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Getting out of Shell

August 18, 2023 09:44 +0000  |  Climate Change Employment Environment Shell 3

That's it, I'm out. It took me longer to find the exit than I would have liked, but such is life. I'm actually sad to be leaving some of the people there, but I'm afraid I'll be wrestling with the moral quandary that is my contribution to Shell's bottom line for the rest of my life.

When I started working at Limejump, I honestly believed that I was doing the Right thing: using Shell's oil money to build a green future. I know now how naïve that was.

Once we were TUPE-transfered into the parent company, it became clear to me how Shell really works, and perhaps more alarmingly, how so many working there perform appalling mental gymnastics to convince themselves that they're doing good things for the world.

From the Orwellian "Respect for Nature" scrawled on the walls of the office, to the contemptible climate denialism you hear from staff at all levels, it's clear that too many of the people working there truly believe that they're somehow making the world better even when confronted with the evidence.

There are of course some great people still there, attempting to "change the company from within", but it's a fool's errand if you ask me. Shell has known about the climate crisis for decades and every new generation of management since has worked to support and expand fossil fuel extraction. This latest crop is no different. Their performance at Shell's latest AGM where they straight up denied that their plans violate our Paris obligations in the face of clear evidence should divorce anyone of the illusion that Shell is on the right side of history. So long as it's profitable to burn the world, Shell will continue to provide the fuel.

What's more, even if Shell were interested in achieving a carbon free world (its actions say otherwise of course), I don't think it's capable.

Shell is a Very Large Company that's spent more than a century doing one thing: digging stuff out of the ground and setting it on fire. They're heavily invested in this pattern, with infrastructure all over the planet and tens of thousands of employees dedicated to it. They've got armies of lobbyists working to preserve that model in every country that matters and mountains of amoral investor cash lined up to support it too.

Combine this with the reality that big corporations can't pivot because of the black hole of inertia all of the above represents, and you get what happened to Limejump: a small renewables start-up, bought by a Big Corporate Fossil Fuel Company, after which it's swallowed and dismantled -- its goal of a renewable energy future lost.

Perhaps the most frustrating part of working there was the way staff and management would attempt to separate their actions from the ethical implications: "Don't blame us, the world demands energy. We're simply supplying it."

This is a convenient lie Shell employees tell themselves, crafted to obfuscate the fact that Shell has leveraged substantial lobbying efforts on all sides of the political arena to ensure a fossil future. They lobby (or fund 3rd parties to lobby) government and the public to crush green legislation and expand support for fossil fuels, all while repeating "net zero by 2050" as if merely saying it is sufficient.

These are not the actions of a company looking to embrace a carbon-free future. They're not even those of a company hoping to expand their portfolio to include renewables. This is a concentrated effort by the one arm of the company to crush the business of the other arm, a tactic that only makes sense if the renewable side exists exclusively to greenwash the fossil one.

Maybe this is obvious to you, but 2½ years ago, I really couldn't see it, so I'm sharing what I've learnt now.

To future generations: I'm sorry. I never contributed to Shell's fossil fuel business, but I did build systems that Shell used to distract the public from what they're really doing. I honestly believed I was helping, but for over two years I was part of the problem.

To my brilliant Limejumper colleagues that I've left behind: I'll miss you all and hope that one day soon you come to the same realisation as I have: that your skills are valuable, that Shell is using them to burn down the planet, and that you can do better.

Image credit: Rosemary Mosco

In the Den of the Wolf, Ram, and Hart

July 23, 2021 16:22 +0000  |  Climate Change Employment Ethics Shell 1

Update: 2½ years later, I've realised how naïve this was and outlined that naïvety in a separate post.

I made a career decision a few months ago that I've meant to document here for a while now. I left my previous job at Workfinder that was making me miserable, for an amazing job with a green energy company called Limejump.

The people I work with are wonderful. They're both technically capable and respectful human beings. I'm not just talking about my immediate colleagues either. In my 7 months with the company, this has been my experience with everyone I've worked with there -- all the way up to the CEO. People are friendly, enthusiastic, and professional. The team collectively owns mistakes and works together toward common goals that we (the business and engineering) establish together. Seriously, it's pretty great.

I cannot stress enough how powerfully black & white the move has been for me. To come from a job where the higher-ups regularly micromanaged, second-guessed, and belittled everyone and then shoved us under the bus when things went wrong, to where I am now is really quite jarring. I'd spent so much time being miserable that I'd forgotten what it was like to work with decent people.

If you find yourself in a similar situation, I'm here to remind you that not every company is as toxic as the one you're stuck in. If you have options, get out while you can! Hell, if you can roll code, I might be able to find you a spot with us.

So yeah, that's the good news: I'm finally happy in a job again. I'd forgotten what that was like, so the experience still leaves me a bit giddy, even after 7 months.

"So why the dire-sounding title?" I hear you asking. Well, Limejump comes with a significant piece of baggage that I had to unpack and come to terms with before accepting the job. That's the real topic of this post: Limejump is owned by Shell.

Yes, that Shell.

If you know me personally, it's likely that you know that I have some hard lines I don't cross for employment. I don't do guns, I don't do fossil fuels, and I certainly don't do anything illegal. The reasoning behind this is one of conscience, but it's also rational: gaining financially from destroying the world you have to live in makes absolutely no sense. Shell violates the fossil fuel rule fundamentally, and historically has a long documented history of Evil under its belt.

And yet, here I am, taking a paycheque from Shell, and to my mind, doing so with my morals intact. That probably sounds antithetical, so let me explain:

The way I see it, Shell is a publicly-traded company that must, like any other, do evil. It's insane, but this is how capitalism works: a publicly-traded company can't knowingly refrain from doing evil if doing so means that it will make less (or even lose) money for its shareholders. If your goal then is to save the earth from companies like Shell, you have but two choices:

  1. Make Shell illegal. Sue them into oblivion or figuratively kill them by revoking their charter to exist.
  2. Find a way to make doing evil less profitable than doing good.

To be clear, I am all for Option #1, but no amount of screaming from my blog is going to work on that front, so unless activists and human rights lawyers have a need for some high-level software design, I'm afraid I'm not much use to that cause. I have however been offered an opportunity to move on option #2.

Limejump is doing something extremely ambitious and technically difficult: we're developing a framework for consolidating disparate green energy sources into a sort of distributed power plant that compensates for all of the fluctuations inherent in green energy solutions. Sometimes the wind isn't blowing, and the sun isn't always shining, and yet you need power for your laptop at 3am.

The number of companies on the planet even bothering to try to solve this problem is tiny and almost none of them have the sort of resources that Shell brings to the table. If we can prove that this is viable (spoiler alert: it definitely is, we're doing it), then the reality of free, limitless energy becomes a serious "carrot" to pull companies like Shell away from fossil fuels. Combine that with the "stick" in actions like Extinction Rebellion, law suits, rising fuel prices, and political pressure, and I believe that you can steer this earth-killing beast of a ship into a force for Good. Not because I believe that a company can have a conscience (it can't), but because that's where the money is.

Until or unless Option #1 can happen, this sort of work needs to be done, so I took the job. I hope it was the right choice and that I'm not being naïve. I suppose that's a question for Future Me, but for right now, it honestly feels like the Right decision.