‘Recession Resilient’ Climate Start-Ups Shine in Tech Downturn

Many tech workers have gone through a similar climate awakening. Olya Irzak, one of the founders of Frost Methane Labs, which helps reduce methane seeps from coal mines and other natural sources, has mentored people who want to work at climate companies for almost a decade. But during the pandemic, more people began reaching out to her and taking an interest in her annual list of climate start-ups, she said.

“People were sitting at home a lot, asking a lot of hard questions,” Ms. Irzak said. “That was when the tech talent pool started shifting really dramatically.”

One effort, Climate Draft, aims to help climate start-ups find advisers, investors and employees from the tech industry. More than 3,000 recently laid-off tech workers have signed up to learn about jobs at climate companies, the company said. Another online community, Work on Climate, has ballooned to 16,000 members since it began in 2020. People use it to network and learn about jobs.

“Rebuilding every single industry we have is going to require the participation of everybody who is in the work force,” said Eugene Kirpichov, a former engineer at Google who helped found Work on Climate.

Diego Saez Gil, a founder of Pachama, a company that funds reforestation and sells carbon credits, said he had recently hired people from Meta, Google, Amazon, Airbnb and Tesla, with some even taking pay cuts to join. That’s a change from his past start-ups, where he found it tough to recruit people from big tech companies who would take pay cuts.

“The people coming to climate are missionaries,” he said. “They had some kind of awakening. They came to realize, ‘The planet is falling apart, and I’m working on making people click on ads.’”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/30/technology/recession-resilient-climate-start-ups-shine-in-tech-downturn.html