When you're the hired help, you tend to bear the brunt of your employer's misfortunes. And yet Schlumberger, the biggest of Big Oil's service providers, seems in one way to be doing better than its clients:

On top of covering its dividend, Schlumberger had enough cash flow over the past four quarters to cover most of the cost of buying back $1.9 billion of its own stock -- more than even Exxon Mobil did during the same stretch.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/oils-future-see-schlumberger-132059068.html

Financially Sclum are smart, they have little regard for their people! They got rid of 34,000 people to keep them in profit, great if you are a shareholder, not so good if you are a former employee.

Not so great when they try and palm off Junior and Trainee Engineers as Senior Engineers who can't run their operations...

Everything Schlumberger do needs to watched very closely.... contracts need to be evaluated with a fine toothcomb.... they tend to always pull a few stunts.

Once all is in place, Schlumberger are generally be best performers - their reputation precedes them.