Why tech workers are quitting great jobs at companies like Google to fight climate change

Sandy Anuras, the chief technology officer of Sunrun.

Tech workers are walking away from high paying jobs in order to fight climate change.

Taking a pay cut is one of the ways that that has been done. Sandy Anuras, who joined home solar provider Sunrun as its chief technology officer, said a big paycheck can come with a price.

Tech giants have large compensation packages. It is difficult to say no to a large compensation package. You realize there is more to life than you think. Some of the decisions that their companies have made to prioritize profits over democracy are now being realized by people.

Anuras worked at Expedia for three years before he started at Sunrun. She thinks traveling is good for society because people who travel tend to be more compassionate towards strangers. Anuras didn't find helping people book travel efficient enough when she was working at a startup that made affordable housing readily available.

There’s a little bit more to life than maxing out your comp package. And I think people are realizing that now.

Anuras wrote an "intention document" when she was looking for a new job.

Climate change is the biggest problem for our generation. Anuras began to think. Climate change is a threat to humanity and it is also a threat to the poor. She said that spending her time in that space is important.

It was like that for Tom Melendez. After five years at Google, he left to work for the Environmental Defense Fund's MethaneSAT, which processes satellite data to measure emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas.

I was happy to be at the company. In an interview with CNBC, Melendez said that he enjoyed the work he was doing. He began to feel like a lost soul. It feels like the only purpose of this is to make money. I am not making any improvements. The metrics that I'm rated on are important to the company, but they're not important to me.

He has two children who are now 12 and 16 years old, and he thinks about what he will leave behind.

I am afraid of the world that we will leave these people and what can I do to help? He said that it was not his job to push the data around.

Tom Melendez, the senior engineering director at MethaneSAT, and his son, Jaxon.

At Skybox, he worked with satellite data. He got his current job because of that experience, but he hasn't always thought of himself as a climate warrior.

I didn't grow up as an environmentalist. He told CNBC that he was just trying to survive. He grew up in a working class area of Long Island, New York, where his family and friends saw environmental regulations as a nuisance that increased complexity and costs for businesses. He wanted to give people the data and tools to process the facts on their own.

The data needs to be turned into something that everyone can understand and not be afraid of. How to make this consumable to those people that I grew up with is something I have put effort into. I don't know how to get them to understand that this is a problem.

Eventually, it just got to the point where I couldn’t justify to myself why I’m still doing something that isn’t climate.

He was able to take the step-down in pay because he had earned a high salary for many years and owned his home. It's important to have a stable housing situation in order to move to a lower salary in exchange for meaningful work.

Resources are available to help techies make the switch to fighting climate change.

More than 600,000 people have used the climate jobs website Climatebase since it was launched in June 2020. Over 3000 applications for an educational fellowship have been received by Climate Base. I was a member of the founding fellowship.

Eugene Kirpichov, the list's co- founder, said that the Work In Climate channel has more than 10,000 members.

Eugene Kirpichov, co-founder and CEO of Work on Climate

Kirpichov was employed at Google for eight years, where he worked on big data and machine- learning systems. He enjoyed his job there.

He told CNBC that it was fascinating.

The film "An Inconvenient Truth" and the sequel "An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power" were both shown on the plane flight. He asked his friends and acquaintances if they knew more about climate change than he did, and he also read books.

Kirpichov told CNBC that he couldn't justify to himself why he was doing something that wasn't climate-friendly. I was in a state of anxiety and uncertainty.

Kirpichov shared an email he wrote to his colleagues on LinkedIn when he decided to leave the company.

Climate change is so dire that I can no longer justify working on anything else, no matter how interesting or lucrative, until it is fixed. I think other people who have the privilege of being able to do so should do so as well. I like to think of the problem as how much can we save, and every one of us can help.

The response was very positive.

There are a lot of people who are in the same boat. Many people wanted to work in climate, but they didn't know what to do.

He said that most people think that working in climate is walking around with banners. Kirpichov realized there was a need to help other people find jobs when he heard the feedback.

James Newsome was one of the people who didn't know if his skill set could translate to a climate job.

James Newsome, Chief Data Officer, Persefoni

When Newsome was a child, the only people who cared about climate were scientists with degrees. Newsome said that he thought it was awesome when he was told about the climate disclosure platform. I am not aclimate scientist.

He was told that the problem was a data one.

Newsome definitely knows what's going on.

I wanted to trade stocks back in the day. Newsome said that he admired Warren Buffet. He was certain that he was onto the wave of the future after reading about people who used quantitative analysis to trade stocks. After graduating with a masters in accounting from the University of Phoenix, he began studying statistics, mathematics and computer science on his own. He ran the business intelligence group at Insight for six years after working in IT services and consulting.

After a while, Newsome lost his passion for the work. It starts to feel like a factory.

Newsome is able to align his personal values with his work values now that he's working at the company.

A lot of other tech workers want the same kind of change as he does. Newsome has been able to compete with the top tech companies by hiring about 40 engineers.

This skill set is in high demand. Amazon pays people $300,000 a year, according to Newsome.

Brian Lafayette, head of business strategy at Overstory

Brian Lafayette was brought to Overstory by that kind of skill set translation. The Rainforest Alliance uses Overstory's technology to keep an eye on forest growth and electric wires running through dry leaves.

Lafayette was raised in Burlington, Vermont, with a forest in the backyard, a lake at the bottom of the street, and not a lot of big business. He wanted to work for businesses that change the way people live and work.

He asked if people want to work in tech. He got a job at an event planning platform after working in management.

He ran the data analysis and strategy team and was part of the team that helped sell the company to WeWork. Meetup had to lay off a lot of staff as WeWork began to fall.

The kind of layoffs creates a big hit to the staff. Lafayette said it felt terrible.

He knew it was time to leave his job.

There’s just no bigger problem in the world than climate change. It’s the defining problem of our generation.

The joy of working for a company that makes the world better in some way was one thing that Lafayette learned at Meetup.

I couldn't work for a startup that was working on a marketing stack. Lafayette couldn't get excited about that.

He realized that climate change was the biggest problem in the world when he stepped back to think about his next step. "It's Existence."

Lafayette reached out to a friend in his network who had already transitioned to a climate startup when he was ready to do so.

Lafayette said that there's starting to be a lot of things. A person who had done it before helped me and showed me all the resources that were available. He was told not to go back to school by his friend. Lafayette listened to a popular podcasts and took a climate boot camp course.

The head of business strategy is Lafayette. Lafayette's previous employment experience made him a success at Overstory.

The thing is the same. Lafayette said it's just business with a different focus. The same skills are required.

Sunrun's Anuras said that having the chance to develop this kind of skill set is a privilege.

I was thinking about my family. Climate change is going to hurt Southeast Asia. I think about people who don't have the privilege that I have, where I can say, "Oh, I'm going to be in Seattle, where it is so cool and climate change is not impacting us in such a severe way,'"

Where should I be spending my time? Anuras made a statement. The answers to her own questions became clear as she realized that she can use her skills to fight climate change.

I want to look back and say I helped solve one of the greatest problems humanity has faced, but it just didn't fit for me.