Pros
- Good, knowledgeable and helpful coworkers - Good base salary - Relaxed working environment (before the layoffs started)
Kontras
Before the 2015 Oil and Gas downturn, PHX was a company with big ambitions and lofty goals. Recruiting was at an all time high in all departments, resources were being put in place to develop new technologies, and there was permanent marketing from leadership on how the company was going to evolve from a third tier player to something they creatively called a "1.5 tier" service company. Record revenues and profit margins only underpinned management’s future growth “strategy” and fed their egos. Misled by the siren calls of a long term and promising career at PHX, I turned down other offers and joined them to help the company fulfill its potential in an office position. But weaknesses in the leadership’s plans, and especially in its execution, were evident early on, even during the good times. Rivalries between groups, struggles between the old and new guards, and lack of clear communication and transparency were present. They were simply being masked by positive cash flow and the ensuing optimism. With the downturn, the ugly face of lack of long term strategy and vision, mediocre planning, poor execution, incompetent and dishonest leadership, and politics is showing up. Layoffs are rampant, fear and mistrust is palpable at all levels, and talk of a bright future is all gone. Leadership has clearly fallen into the short-term trap of trying to save face with the company’s shareholders at the expense of long term strength. I have to rescue the excellent, knowledgeable and hard working, present and past, coworkers and colleagues that made working at PHX a mostly enjoyable experience. I know that once they’re gone from the company, and they will be because they aren’t valued there, PHX would have lost hope to crystallize their ill-conceived strategy. Should PHX stay in the present course, they will remain a mid-size company with a small-sized company mentality and big company ambitions. They will become a contender that talks big but seldom delivers. It’s already a top heavy company that has cut the fat and muscles off and now it’s cutting its bones. That’s not a company a long term investor or a career conscious employee wants to be in. The true strength of companies in O&G lays not on how much they brag in the good times, but how they keep their vision during the bad ones. This is especially true considering the cyclical nature of the industry. If you’re looking forward to work for PHX, be warned. Competence, knowledge, hard work and even results don’t matter if you are not extremely deft at politics and relationship building. That’s especially true if you have any hope of advancement and career building with the company in the current downturn. And this is coming from someone that had survived other career battles and quite a bit of politics before being burnt at PHX.