Pros
Pretty good pay right out of college, there are a lot of opportunities for advancement in most parts of the company. Engineers are treated much better than other employees, and the company really is committed to having quality engineers in every job. Whether that is achievable is another issue. The company wants you to learn to do your job better, then move you into a new place where you can try something new. It is pretty hard to get bored as and Engineer. Two years in a job at one place and then a transfer is the expected schedule, with some variations based on the market at the time. Academic performance is not at all correlated with job performance, in my experience. Your work will only be tangentially related to what you studied in undergrad. This is a hands-on job where reasonable assumptions are used to make reasonable estimations, things are never done by a set formula. Lots of times the calculations take a back-seat to getting a diesel engine running properly, diagnosing an electrical problem, or fixing a hydraulic malfunction. While staying with the company can lead to a long and successful career, it is also a great training program for the rest of the industry. Getting a job after a successful 3-5 year stint at Schlumberger is easy.
Cons
There are long hours and early mornings regularly. Days off are iffy - depending on where you are and what the market is like you may not get any. Fifty hour stretches of non-stop work are not unheard of, and one hundred hour weeks can be expected. If you have researched working at Schlumberger even a little bit, you know that it is not a 9-5 job. Take that statement to heart. But there is a certain pride that comes from working the hours that are required, but this can be easily overlooked in the moment of exhaustion. The company is gigantic, and there are rules and checklists for every single step in a job. The job of Field Engineer means ensuring that these policies are fully followed. It can be a huge amount of work in a busy district that is short on people (most all of them). The US oilfield is significantly different than the rest of the world, but the company operates roughly the same everywhere. This has its benefits, but largely makes working in the US more cumbersome as the staffing levels in the US are much lower than everywhere else. An engineer fills in the gaps - sometimes working as a hand, a mechanic, an accountant, and a manager all in one day. If you are not mechanically minded, a job in the field will probably be largely baffling. Every job uses extremely complicated tools and machinery, and understanding the operation of all of it is necessary.
