I'm currently interviewing for a Software Engineering position with sonnen, which sells home batteries, some energy services, and even a Virtual Power Plant. But, I just found out that they have been acquired by Shell in 2019.
Intuitively, this feels like a much worse deal for me to take. If I were working for sonnen, the profits would go to Shell. I also think that Shell might be using sonnen for greenwashing and not have a real interest in climate solutions.
Or maybe it doesn't really matter who owns the company, as long as sonnen does good work?
I do have other alternatives, so I have the privilege of being picky. How do you think being owned by Shell changes the moral value of working for sonnen?
A few thoughts, though I wouldn't give them too much weight:
The considerations I can think of look something like:
(1)Sonnen does work with some positive externalities.
(2)Sonnen makes some profit, which either goes to Shell shareholders, net of taxes, or might be used to finance other Shell activities.
(3)Shell might be able do other things with negative externalities and suffer fewer consequences due to positive PR effects from Sonnen.
Since Shell will probably evaluate other projects on their own merit, and can easily borrow money in financial markets, (2) probably doesn't matter, I think. Shell shareholders are basically just the same shareholders as every other big company.
I have not much idea how much good there is in (1) versus bad in (3), mostly because I know little about (1). I would be a bit surprised usually if second order effects were larger than first order effects.
Also, I think a world where Shell wants to invest in clean energy projects is better than one where it doesn't. If those projects do well then that might mean more spending goes to them vs other projects, more because of limited management capacity and better PR rather than not having enough money to do both things.
If there were two otherwise identical options I'd probably lean towards the non Shell option, but I'd guess this factor should probably not overwhelm a substantial difference.