The Nvidia Way: Jensen Huang and the Making of a Tech Giant

by Tae Kim

“Over the years, I realized what was happening, how people protect their turf and they protect their ideas. I created a much flatter organization,” Jensen said. His antidote to the backstabbing, to the gaming of metrics, and to political infighting is public accountability and, if needed, public embarrassment. “If we have leaders who are not fighting for other people to be successful and [who are] depriving opportunities to others, I’ll just say it out loud,” he said. “I’ve got no trouble calling people out. You do that once or twice, nobody’s going to go near that again.”

But among all the former Nvidia employees I talked to, it was hard to find a dissenter. They all reported that the company was largely free from the internal politics and indecisiveness typical in large organizations. They mentioned how difficult it was to adjust to working at other companies where direct, blunt communication is rare and there’s far less urgency to get things done. And they described how Nvidia not only empowered them, but also required them to fulfill their professional calling, as a necessary condition of employment.

“People with very high expectations have very low resilience. Unfortunately, resilience matters in success,” he later said. “Greatness is not intelligence. Greatness comes from character.”17 And character, in his view, can only be the result of overcoming setbacks and adversity. To Jensen, the struggle to persevere in the face of bad, and often overwhelming, odds is simply what work is. It is why, whenever someone asks him for advice on how to achieve success, his answer has been consistent over the years: “I wish upon you ample doses of pain and suffering.”