot of improvement opportunities. I've worked for both smaller and larger organizations, and actually the larger organizations had too much talk, too many initiatives, and really not much action or true adherence. All bark, not enough bite. And I say this as a white male who has observed far far too much of Ye Ole Boys Club protectionism. (Note I say OBSERVED... I've definitely been victimized by it for standing up for others when it may not have been politically prudent... which explains a bit...).