

Ask HN: Are there tech jobs in oil and gas?  - allsystemsgo

What are some of the more interesting roles?
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michael_miller
Yes, there are oil and gas jobs for CS majors / tech people. I went to school
at UT Austin, which as you might imagine, has a nontrivial number of these
companies recruiting. However, my takeaways from these companies:

\- You'll most likely be working in Houston / San Antonio (probably not where
you want to be working)

\- They pay well by general, non-tech, new grad standards, but don't expect
the "standard" 100K salary + 50K signing bonus + 30K/year stock that's become
standard fare in the Valley. That said, the cost of living in Texas is
significantly lower than the Valley (plus, no state income tax!), so you might
come out ahead here.

\- Not a ton of startups in the space, due to the large amount of capital
required. You're basically working for the big guys. This means that there
isn't much upside. WYSIWYG, you aren't going to become an overnight
millionaire.

\- Culture is much more corporate than Valley companies. So don't expect free
food / drink / laundry / massages / gym memberships / rail passes. And you may
have to wear clothing other than jeans + flipflops to work.

Major companies in this space recruiting CS people: Valero, Schlumberger,
ExxonMobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Phillips 66.

All the above said, there are some pretty cool technical challenges that these
companies face. Where do you drill? How do you analyze seismic data to figure
out on a macro level where to explore? What about when you start drilling and
find oil, what's the best way to extract it? These companies have massive
quantities of data gathered from sensors as they're drilling / exploring, and
they need to crunch through it to minimize waste and maximize the possibility
of hitting large amounts of easily extractable oil. The oil/gas space is
definitely gratifying from a solving-real-problems-instead-of-social-media-BS
perspective.

~~~
kyle_t
Just want to second the culture part. From what I've seen and experiences
related to me from friends the culture at these guys is very rigid and
'corporate'. For example I've heard that at Valero in San Antonio men can't
have facial hair of any sort.

~~~
6thSigma
I'm based in San Antonio and have never heard that of Valero employees.
Culture isn't very strict there from what I've heard.

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kyle_t
When I graduated in 2010 from a school down in Texas with a BS in Comp Sci, I
was constantly being solicited for interviews with the big guys...Valero,
Chevron etc.. These companies also had a very large recruiting presence at all
the career fairs.

So at least at that time I know there was a need for development positions in
this field. Just like most large companies there are plenty of internal tools
that need maintenance and development.

~~~
allsystemsgo
Right, I guess what I want to avoid is maintenance of some sort of reporting
tool and make sure the role helps me learn about how a particular area of the
industry works, to allow for some upward movement. I guess that's why I'm
partial to data mining

~~~
kyle_t
Just out of curiosity are you only interested in Oil/Gas or are you open to
other fields as well? If yes how come? (purely out of curiosity, not judging
either way)

~~~
allsystemsgo
Mainly because I know so many people in oil and gas though their roles are not
technical, and because of my proximity to Houston.

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6thSigma
I have a lot of friends who graduated in electrical engineering or a similar
degree and got jobs in the oil field. Most of them work as rig engineers and
work 6 days a week, travel constantly, on call 24/7, ready to drive 5+ hours
on a whim, etc. They make a lot of money, but most of them hate it.

------
Peroni
I'm not sure what you are looking to find out about without further
elaboration. There are all the usual tech roles you'd expect in any other
industry as well as some specialist roles.

~~~
allsystemsgo
Well I've poked around through some different listings, roles, etc, and I'm a
bit surprised that there are so few data mining roles at various oil and gas
firms. One would think seismic data mining would be a huge area. I'm quite
interested in data mining and software dev.

I've found quite a number of SCADA roles but, this isn't unique to the
industry, and I don't know exactly how interesting the role would be.

~~~
Peroni
I have a few old contacts in the industry working for some of Europe's largest
O&G firms. I'll drop them an email to see if there are any blog posts floating
about that elaborate on the topic a bit further.

~~~
allsystemsgo
I appreciate that. Thanks for the info.

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manglav
I'm also very interested in this...with a degree in Chemical Engineering and a
huge interest in programming, I'd love to hear about any opportunities.

