-ZERO work-life balance
-avg of 90 hrs/week (I'm not kidding)
-driving with no sleep
-upper management is crap
...I worked on average 90 hours per week for a salary of 74,000. The downturn definitely had a hand in this but the reality was, as an engineer, I could find many other jobs that paid me 75,000 USD base plus annual bonuses which only required me to work 40 hours a week - allowing me to maintain a better work-life balance. This is why I quit.
When you are young and this is your first job out of college, a combination of naivety and drive pushes you want to earn respect and praise from your manager/higher ups. This requires you to work hard, not complain/whine, and do jobs. There were many times where I found myself working so much, as a result of poor field management, and driving to/from locations with 24+ hours of no sleep. My wheels were off the pavement or swerving onto the opposing lane. There comes a point where you ask yourself, wow WTF am I doing this for? And you value your life more than a paycheck. You work a 3:1 rotational schedule of either 15 days on/5 off, 12 days on/4 off. Recently they changed it back to a 2:1 giving you 14 on/7off or 10 on/5 off which if a huge step but still not enough to keep me around. I already had a sour taste in my mouth from my experiences there. Working anything in the range of 10-15 days is extremely rough at a 90 hour/week schedule. MIND YOU, THIS WAS MY EXPERIENCE WORKING IN US LAND.
International employees (hired in the US, work abroad) you make so much bank. I'm not joking, some jobs were absolutely ridiculous. People making upwards of 175-250k @ 17% flat tax for internationals. Do the math - that's a ton of money. Do that for 3, 4, maybe 5 years and you are setting yourself up for some solid financial security. But during the downturn, Schlumberger put a freeze on employee transfers to international locations. Now, they've apparently opened that back up, but I'll tell you this...those employees work for months! You can work 6 months straight doing that 28 days on/4 days off (sometimes you don't get your days off). So there is a big catch there.
All in all I think there are many other companies that actually offered a life as well as a career, doing much cooler things. Space exploration, software, solar, etc. where I feel I'd work a more rewarding job and be able to enjoy my young years with my friends, going on memorable weekend trips, travel, vacations, company events and be located in cities and not some small town far away from anywhere.
It was only until I quit with my resignation letter that the heavens decided to come down to Earth and present my bosses with "we'll change! We promise!"....HA! such a joke and anyone is naive to believe that the change would actually be fulfilled
