John Lindsay0:02
It's a very cyclical industry. It requires a lot of hard work, but you want to live life. You will live life to the fullest. I think it's important that people have the opportunity and have the time to do that, because life is too short, right.
I'm John Lindsay, President and CEO for Helmerich & Payne. Of course, living in Tulsa, growing up in Tulsa, you're obviously exposed to the oil and gas business. I graduated with a degree in computer science, and what I realized real quickly is that wasn't what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. And so I decided to go back to school, go to the University of Tulsa. I got a degree in petroleum engineering. 1986, the year I graduated, the rig count was in the 600 to 800 range during the course of the year. That was down from like 4,200 in 1981. I think at the beginning of '87, when I started with the company, oil was trading at 18. I think I had 100 graduates that I graduated with from TU. I think six or seven of us got jobs. You know, I didn't obviously know all the details about the company then like I do now, but what I did know is they had a great reputation.
As a new employee coming in as an engineer, you know, the first thing you do is you go out as a roughneck. So to say that I didn't have some apprehension, I'd never worked on a rig. I had several blue collar type jobs, you know, but nothing like roughnecking. And so it's very hard to prepare yourself for that, you know. So I started off as a floor hand and worked my way up to various positions, ultimately ended up being a driller. And I think it's really the most valuable time that I could have spent early in my career. And I think you build relationships along the way that you actually end up relying on later in your career. My first driller, Vic Garcia, it was somebody that I could always pick up the phone and say, 'Hey Vic, what do you think about this? What do you think about that?' Because you develop those close relationships. What you find out very early is that you have people, even if they're not your official mentor, they're looking out for you, right. But I hear from a lot of other people that when they come to H&P, this is different than other companies that I've worked at.
As I think back, this was Mr. Helmerich's office, so Hans' father, Walt Helmerich III. And it was the last meeting I ever had with him. And I came in to talk with him thinking I was going to talk about business, and we spent 30 minutes talking about family and the importance of family. And I tell our folks all the time, we literally spend more time at H&P with our co-workers than we do with our families. But you really need to get to the point where it feels more like a family atmosphere, because you don't want to go someplace every day and it be a grudge, you know, just drudgery day in and day out. That's where teamwork comes into play, right. I think one of the things is, as you think about the decisions that we're making and the things that we're doing, we're doing it in support of the strategy as we move forward. It's not about individualism, you know. It's not about what's best for John. It's what's best for the overall team. And I think, you know, that's the kind of environment that I want to work in.
