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

by Tae Kim

Most of all, the flat structure freed Jensen to spend his precious time explaining the reasoning behind his decisions at meetings instead of adjudicating turf wars. Not only did he see flatness as key to Nvidia’s strategic alignment, keeping everyone focused on the mission; he also saw it as an opportunity to develop his junior employees by showing them how a senior leader should think through a problem. “Let me reason through this. Let me explain why I did that,” Jensen said. “How do we compare and contrast these ideas? That process of management is really empowering.” Of course, employees’ constant exposure to Jensen and his decision-making process included his public dressings-down of executives and PICs. He justified those potentially painful moments as an efficiency gain for the company: offering private one-on-one feedback behind closed doors would slow him and the company down by requiring the scheduling of separate meetings, but it also deprived junior employees of a learning opportunity.