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>> and whether Exxon was willing to raise pay to the level of major tech companies. Why would oil companies need to hire the same kinds of engineers that a SV

>> and whether Exxon was willing to raise pay to the level of major tech companies. Why would oil companies need to hire the same kinds of engineers that a SV giant would need? If they can get that kind of salary, more power to them, but I don't see the challenges being similar enough except on a smaller scale with device drivers for industrial equipment, etc.

dylan604 4y ago
Sounds like you believe Big Oil only exists to pull crude out of the ground which is limiting your imagination on why they need these kinds of engineers.
- MobiusHorizons 4y ago
  Care to enlighten us?
  - wil421 4y ago
    To name a few: deep water drilling with underwater autonomous vehicles, extremely remote sites in the middle of the ocean or Arctic, dangerous high pressure pipelines, and some crazy geographic modeling. All these requires lots of high tech equipment and robust sensors.
    - MobiusHorizons 4y ago
      Interesting, thanks.
- mistrial9 4y ago
  I met an academically trained modeller who worked for some Big Oil.. it was a stretch for him to even mention what he did, since the whole industry is a big villain among most of the educated people. This fellow wrote custom 3D modelling for geological exploration.. it was all "bespoke" and very little to do with FOSS or emerging tech. He was paid well enough, and it was specialized.. so his models went on for more than a decade last I heard.. So I have to laugh a bit when apologists here declare Big Oil Tech with the "power of HPC" or whatever.. they are in a ghetto niche full of expensive equipment. Also I think it is telling that the math guy was not a rank-and-file employee, but instead sheltered in an academic town with lots of time for careful math at a very decent salary.
taw28 4y ago
Oil and gas are big users of HPC. They have been doing scale for longer than SV.
- ewhanley 4y ago
  Not to mention they have been using ai/ml in practice regularly and at massive scale since at least the late 1970s. And IOT before it was a buzzword.
  - adolph 4y ago
    Here are talks from a recent Energy AI conference if anyone is interested: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLcsG4X8Zn_UDTy6BqKzhqoWY4QNmMmC61 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLcsG4X8Zn_UDTy6BqKzhq...
- julosflb 4y ago
  Total HPC ranked 1st in 2019 within commercial sector. https://newsroom.ibm.com/2019-06-18-IBM-Develops-Worlds-Most-Powerful-Commercial-Supercomputer-for-Total https://newsroom.ibm.com/2019-06-18-IBM-Develops-Worlds-Most...
sudosysgen 4y ago
Big oil needs a lot of compute for various engineering tasks like prospecting and simulations. Depending on how much they do in house those are pretty hard problems and that also means data on a large scale.
- mikerg87 4y ago
  Not to mention operations at the refinery level. Cad, process simulation, and operations monitoring are huge users of compute. At the retail level. The analytics to track sales and optimize distribution marking sure fuel trucks arrive as needs to tip up supply is massive.
scottLobster 4y ago
What kind of systems do you think run the oil drills/manages refineries? Or simulate potential drilling sites? You think Exxon doesn't have data-centers? Or that everything is still analog buttons with a digital device driver on the end like the 80s? I work for a large defense contractor, you know what I'm working on right now? I'm coding up REST services, and a couple of months ago I was helping to spin up a Kubernetes cluster. Traditional industry may not have the same scaling needs as say, Facebook or Google, but you don't have to be an Aircraft Carrier to be in the Navy.
- giantg2 4y ago
  None of this seems to answer the underlying question of why other companies need to compete on salary with big tech. I work for a financial company. We have tons of tech. We get paid peanuts compared to big tech.
  - shiftpgdn 4y ago
    Because those people will leave and take their knowledge with them to big tech?
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - giantg2 4y ago
      The positions at big tech are limited. The vast majority of engineers work for "regular" companies who can't compete with the massive profits and easy money. The risk of losing people to big tech is relatively low. We've had about 35ish% turnover during the last two years. This is multiple times higher than normal. We still managed to retain the other 65ish%. I worked on a team that had over 100% turnover during that time (half lost externally and half moved in the company). You know what, that manager didn't care. She told me they expected to burn people out in 1-2 years and weren't going to compete with companies offering 50-100% raises. So it wasn't a big deal because they expect to lose people, won't compete, and they still retain the majority of people because the availability of better places to go are pretty low.
conductr 4y ago
This is happening because of how much Exxon pays their other engineers, geologists, etc. and how these employees are caught in between 2 boom and bust industries (energy & tech). They see competitive pay for other job titles and layoffs are common when markets shift but are likely seen as a back-office function to be managed as "overhead" would (low pay, outsourcing, etc)
SimbaOnSteroids 4y ago
I was under the impression that if you wanted to hire employees for ethically dubious industries you better be willing to pay them enough that they can ignore their conscious.
green-salt 4y ago
I worked in HPC for a bit and one of my colleagues had come from Aramco and managing their AIX clusters
HillRat 4y ago
The data analytic side of oil majors is extremely sophisticated and complex: these are groups dealing with massive sets of all-sensor geologic data and using them to make multi-billion-dollar bets as to what's going to happen thousands of feet under the earth under complex and immense temperature and pressure gradients. Even outside of those departments, the challenges are significant (though companies underinvest in digital in those areas). Every downstream refinery, for example, is a unique beast full of custom equipment, sensors, and systems, so tying those into digital twins in a scalable, effective, and efficient way is a massively hard problem, and one that has potentially dire real-world consequences. Midstream distribution is full of complex optimization issues from both physical and financial points of view. And upstream E&P, in addition to the geology side mentioned above, is full of literal life-and-death decisions that require sophisticated real-time analytic models that can guide driller behavior. Leaving aside the moral issues raised by working for carbon-intensive energy industries, the technical challenges are significant, impressive, and fascinating to work on -- more so, I would argue, than trying to slightly increase social media ad click rates.

dylan604 4y ago

Sounds like you believe Big Oil only exists to pull crude out of the ground which is limiting your imagination on why they need these kinds of engineers.

MobiusHorizons 4y ago
Care to enlighten us?
- wil421 4y ago
  To name a few: deep water drilling with underwater autonomous vehicles, extremely remote sites in the middle of the ocean or Arctic, dangerous high pressure pipelines, and some crazy geographic modeling. All these requires lots of high tech equipment and robust sensors.
  - MobiusHorizons 4y ago
    Interesting, thanks.
mistrial9 4y ago
I met an academically trained modeller who worked for some Big Oil.. it was a stretch for him to even mention what he did, since the whole industry is a big villain among most of the educated people. This fellow wrote custom 3D modelling for geological exploration.. it was all "bespoke" and very little to do with FOSS or emerging tech. He was paid well enough, and it was specialized.. so his models went on for more than a decade last I heard.. So I have to laugh a bit when apologists here declare Big Oil Tech with the "power of HPC" or whatever.. they are in a ghetto niche full of expensive equipment. Also I think it is telling that the math guy was not a rank-and-file employee, but instead sheltered in an academic town with lots of time for careful math at a very decent salary.

taw28 4y ago

Oil and gas are big users of HPC. They have been doing scale for longer than SV.

ewhanley 4y ago
Not to mention they have been using ai/ml in practice regularly and at massive scale since at least the late 1970s. And IOT before it was a buzzword.
- adolph 4y ago
  Here are talks from a recent Energy AI conference if anyone is interested: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLcsG4X8Zn_UDTy6BqKzhqoWY4QNmMmC61 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLcsG4X8Zn_UDTy6BqKzhq...
julosflb 4y ago
Total HPC ranked 1st in 2019 within commercial sector. https://newsroom.ibm.com/2019-06-18-IBM-Develops-Worlds-Most-Powerful-Commercial-Supercomputer-for-Total https://newsroom.ibm.com/2019-06-18-IBM-Develops-Worlds-Most...

sudosysgen 4y ago

Big oil needs a lot of compute for various engineering tasks like prospecting and simulations. Depending on how much they do in house those are pretty hard problems and that also means data on a large scale.

mikerg87 4y ago
Not to mention operations at the refinery level. Cad, process simulation, and operations monitoring are huge users of compute. At the retail level. The analytics to track sales and optimize distribution marking sure fuel trucks arrive as needs to tip up supply is massive.

scottLobster 4y ago

What kind of systems do you think run the oil drills/manages refineries? Or simulate potential drilling sites? You think Exxon doesn't have data-centers? Or that everything is still analog buttons with a digital device driver on the end like the 80s? I work for a large defense contractor, you know what I'm working on right now? I'm coding up REST services, and a couple of months ago I was helping to spin up a Kubernetes cluster. Traditional industry may not have the same scaling needs as say, Facebook or Google, but you don't have to be an Aircraft Carrier to be in the Navy.

giantg2 4y ago
None of this seems to answer the underlying question of why other companies need to compete on salary with big tech. I work for a financial company. We have tons of tech. We get paid peanuts compared to big tech.
- shiftpgdn 4y ago
  Because those people will leave and take their knowledge with them to big tech?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - giantg2 4y ago
    The positions at big tech are limited. The vast majority of engineers work for "regular" companies who can't compete with the massive profits and easy money. The risk of losing people to big tech is relatively low. We've had about 35ish% turnover during the last two years. This is multiple times higher than normal. We still managed to retain the other 65ish%. I worked on a team that had over 100% turnover during that time (half lost externally and half moved in the company). You know what, that manager didn't care. She told me they expected to burn people out in 1-2 years and weren't going to compete with companies offering 50-100% raises. So it wasn't a big deal because they expect to lose people, won't compete, and they still retain the majority of people because the availability of better places to go are pretty low.

conductr 4y ago

This is happening because of how much Exxon pays their other engineers, geologists, etc. and how these employees are caught in between 2 boom and bust industries (energy & tech). They see competitive pay for other job titles and layoffs are common when markets shift but are likely seen as a back-office function to be managed as "overhead" would (low pay, outsourcing, etc)

SimbaOnSteroids 4y ago

I was under the impression that if you wanted to hire employees for ethically dubious industries you better be willing to pay them enough that they can ignore their conscious.

green-salt 4y ago

I worked in HPC for a bit and one of my colleagues had come from Aramco and managing their AIX clusters

HillRat 4y ago

The data analytic side of oil majors is extremely sophisticated and complex: these are groups dealing with massive sets of all-sensor geologic data and using them to make multi-billion-dollar bets as to what's going to happen thousands of feet under the earth under complex and immense temperature and pressure gradients. Even outside of those departments, the challenges are significant (though companies underinvest in digital in those areas). Every downstream refinery, for example, is a unique beast full of custom equipment, sensors, and systems, so tying those into digital twins in a scalable, effective, and efficient way is a massively hard problem, and one that has potentially dire real-world consequences. Midstream distribution is full of complex optimization issues from both physical and financial points of view. And upstream E&P, in addition to the geology side mentioned above, is full of literal life-and-death decisions that require sophisticated real-time analytic models that can guide driller behavior. Leaving aside the moral issues raised by working for carbon-intensive energy industries, the technical challenges are significant, impressive, and fascinating to work on -- more so, I would argue, than trying to slightly increase social media ad click rates.