Nvidia employees are turning into multi-millionaires. But there’s a catch

Employees of Nvidia Corp, led by its billionaire co-founder and CEO Jensen Huang, have a high-stress and gruelling work environment that leaves them with little time to enjoy the high pay that the graphics chip maker pays them, according to a report.
A former employee, who did not wish to be identified, told Bloomberg that working at the California-headquartered company was like being in a “pressure cooker”. The man who worked in technical support for enterprise clients at Nvidia and quit in May this year, said he was expected to work seven days a week with no offs, often as late as 1 am or 2 am.
He as well as another woman, also a former employee, revealed that tempers often flared up at Nvidia meetings where yelling, shouting and fights were common.
The woman, a marketing executive who quit Nvidia in 2022, told Bloomberg that she tolerated the company’s toxic work culture for two years because of the “golden handcuffs”. She reportedly attended as many as seven to ten meetings in a single day.
CEO Jensen Huang has 60 direct reports at Nvidia, according to the Bloomberg report. The Taiwan-born billionaire had mandated employyes to send emails to regularly to a centralised email ID, listing the five things they’re working on. Once in a while, he would respond to these emails, seeking more details or giving intructions.
Huang, 61, had said earlier this year that he prefers to “torture” his employees “into greatness” instead of firing them.
“And so it’s tongue in cheek, but people know that I rather torture them into greatness. So, I would rather torture you into greatness because I believe in you. And I think coaches that that really believe in their team, torture them into greatness. And oftentimes, they’re so close, don’t give up. They’re so close to greatness,” Huang said in an interview in June.
In the 2024 fiscal, Nvidia reported a turnover rate (percentage of employees leaving) of 2.7 per cent as compared to the compared to the semiconductor industry average of 17.7 per cent, according to the company’s annual sustainability report. This is almost half of the company’s turnover rate (5.3 per cent) the previous year.
A key factor in the low turnover rate at Nvidia is because employees get stock grants that become available after four years.
Jensen Huang co-founded Nvidia Corp. in 1993 and currently owns about three per cent of the company.
With a net worth of $40.7 billion, Huang is the 17th richest person in America and the 76th richest person in the world, according to Forbes