Pros
There are some incredibly smart people working at Wood Mac. Although there has been a mass exodus of senior level subject matter experts over the last few years (most having left for competitors or launched their own spin-off), there are still some very impressive, well respected analysts on the research team. If you’re looking to break into the energy industry and want to learn from really smart people, Wood Mac is almost like a paid graduate program. Access to tons of market and asset data, reports and experts that will help you learn any energy market or company in great detail, if you show sincere interest. The brand still commands a decent name in the industry but that has eroded in a big way over the last five years. Wood Mac is NOT a place you’ll want to stay for your career but admittedly it’s a GREAT place to learn. If you’re on the research side, it’s an awesome stepping stone and people tend to land really solid next jobs after their time at Wood Mac. If you’re on the business side (sales, marketing, ops.) prepare for a world of misery and map out your next move before you even start. Underneath the abysmal, completely dysfunctional, and revolving door of a leadership group, you’ll find some truly amazing (albeit incredibly frustrated) individuals that manage to get things done with virtually no support from their superiors. You will form strong bonds with your colleagues simply by surviving the moronic decisions the leadership makes. 95% chance your direct colleagues and co-workers are great people, 99% chance your boss will have no idea what’s going on and will be a source of daily frustration. Benefits: 5 weeks vacation and a culture that’s weirdly obsessive about cashing in ALL of those vacation days. Work-life-balance - definitely depends on what group you’re in but the standard of excellence is so low on the business side that most smart people can get their core responsibilities done quickly and focus on family life. Pay - reasonably competitive if you negotiate a good starting salary. If you don’t, expect to be stuck at your rate for the rest of your time at Wood Mac. Performance reviews are a farce and even in your best year don’t expect anything above a 2% raise. Internal promotions are rare and pay raises for those almost never exceed 9% and regardless of the expansion in responsibilities or the true market rate for the role. 401K match - slightly above average, employee stock purchasing plan is ok too. Health care - okay but benefits continue to get stripped year after year.
Cons
Toxic corporate culture seems like an understatement. It’s flat out depressing to watch highly motivated, smart, and loyal Wood Mac’ers have their spirit broken by management and realize the only option left for them to feel happy and advance their career is to leave. Strategic decisions about products, major internal processes, and people are all made from the top and executed without question. Senior Leaders have seen so many of their former colleagues mysteriously “move on for other opportunities”… for constructively disagreeing with decisions. The company has developed a culture of silence and a system of reward for those willing to put office politics ahead of the right thing to do. An old Glassdoor review makes reference to a “Game of Thrones” leadership circle and it’s hilariously accurate - kudos to that anonymous contributor. Short-sighted strategic decision making and the preservation of EBITDA margin above all else has set the company up for a very difficult path to growth. People are afraid to challenge convention or make decisions that could actually propel the next phase of growth. Spin-offs and competitors are quickly dismissed by leadership but they’ve grown tremendously and are well placed to build off Wood Mac’s eroding market perception. My last comment on the “cons” is the overall drop in the standard of excellence. As an employee-owned business, and even in the early days of corporate ownership, Wood Mac was well run. A huge contributor to that was the fact that senior and mid-level leadership demonstrated good corporate behaviors which trickled down to their teams. Unfortunately, most of those people have left. The erosion of professionalism is staggering and it will make you feel like you’re taking crazy pills. Leaders, particularly in the sales org., inundate subordinates calendars with meetings with no clear agenda or objective. They don’t understand how to use business systems or take the time to understand the outputs for fear of looking bad. Decisions are made before a problem is fully understood, cross-functional collaboration isn’t encouraged, and ironically for an analytics company, the use of data for decision-making seems to be a relic of the past. What makes surviving employment at Wood Mac even more difficult is watching management openly lie and pretend nothing is wrong on Quarterly Town Halls. The lack of awareness or emotional IQ is dizzying. With respect to the client interactions, they’ve become transactional. Clients used to look to Wood Mac as a thought partner and now simply see them as a data provider. Wood Mac still has a foothold in certain markets that’s going to be tough for competitors to displace but any new service is quickly dismissed by prospective clients after they’ve all experienced years of failed product launches. This market perception certainly does not bode well for a company looking to make the biggest product pivot in their history.
