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

by Tae Kim

Through these interviews, I began to understand what makes Nvidia special. Its defining characteristic is not its technological prowess, which is more a consequence than a root cause. It is not the financial resources and the new opportunities that come from a high market valuation. It is not a mystical ability to see the future. It is not luck. Rather, it is a unique organizational design and work culture that I have come to call “the Nvidia Way.” This culture combines unusual independence for each employee with the highest possible standards; it encourages maximum speed while demanding maximum quality; it allows Jensen to act as strategist and enforcer with a direct line of sight to everyone and everything at the company. Above all, it demands an almost superhuman level of effort and mental resilience from everyone. It’s not just that working at Nvidia is intense, though it certainly is; it’s that Jensen’s management style is unlike anything else in corporate America.