Garve
Most of the ill will towards oceaneering comes from former – and current- employees of what used to be their Aberdeen branch, which is now split between Aberdeen and dubai.
The attitude some of the office staff had towards offshore people was ridiculous. Mainly of the ‘your just trained monkeys – we can get 10 of you tommorrow by clicking our fingers’ variety. Which was probably true, but didn’t promote any kind of good attitude towards the company.
Their belief in the superiority of the their own ROVs – magnums and Milleniums- certainly didn’t help matters. Magnums were little better than big eyeballs, and somewhat less usefull. Milleniums are a bit better, but no where near on par with the best coming from other firms.
I’ve lost count of the number of times in the last couple of years that I’ve heard of other firms being drafted in to complete (in some cases, to entirely do) construction contracts Oceaneering have attempted to take on, only for the client to find they did’t have the equipment or the skills.
But I will hold my hand up to being a wee bit biased – I was fired by them a number of years ago for showing ‘a lack of respect to the company’ – something I thought was a company requirement.