Once upon a time
Random items from my past, present, and future.Sunday, May 13, 2007
My Jobs At Phillips Petroleum Company
I got hired by Phillips on Thursday, July 21, 1977 to start work on Monday, July 25. I interviewed with Gary Blancett and others. Gary offered me the job as I was leaving the interviews. I was very surprised, and I took the job immediately. My only other prospect at the time was a programming job at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater. It was not definite, but they were going to interview me.
I started work on July 25, sitting in the Adams Building. I was hired as a commercial programmer (primarily to do COBOL programs). The first thing Phillips did for new programmers was an eight to twelve week training program. Since the spring college graduates started in early May, they were mostly through training. There were just a few of us in different places in the schedule. Lowell Walters and I both started within a few days of each other and did all our training together.
Phillips is a company that keeps employees paid up-to-date. I got my first paycheck on July 29, to cover my first week of work. Phillips paid on the last workday before the 17th of the month (nominally the 16th) and the last workday of the month. Since July 30 & 31 were weekend days, I got my paycheck on Friday. This was great. Charolette and I left the kids with Mother and went out and bought me another suit. For the first 20+ years I worked for Phillips, I had to wear a coat and tie everyday to work. That was the main thing about my job I didn't like.
I finished the training program around the middle of September. I always did well at programming, so I did not have any problems with the training. I had been programming for the six previous years in Maryland, using FORTRAN. The training program at Phillips was run by Connie Benbrook at that time.
I was assigned to a programming unit (unit S4K) that maintained mostly accounting programs. I worked primarily on an account receivables system called AR2. My clients were in the Treasury Department and included Ron Hall and Charlie Driskell. Initially I had a supervisor named Rusty Elston who turned out to be a real jerk. His primary claim to fame was that he had married the daughter of a high manager in Exploration and Production. Rusty didn't like me and in December of 1977, he appointed a 23-year lady as the leader of the programming team I was on. Her name was Kathy Voss. She was nice enough, but she was a recent graduate of OU with limited experience. She spent most of her time getting ready for her upcoming wedding to a guy getting ready to graduate from dental school. A few years later, she got a job with Cities Service in Tulsa and left Phillips. Her husband was working in Tulsa. Anyway, I found my initial experience at Phillips to be less than good, and I was getting ready to prepare and send out my resumes when Rusty got an opportunity to take the job as the head of Information Technology for Phillips Uranium Company in Albuquerque. We were certain that his father-in-law got him the job. Phillips Uranium was shut down after a couple years. Rusty had gotten a divorce and left the company. Rusty left and Jerry Moore, my partner in the noon-time domino game at the Men's Club, became my supervisor. Jerry did away with the teams that Rusty had set up, and I reported to Jerry. Things were much better after that.
I continued maintaining AR2 which in addition to a lot of batch COBOL programs, had a major online system using an IBM product called CICS. Most of our customers entered their new data into the system using online mainframe terminals. In the spring of 1978, we moved into the IC Building (Information Center). I also got to be the lead programmer for a new system being developed, call the consolidated debt system or something similar. Ernie Berg, who I knew from Cordell Hall at OSU, was the project leader. I spent about nine months programming the system. It was somewhat simplistic, but the old method was primarily a paper and pencil system where payments and stuff were calculated manually. I guess I was doing a reasonably good job, because after one year with Phillips I was promoted to what was then called a grade 23 (August 1978). People fresh out of college were hired as grades 21. About half of the programmers I knew got as high as grade 24 and retired at that grade. In today's ConocoPhillips grading system, a grade 23 is now called a grade 13. Everything got renumbered after the merger. At the end of my second year (August 1979) I was promoted to grade 24 (now grade 14). In December 1979 I got the opportunity for a temporary assignment with the training group to train the 30 new college hires coming to work in January 1980. Connie Benbrook was over the training program, but Steve Huston ran the new hire part. Steve had been an computing professor at Emporia State College in Kansas, until Phillips hired him to do this. I worked on this assignment through March 1980. Just as the training was wrapping up, I got called in to speak to Bob Jones, Connie's manager. Bob asked me to take over the whole training department for commercial programming plus maintenance of several programming systems called Internal Systems (Connie's job). Connie was getting a new job. I took over the Training and Internal Systems unit which included a promotion to grade 25 effective May 1, 1980, only nine months after my last promotion.
H.J. Reed was assigned to Internal Systems. I also used him to do training. There were around 10 people altogether in the unit. We trained 30 more new college hires starting in May. I spent a lot of my time involved with the programmers and customers of the Internal Systems part of the unit. One system was the PMC (Project Management and Control) system which was the system where all programmers and analysts in commercial systems reporting their time each week. No one liked it, but time had to be tracked so customers could be billed. I seemed to do reasonably well. In May 1981, Phillips gave good raises under a short-lived program called Premier Employer. I got a 25% raise, which was exceptionally good.
I did this until about July 1981, when I was put in charge of the technical support staff who supported commercial programmers. I was also responsible for college recruiting of commercial programmers. Dave Walton was one of the people involved in technical support. So were Bob Rowe, Tina Gordon, Lee Unterreiner, and H.J. Reed (who came with me to this job). I had to lead an intensive one-week effort at the Shangr-La Resort on Grand Lake to write a lead programmer manual in August. My boss, Gary Blancett, seemed to be happy with what we did. By December 1981 I had finished writing up the job description for this job and it had been evaluated by HR and I was promoted to grade 26, with another raise. This turned out to be my last promotion until 1996. By 1985, Phillips began a series of lay-offs that eliminated two-thirds of the work force in Bartlesville over the next 12 years. Getting promotions was a little tough because there were so many surplus high-grade people around. I was reasonably satisfied to just have a job without a cut in pay. Some people I know got cuts in pay.
In March of 1982 there was the first of many reorganizations I experienced. H.J. and I were temporarily assigned to special duties. H.J. reported to me and I reported to Bob Jones. During this time, I accomplished what I consider one of the best things I ever got done for Phillips. I finally succeeded in convincing I.T. management that every programmer needed his own terminal on his own desk. Up until now, the terminals were in pools in common areas, and a programmer had to leave his desk and go there to use a terminal. H.J. and I made the case for individual terminals. We got management to sign off. We immediately led a project to acquire the terminals and get them installed on everyone's desk.
Around October 1982 I was made a Section Supervisor with four programming units reporting to me. Each unit had a supervisor and 3 to 10 programmers. About 35 people worked for me, including Ron Maxwell, Avis Snyder, Ron Denton, Priscilla Denton, and of course, H.J. Reed. I reported to Bob Jones. Around early 1985, Bob Jones was transferred to Data Processing Operations and Bob Benson replaced him.
In September 1985 I was transferred to Data Processing Operations work for Bob Jones. I led a project to develop a system to track online datasets which were growing by leaps and bounds and always overflowing the amount of disk storage which Phillips had. Disk Storage (usually called DASD for Direct Access Storage Device) was getting popular and replacing tape storage because a job needing data didn't have to wait while an operator retrieved and mounted the tape with the data. However, DASD was extremely expensive back then. Anyway, I led a project with three programmers (Kathy Brown, Teri Hughes, and Terry Earnheart) to develop the system. We finished it in June 1986. I believe that system was used until the early 2000's.
In the summer of 1986 I was put in charge of customer communications for all of Data Processing Operations, working for R.E. Crow. Two things came out of this. I produced, for two years, the annual booklet summarizing services and contacts for Operations, and I developed the slide show and tour of the entire computing center, to include the up-to-now super-secret basement of the IC building. We gave this tour about 100 times in the next year to over 1,200 Phillips employees. We were trying to improve the internal corporate image of Data Processing Operations.
In January 1988 I was appointed the dayshift supervisor for Operations. This included the tape library, the mainframe printer operations, production control (who ran thousands of batch jobs every night), and miscellaneous support operations. I had about 30 people reporting to me plus I had responsibility to coordinate with the other two shifts and to take the lead in setting policies and procedures for all three shifts. I was working for Bob Jones again. I did this job for almost three full years, the longest job I ever had for Phillips. The last year I worked for Max Moser as Bob Jones had been assigned to another job. One of the major accomplishments during this job was moving the tape library (over 100,000 tapes) and the tape drives and supporting equipment from the 2nd floor to the 3rd floor without stopping operations. This happened just after Gene Batchelder became Bob Jones boss while Bob while still my boss.
In September 1990, I was unexpectedly and, on short notice, moved to take over PC and terminal support, once again working for Bob Jones. This group support the thousands of leased mainframe terminals in Bartlesville and the hundreds of PCs in Bartlesville. We did hardware support. I had this job for about one year. Then in the fall of 1991, I was moved to take over the support for the wide area network. Nate Rider worked for me here. Shortly after I got this job, Phillips went through one of its most painful layoffs, which was called AVA (Activity Value Analysis). We had to document everything we did and why we did it. Other people evaluated whether it was needed or not. Five percent of the staff was laid off at the start of AVA and then another 10 to 15 percent were laid off when it was done. It was brutal. I spent two months documenting everything done in computer operations so that IBM could make a bid on outsourcing the whole thing. This was an especially scary time to be working in Operations when it looked like everything might be outsourced. Anyway, the bid IBM made, based on my document, turned out to be much more expensive than what it cost to run Operations, so we didn't do the outsourcing.
I spent a year or so in charge of the wide area network, which was the job I knew the least about of all the jobs I had at Phillips. I did manage to double the number of Cisco routers in the network while I was there because I was successful in getting a large capital budget and getting it spent before they froze spending again.
In the spring of 1993 I was put in charge of the Voice Unit, which handled telephones company wide in the United States. This is when I started travelling a lot. I made at least one business trip a month (and sometimes more) starting now for about the next 10 years. Warren King and Charlie Johnson worked for me. I got our group moved to the building on the corner of Frank Phillips and Park Avenue, next to Saddoris Textiles. That building is now owned by and occupied by Saddoris. At the time, the radio group under Bob Lummis was in half of the building. Gary Gompf worked for Bob. My group occupied the other half of the building. This was the only time in my career that I was not seated in one of the main downtown buildings.
In the spring of 1994 I was put in charge of the Help Desk and Command Center. The Help Desk was the main help desk for the United States. The Command Center kept the main computers up and running and monitored the worldwide network. The Command Center was staffed 24/7. I had six people to do that with. Working with Kay Sallee, I put together a proposal to increase the responsibilities of the help desk to actually solve more of the problems instead of just taking the customer calls and assigning the problems to other groups. The proposal was implemented after I moved on, and the help desk to this day is very robust.
In March of 1996, I was promoted again and became the Director of Data Processing Acquisitions (the head procurement guy for computer-related things). I moved to the Plaza Office Building. I was made a grade 31. (In the new ConocoPhillips grade scale, many of the Phillips grade 31's became grade 17's. A few of us, including me, were lucky enough to be made grade 18's, which received much larger bonuses than the grade 17's.) I had five procurement professionals working for me plus a support staff of four. We negotiated every major I.T. contract for Phillips. I personally did the negotiations for the SAP contract which at that time was the largest I.T. contract ever.
After two years running IT procurement, in 1998, I did a tour on a special procurement team renegotiating the worldwide corporate contract for PC procurement, valued at tens of millions of dollars back then. I also wound up working part-time on the Year 2000 project. By the end of 1998, Phillips was undergoing another layoff. I ended up full-time on the Year 2000 project. In mid-1999, I was again put in charge of Data Processing Acquisitions while retaining the lead of two of the five major subprojects of the Year 2000 project. Gene Batchelder had arrived as the new CIO and vice president of services, which included information technology services. One month before the end of 1999, while still retaining the lead of two of the Year 2000 subprojects, I was put in charge of Corporate Documents and Records Management. I got about 10 days notice of this change because it was going to happen while I was gone to Big Bend National Park on vacation. My job change was announced while I was gone. I was working for Marshall McGraw. My new people didn't get to meet me and talk to me for several days since I was out of town.
Fortunately the Year 2000 project wrapped up about 15 days into the year 2000. Our project had been very successful. One thing I did was run the Year 2000 Command Center for 24 hours while the year change went around the globe. I was also in charge of making sure contingency plans had been developed at every Phillips installation around the world. I was also in charge of making sure all Phillips organizations had contacted any third parties that were critical to their business to verify that the third parties were properly preparing for the Year 2000. We had to document that the contacts had taken place. All of this was a far cry from what I envisioned as a career when I got my math degree.
I spent two years in charge of Documents and Records Management. I had an office in the corner of the 11th floor of the Phillips Building. I had now worked in every major downtown building. I had a warehouse with over 100,000 boxes of stored records, not to mention a forklift and a big truck to move boxes with. I had an area with 20 contract employees that converted documents from paper to microfiche. I had an area with five Phillips employees and 15 contract employees that converted documents from paper to online documents. I had an area with five Phillips employees that produced all the many hundreds of boxes of copies of documents that we had to produce for lawsuits. I was over the library for the research center. I also had the staff that defined the policies for corporate records management. Counting contractors, about 60 people worked for me, including five supervisors who handled most of the day-to-day stuff. The first thing I had to do was to meet with Gene Batchelder and tell him that my area was going to go $500,000 over budget because my predecessor and my boss had made some bad assumptions about what could be done during the year. It was a scary start, but everything came out well.
In November 2001 I suddenly found myself back in computing. I was responsible for coordinating network projects around the world. I moved back to the Information Center. I spent a lot of time on the phone talking to people all over the world. I ended up going to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait City, Kuwait in January 2002. I really didn't like this job.
In May 2002, the proposed merger between Conoco and Phillips was gearing up. I was assigned to work for Brit Parker in the Program Management Office. The PMO would run all Information Technology projects required for the merger (about $200,000,000 worth). My job was to help coordinate the people available for the projects and to provide office space, office equipment, and housing for everyone temporarily located in Bartlesville. At first we were in the Plaza Office Building and then we moved to the Adams Building. I started my career in the Adams Building and I ended it in the Adams Building. At one point I had over 125 apartments being rented and was responsible for about 15% of the office space in downtown Bartlesville. Connie Lawrence worked for me. Some of the transient project people were also assigned to me, including Connie Benbrook and Marvin Neuschafer.
I had told my boss that I was very interested in taking advantage of the layoff plan in effect during the merger. In early June 2003, he was able to let me take advantage of it. I quit working about the 10th of June although I was on the payroll through August 2nd.
I will probably write more detail about some of my jobs. This was just a summary of the various ones I had in 26 years working for Phillips
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