A Career at Shell

The work I did at Shell from the time I transferred to San Francisco until the mid 1960s was certainly enjoyable and I suppose it some respects it was what a chemical engineering graduate would sort of dream about doing as a career goal. One was always on the forefront of what was going on in the development of equipment; indeed a fair amount of time was always devoted to keeping up with the current literature. This involved scanning the summary of contents of periodicals circulated by the library, perusing the half dozen or so periodicals that were regularly sent to me and doing the same with company reports that Technical Files sent around.

The work was not entirely research however as there were always operating or design problems that were referred to the department that required handling. Shell used the chemical engineering department as sort of a lure for engineering graduated they wanted to hire. As I indicated the work was sort of a novice graduate’s dream and they played on prospective employees’ desired in the regard to get them to accept employment.

Gradually this presents a problem as it required moving people out of chemical engineering into other parts of the organization. After new engineers would work for a couple of years and then sending that there were better opportunities for career advancement elsewhere would take transfers to other parts of Shell. This partly solved the problem but there came to be the feeling on the part of management that it would be helpful if members of the department who had been in research for a considerable legth of time would also transfer out.

So I was approached in this regard and a year’s assignment to Licensing and Design engineering was arranged. This department handled the evaluations and actual designs of the process that Shell licensed to outside companies, as well as some of the designs for applications within the Shell organization itself. This occurred in the mid 1960s, essentially after nearly two decades in research.

I found the work, essentially process engineering, to be stimulating and interesting and at the conclusion of the year decided to transfer permanently into this new phase of chemical engineering. It was in this kind of work that I spent the remainder of my career at Shell, including the work I did for the company after I retired (mostly in 1975, but also briefly in 1976).

In retrospect I think that it would have been more favorable to my career at Shell had I made the change earlier. In a way I feel that my career potential at Shell was not achieved — I attribute this in part by the lack of background and sophistication in my childhood and adolescence (i.e., when I went to work at Shell I really had no feel for how a large industrial organization operates) and secondly by the absence of some experienced person who would have offered advice to me at some crucial points in my career.

Had these factors been in effect it still might not have affected the course of my career significantly. I have a certain diffidence, lack of aggressiveness and unwillingness to have the single-minded commitment to career goals that would have kept my career to about what it was.

Shortly after transferring to process engineering, my department head approached me about the possibility of becoming a supervisor, with responsibility in the area of separations (distillation etc.). However he said to achieve this I would need some plant start-up experience and this would have involved a fairly lengthy absence away from family and the familiar scene. After considering the matter I decided I wasn’t interested in the effort and disruption involved, at least at that point in my career.

When Shell decided to move its research establishment, along with the associated engineering functions, to Houston I first decided not to go, but later changed my mind and the family made the move. It it still a question in my mind if we made the right move, economically or for the effect of the move on our daughters.

Economically I suspect there would have been little difference in the family fortunes. The appreciation in the value of 411 Bonnie Drive would have well offset the income from two years of employment, the increase in the Provident Fund savings and what I received “consulting” in 1975–76.

After we moved to Ashland I considered getting a degree in accounting and doing income tax work but there wasn’t any incentive income-wise to do so and other diversions such as gardening and drawing and water-coloring intervened. It is also, at this point, a question in my mind once we went in Houston to have stuck it out for longer than the two years we were there.

I suspect that had I been working downtown in Houston, instead of out at the International Trade Center there would have been a good deal less impetus to leave Houston on my part. Had I been working downtown I could have commuted easily on the bus that ran along Memorial Drive to downtown. Such a commute would have been much more to my liking that the drive in an un-air-conditioned [car] to ITC.

As it turned out Shell moved its engineering functions from ITS to a downtown location within less than a year after we departed Houston. We left in June 1974 and by March 1975 when I started the work I did for Shell that year they have moved downtown to the Milam building. I think that had we stayed in Houston it would have been much easier on Laurel. She was just getting established I think with a group of friends in Houston and she never did really “click” in Ashland.

For Jean and me the early retirement to Ashland turned out very well. We have been happy and occupied here and life here has been satisfying and rewarding. Income-wise there was no problem at all, and we were easily capable of meeting the 2-1/2 college educations that we still had to provide for. Muriel was halfway through her first four years, but Palma was just starting college when we arrived in Ashland. Laurel of course still had three years of high school still before her college career would begin.