Craig's blog

Well I made it through my first week at my new job at Tesla motors. Having been at Intuit for 15 years, many days would go by when no big new ideas came my way. There were plenty of hard problems, but I was rarely faced with new concepts. As I'm sure you can imagine, the first week at Tesla was the exact opposite. In my first meeting, it seemed like the average sentence had 3 acronyms, none of which I understood. By the end of the first day, my head was spinning. I'm taking notes, reading and studying, but I've got a long way to go.

Don't get me wrong, it was a great week. I remain extremely excited by what the company is doing, both because of the great match with my personal interests and because of what they are trying to do for the world. I'm also optimistic that I'll be able to help them in meaningful ways. But I certainly can't yet. At the moment, I'm in learning mode and am in no position to help. But by the last meeting of the week, amazingly I understood 90% of the acronyms I heard. So that's some progress. Maybe by the end of the month I'll actually add some value.