| ▲ | Conscat a day ago |
| I really hope they don't bring in someone external. Nvidia has a unique and special work culture that should be preserved by someone inside. |
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| ▲ | dofm a day ago | parent | next [-] |
| I think I remember reading Huang had something like 60 direct reports, team-of-rivals style? Very few people will ever have got close to taking over and the CFO might only have a few months of her colleagues tolerating her getting the job. It may take someone from the outside coming in, saying, fuck no, we're going to have a little hierarchy, and dealing with it, because they don't have their own internal loyalties and friendships to ruin. |
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| ▲ | fidotron a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| What's so special about their work culture? |
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| ▲ | Conscat a day ago | parent | next [-] | | Among other things, the distaste for intense scrutinization of productivity, the extremely deep involvement of the CEO in all facets of the business, and intent to distribute profit to employees as much as possible (something Jensen insisted on in company wide meetings a lot) to name a few big ones. | | |
| ▲ | cashsterling 21 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | 60 direct reports and the amount of time Jensen travels and was at conferences and on TV mean "extremely deep involvement in all facets of the business" (or in much of anything) is not possible. I don't care if Jensen is superhuman... there are only 24 hours in a day and he has to sleep at least 4-6 of those. The remaining 18 hours is simply not enough time for anyone to get deeply involved in more than few focused areas at any one time. On the flip-side... some CEO's with technical backgrounds like it to seem like they are intimately involved in crucial technical brainstorming, invention, and design sessions. The reality is, in almost all cases, the hard and deeply-innovative work was done by a group of subject matter experts (who had the time and expertise to get extremely deeply involved) before the CEO ever stepped foot in a meeting room on the topic. The meeting is there to make the CEO feel like they were deeply involved and win their buy-in for the decision that has already been made. Edit: Jensen is one of the all-time great tech CEO's ... not trying to cast shade on him. I have made a lot of money off nVIDIA over the last 10+ years and think they are worse off without him. | |
| ▲ | fidotron a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > the distaste for intense scrutinization of productivity Do you mean a lack of KPIs driving HR decisions? | | |
| ▲ | Conscat 17 hours ago | parent [-] | | HR essentially reviews us once at the end of every year. It is primarily our managers who oversee our productivity, and they're all too busy to micromanage anyone (and discouraged from it anyways). There are no quarterly reviews, no regularly scheduled layoffs, no extremely deep management hierarchies, etc. Compared to Google, Amazon, or Meta, we have a huge amount of freedom as well as very open insight into most of what other teams are doing on Slack. I follow several developer Slack channels for software I was a fan of prior to onboarding. I read online that there isn't a standard hiring procedure, but in my interviews they didn't give me esoteric coding puzzles, they mainly wanted to discuss computers and let me yap about my interests. The whiteboard problems were trivial. |
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| ▲ | cyanydeez a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | so, I assume you don't believe Huang violated export controls and didn't cause NVIDIA to have heavy liabilities both from government oversight and from the circular financing. | | |
| ▲ | Conscat a day ago | parent [-] | | I have no idea whether he violated export controls. It sounds plausible, but there's no evidence to this yet as far as I am aware. I suspect he may be stepping down out of shame for his actions, especially since his children have roles in the company, but I have no insight into his mind or personal life. | | |
| ▲ | cyanydeez 19 hours ago | parent [-] | | So, he was either complicit or ignorant. It's amusing how people mentally backflip through the dots like they're unwilling to do any mental math that might shatter the soothing tail of people just being mere happenstance and human rather than some power above others. I think you should read more reports on both the circular financing and the smuggling of chips into China. Or the evidence of the Chinese models being trained on blackwell chips. All the stars are there, either he's complicit or ignorant. Choose which you're asking to lead you. |
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| ▲ | empath75 a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The CEO is very hands-on. | | | |
| ▲ | codemk8 a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Speed of light | | |
| ▲ | saturn8601 a day ago | parent [-] | | Someone else read the NVIDIA book huh? What an eye opening book. I knew of NVIDIA for the majority of my life but I had NO idea how much they really achieved and what they persevered against. Its insane. After internalizing how they operated, they are screwed without Jensen. |
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| ▲ | calvinmorrison a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | they flirt with chinese models not just american ones | | |
| ▲ | bilbo0s a day ago | parent [-] | | Yeah, I feel like you have to kind of be careful about "culture". Sure, "culture" can be good. It can also be bad sometimes. Depending on what's going on inside NVidia, you may need someone to come in and let everyone know in no uncertain terms that NVidia is neither frat/sorority house, nor a swinger's party. Love the innovation. But we can't really have the rest of it. For better or worse, NVidia has become a place where the FBI is watching. Probably not fair, but that's just the way it is. In that kind of situation, some actions start to cast suspicion on people who may have nothing to do with any of these "culture" based excesses. | | |
| ▲ | Conscat a day ago | parent [-] | | There is misogyny in the Slack, sure. Let's not forget they still intend to release a product named Feynman. When this was announced, some women (including myself) complained, and this mostly fell on deaf ears except for some man who said like "I don't know anything about this but my friends used to be his neighbors and they liked him" then disappeared when a lady scrutinized him defending another man he knows nothing about. I've also been treated like a sexual object by several colleagues outside of work settings. But at least our CEO never said we need more masculine energy on Joe Rogan's show, and he installed a lot of powerful women in the C suite and board of directors. |
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| ▲ | hvs a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Everyone dates the CEO. | | | |
| ▲ | egeozcan a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | Nobody knows where it's appropriate to put their chip in. |
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| ▲ | riedel a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > Haas [...] worked at Nvidia for about seven years more than a decade ago, and still has a strong relationship with both Huang and some members of the company’s board. |
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| ▲ | imimayj1337 a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| doesn't the article say he worked at nvidia for 7 years? |
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| ▲ | Scoring6931 a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| For what it's worth, the work culture at Arm is excellent for the most part. |
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| ▲ | saturn8601 a day ago | parent [-] | | Rare was a legendary game publisher in the UK owned at the time by the Stamper brothers (some of the richest people in the UK). They developed a culture of people working horrendous hours under immense pressure and entire teams quitting after a game release. However despite that they would release game after game that would become cult classic and historic. Furthermore the teams that would quit would often have the skills to develop excellent game studios on their own. Microsoft buys them in 2002, institutes "work life balance" and the historic magic that they were known for completely vanishes to the point where even Microsoft having dumped endless amounts of money loses hope. I don't think they have released a single historic title on Microsoft platforms since they were acquired 24 years ago. There is no such thing as a free lunch in life. If you want to be top 1% you have to make sacrifices. While I feel for the devs as I am one as well, I must also feel bad for the current people to be in a position where fans once clamored for every new title transitioning to the public accepting the greatness is gone. If you read into NVIDIA's history you'll know how much Jensen set the culture and enforced it. | | |
| ▲ | Scoring6931 10 hours ago | parent [-] | | That's fair. Not everyone wants to devote their life to work though. Everyone at some point realises how short life can be. | | |
| ▲ | saturn8601 an hour ago | parent [-] | | Oh, absolutely. I'm not saying that this is the only path. Neither am I saying that other paths are bad. Every person has to decide for themselves what their values are. I'm sure many people have left NVIDIA over the years. There are even some very famous stories in their biography books of famous engineers going back to the beginning who had to finally decide to walk away from it all. A company is just a collection of human beings with all their amazing skills, but all of their blind spots. I just fear that this company may not be able to be the same anymore and most people won't realize why. |
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| ▲ | FLeXMurphy a day ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| This is a company takeover. |
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| ▲ | saturn8601 15 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | The company will be a zombie that will skimp by for a while until it doesn't. Who would really want that? | |
| ▲ | AnimalMuppet a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | Because they replace the CEO? That seems like a bit of an overreaction... | | |
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| ▲ | a day ago | parent | prev [-] |
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