Leaving Big Oil at Age 26 Was Terrifying. Staying Wasn’t an Option.

In this series, professionals share all the right — and wrong — ways to leave a job. Follow the stories here, and write your own (please include #IQuit somewhere in the body of your post).

A lot of people think of me as a wildcatter. But the truth is right out of college, I needed a job and I landed one at Phillips. That was how I met the monster: Big Oil.

Phillips was one of the 20 largest corporations in America. It had 20,000 employees, chemical and plastic divisions, refineries, an international operation, hundreds of Phillips 66 gas stations, and two dozen exploration and production offices — all run by a big, sluggish army of bureaucrats. I went to work in the home office in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. Every morning a bell rang at five minutes before eight, signaling you to your desk, just like in school. At noon, everyone would be standing by the door, waiting for the lunch bell. At one, the bell would ring, signaling that lunch was over. The final bell rang at five, and they didn’t want anybody staying past quitting time.

(Get this — I once got reprimanded for staying until six).

Paranoia was rampant. What sickened me most was the waste. Management was incapable of listening to or even considering alternative ideas to save the company money or find it more oil.

“If you’re unhappy, why don’t you quit?” my wife asked me after one of many nights of hearing my complaints. I don’t think she meant it or dreamed that I would actually do it. After three years, five months, 21 days, and four hours, I did exactly what she suggested. I went over the wall.

“I want your car keys and your credit card,” the division manager told me.

I walked out of the office with all of my belongings in a pasteboard box and headed for the bus. Although I was more than a little scared, I felt as though somebody had taken their foot off my neck. We had two young daughters by then and another baby on the way. Christmas was just around the corner.

My wife was surprised when I walked into the house.

“What are you doing home at three o’clock?” she asked

“I just quit,” I said.

“Have you lost your mind?”

“No, I did what you told me to do last night,” I said. “You told me to quit if I didn’t like where I worked, so I did.”

“I didn’t mean that! I didn’t think you would actually do it.”

She paused for a minute.

“Boone, what are you going to do now?”

Someday I would challenge Big Oil, but right now I had more pressing needs. I had to make a living. I was 26 when I went out on my own in 1954, the youngest independent geologist in the Texas Panhandle. I used the $1,300 in my Phillips thrift plan as a down payment on a 1955 Ford station wagon and started out as a consultant doing well site work for $75 a day. Those days were too few. My back was against the wall. When I was doing well site work, I often slept in my car and shaved in service stations. At the end of my first year on my own, I had put together seven drilling deals in addition to my consulting work. I knew I was not going to get rich on $75 a day. But if I could put enough deals together, I could make a decent living and accumulate some equity. Maybe then I could get rich.

Two years later I formed my first oil company with two investors who put in $1,250 each for half the stock and established a $100,000 line of credit for our new company. I gave them a $2,500 note for my half. The company was called Petroleum Exploration Inc. (PEI). Then I hit the road again to find investors willing to finance a drilling program for a group of wells. Except for a few members of my family, no one gave me a prayer of succeeding. My single-minded focus gave me an edge. I always think I have an edge, but I love to be the underdog. I was going to succeed or fall on my ass.

And you know what? All those billions I’ve made? I'd give them back to do it again!

Photo: T. Boone Pickens (seated), with John O’Brien, Lawton Clark, and Wales Madden (in 1959), who were involved in Petroleum Exploration Inc.