Sperry Drilling Services Reviews

Cons

It sucks the cyclical behavior of oil and gas because as a young man in this industry it is hard. We need better job security.

Cons

Pay isn't the lowest, but isn't close to the top either. I would say its in the middle or middle-bottom. The Houston District is terrible to its field employees, I mean BAD. I had the unfortunate experience of having to work for that office for a couple weeks. Stay away from that district if you can. Other than conventional GWD/EM/Pulse setups, the 'high end' tools are of poor design and have too many failures. They are also ancient and a pain in the rear to assemble, diagnose and operate. They'll hire DDs who have never seen an oil rig, but are slow to promote MWDs to the same position. This practice varies by district.. They do face an issue - they train up guys like MWDs, don't promote them and then they end up either leaving or going DD with someone else. Happens a LOT.

Cons

If in the field, schedule is inconsistent at best, extremely long hours and mostly thankless work environment. There are good managers, but there are bad/seemingly incompetent ones as well. It will make your time in the field worse if you have the latter. I was lucky to have great people always in my corner, so its important for you to keep an eye out and learn how to do your job well (watch your own back) and recognize who your leaders are quickly.

Cons

The oil field is a difficult environment, which is not specific to working for Sperry. However, it sometimes seems that there is a lot that can be done to make it easier for the employee, but Sperry chooses not to, in order to be economic. A single field engineer is delegated a lot of responsibility which, while may be satisfying, gives a lot of headroom for human error. The tools used are outdated which makes running them a pain, they require lengthy preparation which is done on site, and because of how old they are, its not uncommon to get downtime for a failure. As with any corporation involved with oil and gas activity, world economics and politics have a direct effect on job security.

Cons

Promotion especially in SEA. you hardly get promotion even your job performance (PPR) show otherwise. I've been working with this company for 5 years now and the promotion rate is really slow and selective. The technology is outdated. Too much paperwork and technology notice. Acceptable on why Halliburton choose Baker Inteq over Sperry drilling.

Cons

Disparity in pay between directional drillers and MWD personnel leads to resentment, given that MWD hands are required to be college educated and DD's are not. DD's are effectively in charge of operations, but are typically less educated. Much of the work is "on call", so planning personal time is challenging.

Cons

Tons of pay cuts since the downturn. Shady business dealings, management will lie to your face about changes in pay and work practices. Have no loyalty to their employees, only for the bottom dollar. Will not let you move between PSLs easily. They do not encourage career growth.

Cons

When working the rigs, not knowing when exactly you might have off days versus work days in the future is frustrating. Especially if you have a family.

Cons

HIERAR-CRAZY: Sperry (software) has a fundamentally flawed management philosophy and is desperately trying to build a hierarchy of managers. Managers are chosen from a pool of friends and family to those that are higher up. Which means managers are people who know nothing about their "domains of expertise" other than what they pecked out of engineers who quit. "Merit" and "Egalitarianism" are cuss words not to spoken out loud. EXPLOITATIVE MANAGEMENT PRACTICES ARE A HALLMARK: Managers have to contribute nothing and granted unlimited powers to abuse. The standard protocol in my group was: the lowest rank of employees did all the work, including development and research, following which they were asked to train their manager and write reports which were for his leisure reading. The manager would then, WEEKLY, take all the data/figures out of the report, carefully strip out names of individuals who actually performed the work and present them to his superiors and peers in "team meetings" which we were asked not to attend. The justification provided, literally, for this was "we don't waste time in presentations with names". It was common for the managers to stamp their names to be on our invention disclosures. It was common for managers to stockpile reports from everywhere and pull them out in meetings misrepresenting the work as their own ("WE" did xyz) and without permission. In academia, you'd be fired for plagiarism. Here, its a survival skill for managers. Employees in the lower ranks, interns and coops were often ordered to train their managers on technology and were subsequently graded by the managers using a "PPR" process! At one point, an expensive consultant was hired for an entire year to train my manager. Of course, as a result, most people who contributed to the development of products have left - usually the young crowd in the lower ranks. Every year during summer a pool of interns and coops would come in from Univ of Houston. Every single year, full time job offers would be made and every single offer was rejected. LAID OFF FROM BOTH ENDS: From the top they are being "let go" by Halliburton as a result of the Baker Hughes acquisition and the fact that Sperry's technology is far inferior to Baker Hughes. From the bottom, a lot of employees have quit contributing to some of the highest attrition rates I've ever seen. What's left of course is a group of managers scrambling to take ownership of things that several generations of engineers have left behind. IMMIGRATION SABOTAGE: There is a very concreted effort at this group to do only as much as is necessary to keep you in the country while doing everything possible to seriously limit your opportunities. This is accomplished by delaying your Green Card as much as possible (until the 6th year on H1B) while making promises to do it earlier during a hire (one year after hire I was told). I spoke to others at the group and I was able to confirm that this wasn't an isolated incident- that this was a systematic and widespread practice. OTHER FUN FACTS: When my manager was asked why he hadn't done *any* work in YEARS, his response was verbatim - "you'll understand when you have kids". On another occasion it was "I've just been in so many meetings". A few weeks after I was hired, I was asked by my manager to forward every single email that comes into my mailbox to his. I was also asked to prepare daily reports for my work. When I protested, he said he'd do me a favor and make it weekly instead. Engineers, even senior ones work in noisy cubicle farms, while managers relax in their offices. Its like being in a fish market. Median employee age of 50. RECOMMENDATION: If you're an engineer, this should be your very last option; its a soul crushing environment. If you're applying to be a manager, this is great place to work, you'll have a very relaxed environment and can hire as many people as required to train your for your job. If you think any of this is exaggeration, you just have to get in touch with ex-employees to verify.

Cons

Too many levels of mid and upper management impeding action to stay fresh in an ever changing market. Front line employees are expendable and not recognized for jobs well done. Processes not followed through on, either at the shop, field or office level creating a lack of accountability and loss of customers frustrated with poor service delivery.