Viridien Reviews

The career development structure in this company is terrible. Your technical skills and knowledge won't bring you anywhere unless you play the game of politics. You will see lots of mid-upper level managers in CGG that has no technical skill-set or character to be a manager. Most of them are in those positions because of their good-old-buddy network. This drives the smart people away from the company. There are lay-offs due to current oil and gas market, which is understandable. However, I think CGG is not handling the situation right. Instead of doing one mass layoff and be done with it, they distribute it to the days and weeks. This creates an extremely scare-driven and depressing work environment. Everybody gets nervous when they see HR walking the floors, and people lose their focus on their work. Very poor upper management. They blame the low oil and gas prices, but they keep forgetting the terrible financial decisions that they made in the past. Check the financial results, and the stock prices, you will see...

The most important competencies are not hard work, technical knowledge or dedication to giving client a good service. Instead, the real measure of your worth in the eyes of the inexperienced and clueless management team is how much you are prepared to tell them how great they are (e.g. lube up those scalps and don a gas mask because you are about to go dark). Yes, brown nosing is 100% the only "skill" required to appease the minimalistic brains of the under-qualified and dimwitted managers. It was no surprise in the recent redundancy round that all the seasoned veterans of the "brown nose game" easily survived and also the ones married to other staff members faired very well, be it most of them are also at least brown belts in the most important aformentioned "skill". If you are a hard worker and highly technically skilled you will not get any credit or recognition if you do not dance when Premier Page says or get under the desk when instructed. The cloud of unethical practice and injustice has poisoned this once great workplace and company reputation. Basically, if you are interested in putting endless hours into projects and building a good relationship with clients, only for your efforts not to be acknowledged and then for an underqualified superior to reap the rewards of your efforts, then this company is for you.