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

by Tae Kim

An operations executive claimed that Nvidia isn’t a 24/7 company, but a 25/8 one. “I’m not kidding. I wake up at 4:30 a.m., and I’m on the phone until 10:00 p.m.,” she said. “It’s my choice. It’s not for everybody.” Another product manager noted that many employees don’t want to embrace the grind and end up leaving after a few years. He himself tended to arrive at the office before 9:00 a.m. and rarely left before 7:00 p.m. Once home, he had to log on from 10:00 p.m. to 11:30 p.m. every night to talk to partners in Taiwan. “On weekends, if you could not reply to an e-mail within two hours, you had to let the team know the reason why you wouldn’t be able to respond,” he said. When he reviewed his calendar, he discovered that he had been either traveling for work or at the office for almost half of his weekends over the past year. Nvidia’s extreme work culture stems from the chief executive himself, who lives and breathes his job and looks down on anyone who isn’t as committed. “I don’t actually know anybody who is incredibly successful who just approaches business like, ‘This is just business. This is what I do from 8 to 5, and I’m going home, and at 5:01, I’m shutting it down,’ ” Jensen has said.15 “I’ve never known anybody who is incredibly successful like that. You have to allow yourself to be obsessed with your work.”