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

by Tae Kim

Nvidia’s current structure stands in contrast to that of most American companies, whose CEOs have only a handful of direct reports. In the 2010s, Jensen had forty executives on his leadership team, or the “e-staff,” each reporting to him. Today the number is more than sixty.6 He has steadfastly refused to change his management philosophy, even when, for example, new board members joined Nvidia and recommended that he hire a chief operating officer to reduce his administrative burden. “No, thanks,” he would always reply. “This is a great way to make sure everybody knows what’s going on,” he would add, referring to his direct communication with much of the rest of the company.

“We always have a PIC for every project. Whenever Jensen talks about any project or any deliverables, he always wants the name. Nobody can hide behind, ‘such and such a team is working on that,’ ” former finance executive Simona Jankowski said.11 “Everything has to have a name attached to it because you have to know who’s the PIC, who’s accountable.”

So Jensen asked employees at every level of the organization to send an e-mail to their immediate team and to executives that detailed the top five things they were working on and what they had recently observed in their markets, including customer pain points, competitor activities, technology developments, and the potential for project delays. “The ideal top five e-mail is five bullet points where the first word is an action word. It has to be something like finalize, build, or secure,” said early employee Robert Csongor.14

To make it easier for himself to filter these e-mails, Jensen had each department tag them by topic in the subject line: cloud service provider, OEM, health care, or retail. That way, if he wanted to get all of his recent e-mails on, say, hyperscaler accounts, he could easily find them through a keyword search.

Every day, he would read about a hundred Top 5 e-mails to get a snapshot of what was happening within the company. On Sundays, he would dedicate an even longer session to Top 5’s, usually accompanied by a glass of his favorite single-malt Highland Park scotch whiskey. It was the thing he did for fun: “I drink a scotch, and I do e-mails.”

Driven by Jensen, Nvidia’s e-mail culture was and remains unrelenting. “One thing I learned pretty quickly is if you got an e-mail from him, you acted on it,” Douglas said.16 “Nothing stays. Nothing festers. You answer and move on it,” former head of human resources John McSorley said.17 Jensen would often respond to e-mails within minutes of receiving them and wanted a response from an employee within twenty-four hours at most. The responses had to be thoughtful and backed by hard data. Those that fell short of his high standards would get a typically sarcastic response: “Oh, is that right?”

A former senior executive at a large software company said that he was always struck by how you could talk to multiple Nvidia employees and they would never contradict one another. The message from the top was consistent, and Nvidia staff learned it and made it their own. He drew a contrast with almost every other company he’d ever worked with, whose representatives sometimes argued with each other in front of external clients.

To avoid the “equity cliff” (when engineers depart after their stock packages have fully vested over the industry-standard four years), Nvidia offers annual refresher grants. If an employee receives an “outperform” rating from his or her manager, that employee may be awarded an additional three hundred shares that vest over the next four years. In theory, employees can receive these refresher grants every year—more and more reasons to remain with the company. Another wrinkle is the TC, or “top contributor,” designation. Managers can refer an employee for special consideration to senior executives. Jensen will review the list of TC candidates and give out special one-off grants that also vest over a four-year period. Once such a grant is approved, the employee receives an e-mail from a senior executive, with Jensen copied. The subject line says “Special Grant,” authorizing the RSU grant “in recognition of your extraordinary contributions,” with a clear description of the rationale behind the award.