I’ve thought a fair amount about this (Shell recruited pretty heavily at my college). I agree with previous answers and think those are probably the primary considerations. Some other thoughts, both for you personally and on the moral value of the work:
Being thoughtful (as you are doing) is half the battle, and it’s key to make sure that your own values and motivations aren’t led astray by the environment you will be in—it’s easy to have value drift when your job is on the line.
I wouldn’t underestimate the subtle ways in which being owned by a FF can change the way a company does business (and therefore what you are able to do and what you are rewarded for). An imperfect analogue is the way SBF’s funding shaped what EA orgs did over the past few years, and the resulting fallout and instability now.
There’s some research that even if you have idealistic motivations about doing good, the environment around you can shift your preferences towards whatever is externally rewarded, e.g. here re law school.
It is hard to be motivated and do your best work (and therefore get promotions, transition into a better job in the future, etc) when you don’t feel affirmed and aligned with your work.
There is utilitarian value in socially stigmatizing fossil fuel companies. If FFs (& the companies they own) can’t find talent, that’s yet another signal that they should be seriously re-evaluating their business model. I do think this consideration is less clear when it comes to acquisitions like sonnen.
I wouldn’t do it myself in your situation, especially since there are probably plenty of non-FF-owned clean tech companies hiring SWEs. But it’s not clear to me whether it would be net good or bad, for the world or for you.
I’ve thought a fair amount about this (Shell recruited pretty heavily at my college). I agree with previous answers and think those are probably the primary considerations. Some other thoughts, both for you personally and on the moral value of the work:
Being thoughtful (as you are doing) is half the battle, and it’s key to make sure that your own values and motivations aren’t led astray by the environment you will be in—it’s easy to have value drift when your job is on the line.
I wouldn’t underestimate the subtle ways in which being owned by a FF can change the way a company does business (and therefore what you are able to do and what you are rewarded for). An imperfect analogue is the way SBF’s funding shaped what EA orgs did over the past few years, and the resulting fallout and instability now.
There’s some research that even if you have idealistic motivations about doing good, the environment around you can shift your preferences towards whatever is externally rewarded, e.g. here re law school.
It is hard to be motivated and do your best work (and therefore get promotions, transition into a better job in the future, etc) when you don’t feel affirmed and aligned with your work.
There is utilitarian value in socially stigmatizing fossil fuel companies. If FFs (& the companies they own) can’t find talent, that’s yet another signal that they should be seriously re-evaluating their business model. I do think this consideration is less clear when it comes to acquisitions like sonnen.
If you care about what climate people think, there was a lot of discussion on Twitter recently of a similar piece in NYT’s The Ethicist (though I personally disagree with climate Twitter consensus on this).
I wouldn’t do it myself in your situation, especially since there are probably plenty of non-FF-owned clean tech companies hiring SWEs. But it’s not clear to me whether it would be net good or bad, for the world or for you.