This is misleading though because energy projects produce returns over a much longer timescale (i.e. decades) than the typical tech project (a year or two?). In

This is misleading though because energy projects produce returns over a much longer timescale (i.e. decades) than the typical tech project (a year or two?). In addition, the typical big tech firm is running a lot more projects than the typical large oil company (which maybe operates a count of oil fields in the hundreds). So it's very much expected that the capital investment per project will be higher in oil. But the fact of the matter is that Google, Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft have double the market capitalization of the largest private oil companies. So yes, they're objectively better capitalized taken as a whole -- even if the typical tech project has less investment and consequently working on tech projects as a low- or mid- level employee feels smaller.