Hello, Energomonitor!

Yesterday, I described how I learned about climate change and realized its importance. At first I become depressed about the severity and depth of the problem, but then I started looking for ways how I can help with solving it.

First steps

The first thing I did was trying to lower my personal carbon footprint. This is something everyone can (and should!) do and it involves limiting activities that release a lot of carbon into the atmosphere (in the form of greenhouse gases). I won’t go into the details here as everyone interested can find a lot of resources on the internet. But I found it interesting that low carbon footprint correlates pretty much 100% with leading a non-consumer lifestyle.

The second thing I did was give a talk about what I learned (in Czech). This felt like a logical step — when most people don’t know about the problem, it’s worth educating them.

But I wanted to do more. I’m a software engineer and software is inside everything these days. There must be a way to contribute by doing what I know best — building software. So I started looking around.

The search

It it well known that climate change is linked with the energy sector. One of the best ways to mitigate it is by being smarter about energy production, consumption, and distribution. Unfortunately, this is mostly a domain of big utility companies — the last place where I could imagine myself working at. But there are also startups that try to attack the problem from the sidelines, mostly with unconventional approaches.

One of these startups is Energomonitor, a maker of smart devices that measure energy consumption and help to optimize it. I followed the company for some time and liked what it was doing. When Energomonitor started looking for people to strengthen its software development team, I didn’t hesitate and applied. And the result is that I’m starting to work as software development lead at Energomonitor today.

The job will be full of challenges. New role, new problem area, new set of technologies, new set of people, etc. But I’m confident I’ll be able to handle these and help the company succeed while contributing — in a tiny but not unimportant way — to mitigating the climate change.

Wish me luck :-)