Tech workers are walking away from high-paying jobs with great perks to help fight what they believe is the greatest existential problem of our lifetimes: climate change.
In some cases, that has meant taking a pay cut. But Sandy Anuras, who recently joined home solar provider Sunrun as its chief technology officer, says a big paycheck sometimes comes with a price
"The tech giants have had these huge compensation packages. And it's hard to say no to a huge compensation package," Anuras told CNBC. "You just realize there's a little bit more to life than maxing out your comp package. And I think people are realizing that now — and especially with some of the decisions that their companies have made to prioritize profits over democracy, for example."
Before starting at Sunrun in March, Anuras worked at Expedia for almost three years. She believes traveling is good for society, as people who travel often experience an expanded perspective and greater compassion toward strangers. But helping people book travel efficiently did not give Anuras the internal satisfaction she had when she worked at Blokable, a startup working to make affordable housing readily available.
When Anuras started looking for new jobs, she wrote an "intention document" expressing her desire to work at a mission-first company.
"What bigger problem is there to solve for our generation than climate change?" Anuras found herself thinking. Not only is climate change an existential-level threat to humanity, it is especially dangerous for the poorest communities around the world. "Spending my time in that space is just so important," she said.
That's how it was for software engineer Tom Melendez, too. He worked at Google for five years before leaving in 2019 to take a job at MethaneSAT, an affiliate of the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund, which processes satellite data to measure emissions of methane, an especially potent greenhouse gas.
"I was proud to be at Google. While I was there, especially in the beginning, I enjoyed the work I was doing," Melendez told CNBC. But eventually he started to feel disenchanted. "At the end of the day, you can't help but feel like the sole purpose of this is really just to make money. I am not making anything better — or not really. The metrics that I'm rated on are important to the company, but they're not really important to me."
He has two kids who are now 12 and 16 years old and he thinks about what he's leaving the next generation.
"I genuinely am afraid of the world that we're leaving these folks and what can I do to help? And me pushing bytes around at Google" was not it, he said.
Before he was employed at Google, Melendez worked with satellite data at a startup, Skybox Imaging. That experience helped him land his current gig, but he hasn't always thought of himself as a climate warrior.
"I didn't necessarily grow up as an environmentalist, or anything like that. I was just trying to live my life," he told CNBC. He grew up in a working class, politically purple part of Long Island, New York, where his family and friends saw environmental regulations as a nuisance that increases complexity and costs for businesses. Melendez wanted to help give people like his childhood peers the data and tools to process the facts on their own.
"I do feel a need to be able to turn this data into something that everybody can understand and not be so afraid of," Melendez said. "I've put effort into this in my current work of — how to make this consumable to those folks that I grew up with? How do I get them to understand that this is a problem?"
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/07/26/tech-to-climate-career-changes-why-these-workers-left-jobs-like-google.html
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