Why I Joined Oracle Utilities and Opower

People. Purpose. Passion. Planet.

Tired Of Dating

Forgive me for stating the obvious, but of course finding a job is a lot like dating. And not dating like in your 20s; more like in your 40s where you can’t afford to be with some loose cannon that’s underemployed and promiscuous. You’re looking for someone that you know is probably flawed but at least they pay their bills and still have a fire in the belly. With each job interview you’re trying to make a series of, at best, educated guesses, and at worst, paranoid silent pleas like ”I hope they they’re not crazy like the last one.”

For all the data-driven resources such as Glassdoor and LinkedIn at our disposal you still can’t divine the texture of a culture and its ethos. You need to also go with your gut. After all, we have more neurons there than in our brains. We make our most important decisions when we are both emotional and analytical. Basing my job decisions on the latter has proven to be a major buzzkill and a rich source of humble pie.

I’ve had no shortage of learning from making that mistake. These were places that were good on paper but profoundly disillusioning. Whether it’s a leader in interviews beseeching you with promises like ““We want to be a design-led organization and have a rich pipeline of differentiated ideas” only to rescind into whatever leads to the shortest path to valuation. Or reporting to an executive that loves the idea of design thinking only to drive our team to “just copy what those other guys are doing” and finally reveal a deficit that design was only how it looked, not how it worked. Or Product Management teams that are always chasing metrics as an end rather than a means, electing to roadmap breadcrumbs, hoping they would amount to a loaf of bread. As Charles Goodhart says “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.”

Outcomes over outputs please. It’s table stakes. Ah, you live and learn: don’t work anywhere that isn’t sympathetic to how design drives material value to the business.

Needing a Just Cause

What now? Yes, I’ve always tried to bloom where I was planted. I learned that regardless of where you work you can always contribute and be generous and leave a place better than when you found it. But after working with so many wonderful people at Accenture/Fjord, where I learned how design can literally change C-level hearts and minds (and the bottom line), I now sought a place where I could do just that but in service of an even grander purpose.

I needed a just cause. I needed to think in generations, to imagine a world I might be leaving behind for my 10 year-old son. If you’ve worked in interaction design like I have over the last 20 years you understand the sorrow of ephemera. After some reflective inventory, I saw that I had more appreciation for the people i’ve worked with than the products and services I’ve produced. I wanted to be proud of both. I wanted a problem space that endured long after I’m gone. If design is a neverending endeavor isn’t the next 100 years more important than an 18 month roadmap?

So I thought about it. The earth is in a state of profound crisis. We consume 1.5 times the earth’s ability to regenerate those resources. The world has already warmed by 1C since pre-industrial times, due to human activity and is likely to pass the 1.5C mark between 2030 and 2052. If we get to 2C, marine life will be decimated by ocean acidification and warming. The poorest agrarian nations will be savaged by arid soils and increased poverty. Diseases like malaria and dengue fever will spread due to the expanded range of mosquitos. I could go on. The struggle is real. We need moral imagination. Now.

Hello Opower

And then, sometimes, you put a call in to the universe and it answers. When my dear friend at Oracle said they were hiring in their Global Utilities Unit at the recently acquired Opower, I didn’t know much about it. I certainly didn’t know they had helped consumers save over 25 TWh of energy through their Home Energy Reports. I definitely didn’t know that through both behavioral science, AI and personalization, Opower has saved consumers over $2.2 billion in their utility bills.

It turns out the utility space is a fascinating and complex landscape with the advent of net-zero commitments, EV and solar proliferation and the broader push towards decarbonization. Instead of designing trivial digital trinkets, we design behaviors, leveraging principles such as loss aversion and social proof to support Americans struggling to pay their bills and a planet struggling to sustain itself. Sign. Me. Up.

While I realize Oracle isn’t Greenpeace it also isn’t a cynical start-up dubiously seeking a short sale. We have to innovate. We have to compete with the best-in-class experiences with perceptual competitors (regulators demand it, actually). The people I interviewed with were earnest, decent, whip-smart and deeply ambitious. The purpose that bound them helped them to be resilient in the face of the organizational challenges they faced. They had their eyes on the prize, a growth mindset and a clear passion for the work. I’m thrilled and fortunate to be a part of this team and to drive the next evolution of our offerings.

Oh, and we’re hiring ;) If this sounds like your tribe please get in touch!