Buyer beware: this is a slow organization - Avis employé Operations Manager Shell

I worked in the Lubricants division and I have reason to believe the rest of the company is much faster and more competent, but what I saw in the lubricants division was truly sad. - A slow moving machine. I have never seen an organization as sluggish as this one. There is little motivation to change things and make them any faster or better. Some departments are full of people who have been in "Lubes" since they started working and they are just riding it out until retirement - Little sense of urgency: if you think General Motors was a bureaucracy, or that the DMV is a slow place, wait till you get to Shell Lubes. - IT systems that are not suited for modern working. The IT team is effectively useless. You are better off looking for solutions from friends than by calling the Helpdesk. Any suggestions for simple software upgrades are met with stiff resistance - Under-utilization of talent: there are some talented people stuck in dead-end jobs here, basically wasting away. The mega-talented ones find a way out. - Very little diversity at the top: mostly just the usual straight old white male cowboys. Imports (from Latin America) are almost invariably white South Americans. Other imports to the top of the organization are white Europeans. At the bottom, it's a good mix, so the organization can make good claims about diversity. If you're a US-minority, it's unlikely you will get close to the top here: that's what drove me away. - Overstaffing: it is not an exaggeration to say that a good 20% of the team is pure fat: they can be trimmed without an impact to the organization