Whatever happened to the "Human Energy" we actually meant?

ka · 2026-04-24T18:00:07.224Z

I walked past the old framed photos in the hallway today—the ones from back when the Permian projects felt like a partnership rather than a spreadsheet exercise. Back then, if you had a problem, you walked into an office. You didn't wait for a town hall where the script is sanitized so heavily that the meaning dies on the way to the mic. Now, it’s all "synergies" and "streamlining." We’re being reorganized into these hyper-specialized silos, and honestly? We’ve stopped talking to each other. The institutional knowledge is leaking out of the building because nobody feels like their expertise is part of the story anymore. We’re just inputs in a global dashboard. I miss the days when we felt like a company of engineers and roughnecks instead of a company of consultants. The core values on the wall feel like a punchline now. We used to build things that lasted for decades. Now, we just build quarterly projections. Does anyone else feel like we’re just turning out the lights?

Whatever happened to the "Human Energy" we actually meant? | Chevron Discussions