I’m excited to announce that I’ll be starting a new job on Monday… at Tesla Motors! They have a mission that is incredibly exciting - nothing less than trying to save the world. With lots of opportunity and potential for impact, I can’t wait to get started.
Ironically early in their “data journey”, I’ll be working with cardata initally - on the only team looking at ‘scalable’ systems - and then looking to expand our use into things like manufacturing, Superchargers, solar panels, etc. At this point, the sky’s the limit.
It was a rather longer process than I expected to land at Tesla. I wanted to make sure that the next job I took was a good fit and somewhere I would be able to thrive. In the end I had
By the end of it all, I was quite tired! The reason for such a wide net was that I didn’t really know what I wanted. So, I talked to the full range of companies, from the 10 person startup created 3 months ago, all the way up to the standard behmoths of the Bay Area.
After grinding for two years on Fineo I realized that I needed somewhere with a bit more stability, but still early enough to shape the story and doing something tangibly “good” for the world.
There were a couple of startups that were really exciting, but in the end I couldn’t be confident of my success; I didn’t want to burn out in 6 months - a bad ending for the company and myself. With a wedding coming up and lots to do, more craziness was exactly the opposite of what I needed.
Looking then at “big” companies in the area, they all fit a certain scale necessary for “big data” - much smaller and it wouldn’t make sense, much larger and they are going to be established. Telsa fit nicely in that middle ground where I wasn’t fighting culture, but still had lots of things to do. Combined with a freaking awesome mission, I had to get on board.
My biggest concern is having a commute to Palo Alto. They have a bus (that leaves really early!) and shuttles from Caltrain, so it should be OK. And then I also plan to regularly ride my bike down - at 40 miles its enough to count as a good workout!
By no means was this an easy decision, but it is one that I’m happy about in the end. It was funny to realize that towards the end of my process, I found myself continually trying to justify Tesla over other companies. Fortunately, with a helpful recruiter (yeah, I wouldn’t expect to ever say that) they met all my concerns such that a justification was easy.
I’m excited to say that I’m joining Tesla to do big data and (hopefully!) help save the world.
Oh, and if you are interested in that kind of stuff - we are hiring :)
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