Pros
I worked at Lyondell in the Bob Patel era so I will comment about the culture at the time. Here are some of the positives- 1. Patel inspired confidence and really helped establish the vision, mission, and values at LYB. He was a very good orator and I loved attending his town halls. I felt like we all have a mission and that we were very well informed about the direction the company was going. 2. Safety culture is second to none here. No short cuts or you'll get terminated. This is both good and bad depending on the outlook. Good for obvious reasons but bad because if you or someone in your group had an incident in their unit (inadvertently), they would be put on a short leash and they will be shamed among their co-workers. 3. No lack of personal development. My supervisor volunteered me to attend a lot of practical training sessions. These have basically helped me secure my job. 4. Co-workers are smart, compassionate, and easy to work with. Friday lunches used to be a norm for us and I loved having caring co-workers around me because lets be real here--you spend 8-9 hrs of your day with co-workers. 5. Bonus was good, esp. post Gallogly debacle. Gallogly and Blavatnik had run this place into the ground. Ask the folks who have been around--Arco was one of the best employer back in the day.
Cons
Well, here are the reasons people leave- 1. Lack of recognition--this means, poor salary raise/yr; little-to-NO PROMOTION. If you are ambitions and work like a dog, this is not the place for you. When people got promoted, raise was meager at ~ 6-9%, which IMO is a joke. 2. Monotonous work. Of course they did not have a plan for people to move internally. People often quit as a result. This is very contrasting to BASF, etc that are also plagued with issues, however, they encourage internal movement (x-functional group transfers). Culture here is not established for people to move btwn different groups. 3. Paralysis by analysis--its good to have a strong safety culture but people loved harping about a drop of chemical and its potential to kill someone. It was a running joke, the length of our PHA sessions and the outcomes.
