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

by Tae Kim

He soon learned why. While still working at ATI, he once drove past Nvidia headquarters around 7:00 p.m. and saw that the office was almost entirely full. His manager, who was riding with him, remarked, “Oh, they must be having an evening meeting.” Now that he was on the inside, he realized that “evening meetings” were the norm rather than the exception. He started to regularly work on weekends, something he never did at ATI. He recalls being forced to take part in a conference call on Christmas Eve to discuss a sales shortfall and what the company could do to recover the business. No personal time or day was truly his own. Still, he saw that the commitment expected of him was expected of everyone else, too, all the way up to Jensen, which made the sacrifice easier. “There was a sense of dedication and hard work that resonated through the organization,” he said. “The work ethic was contagious.”