After-Thoughts

Every year thousands of engineers, managers and scientists receive their degrees, some from the best universities in the world, many others from not so good universities in developing countries like Brazil. Most of these young men and women leave the university full of plans and ambitions and with a dream in their hearts: the dream to give some real contribution to society as a whole, the dream to represent their country and take the name of their family to far away lands, the dream of doing something that has never been thought of... Thank God for having allowed me to be one of those lucky fellows... It would have been impossible for someone to have done so much and not feel the benefits in all aspects for the rest of his life. What a great gift for a person to receive...in a few years I've had more adventure than most people have in a lifetime.

My success story didn't happen by chance. I left Brazil at a very young age, without money, without a contract, without a sponsor and worst, without speaking English fluently. I had decided to repeat the same path as my father and my grandmother on my mother's side. They had both lost their parents at the age of 12, having to struggle to survive with the courage inherited from our forefathers, Christian villagers who fought in 1866 the Battle of Benachi in Lebanon and defeated the Turkish invaders, even outnumbered in 1 to 6. I had always been an extremely high-energy and self-motivated person with exceptional problem-solving, communication, leadership and interpersonal skills, so I asked myself: why not seek challenges around the globe?

In many ways, Field Engineer was the most satisfying job I ever had with Schlumberger. Actually it still is one of the most interesting and diversified available to an engineer today. Performing the operations, regardless of conditions, required a rare combination of technical and managerial skills. It offered a chance to make original contributions to science, with career advancement commensurate with my own ability. The customer would commit to investing in a particular oil field or not, on what I told him. It was all my responsibility. I don't remember any two days that were quite alike... Getting to work was a challenge in itself: taking a small barge that would have enough space to carry only our laboratory truck worth millions of dollars, driving through sandstorms in the desert, taking helicopters to land on offshore platforms located only a couple of miles from air-missile targets in a devastating war, getting stuck in the middle of nowhere during a snow storm.

One of my colleagues had a MBA from Harvard and would always say that our company was the best management school in the world. I also recall my GFE Screen Test, under which Senior Engineers are scrutinized by specialists who travel from Paris to evaluate the engineers' skills and knowledge. I was tested for seven straight days, 8 hours a day, on every electronic circuit of every piece of electronic sonde (dozens of them) that existed in the company. I was always trying to compete against myself. I had operated my last two years in the field with zero lost time, in spite of the fact that our goal for excellence was a maximum of two hours of lost time per month.

I got used to working 110 hours per week very enthusiastically and having fun. I always expected the unexpected. Working in the desert for periods of four months without a break, I would never feel intellectually isolated from civilization, as my colleagues were graduates from Cambridge, Oxford, MIT, Harvard and other top universities. Skills in man management and inter-personal communication were a must. As a team leader, I had to recruit, train and supervise crews of local technicians whose language I did not speak. These responsibilities required initiative, leadership, patience and diplomacy. It was extremely stimulating being surrounded by exceptional thinkers and have access to technologies that most people only read about.

I had to travel a great deal, being responsible for very expensive technical projects and occasionally working to the very limits of my ability and endurance, at high efficiency and accurately for periods which often exceeded 48 hours at a stretch. At times it was really tough but afterwards you had a sense of self-respect, a great sense of achievement... Living abroad is very different from visiting as a tourist. Learning to adapt your own lifestyle to live and work alongside people with a different culture is an exciting part of living in another country. When you live in a hostile environment that demands the spirit of an explorer, you have a vision of the world and of your own life, which is beyond the one the majority of the people have...

The Company

Schlumberger is the world leader in oilfield wireline operations and is committed to creating, designing, building and deploying the most technologically advanced oilfield equipment and solutions available anywhere in the world. With Headquarters in Paris, New York and Tokyo, Schlumberger spends each year over 3 billion US dollars doing just that, which is more than all their major competitors combined. Being a research orientated company devoted to the production of the finest instrumentation, its Research Centers are located in Ridgefield (Connecticut), Cambridge (England) and Montrouge (France) employing over 200 PhDs. Production Centers and factories are located in Houston, Austin, Clamart (France) and Tokyo. These centers manufacture the tools that must be able to function perfectly at depths of 30,000 ft, to resist temperatures of up to 500º F and to withstand pressures of 25,000 psi. They must perform in boreholes which can be 3.6 inches in diameter at 20,000 ft under the ground.

The Schlumberger brothers made the world's first electrical recording of subsurface conditions within the borehole of an oil well in 1927. Today, more than 74 years later, the company provides a complete range of specialist and on-site services wherever oil and natural gas are sought or extracted. These wireline logging services have become as vital to the exploration and production of oil and gas as the x-ray is to the practice of medicine. Wireline logging provides reliable information on subsurface structures, needed to locate oil or gas bearing zones, to determine depth, thickness and quantity of oil or gas in place and porosity. To get this subsurface data many forms of energy are used: electricity, sound and natural or induced radiation are the most frequent.

Schlumberger recruits 1% of all graduates in electronics engineering and applied physics in the U.S. from 33 top American universities. Every Schlumberger line manager and director began their careers as Field Engineers. Whilst today's Schlumberger Field Engineer is a specialist of high intellectual caliber, he must possess the qualities of drive, initiative and will to succeed against all the odds which are a part of the Schlumberger tradition.

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