Lots of tradesmen will go "up north" into the oil fields for some hard hard labour but with incredible pay.
Most do it once or twice in their life for a couple years and come back to normal relaxed day job (although some are absolute champions and will tough it out long term).
I've always figured a job like this at Nvidia would be the equivalent of "I'm going to go up north for a while and come back".
> A former marketing employee at Nvidia told Bloomberg News that she would often attend up to 10 meetings per day — each of them involving more than 30 people.
> The meetings would be characterized by shouting and fighting, but employees put up with it because of the “golden handcuffs,” according to the ex-staffer.
Hopefully, the shouting and fighting was at least motivated by drive for the company to succeed.
There are dysfunctional places where people don't care.
There are dysfunctional places where people battle for individual advancement.
There are dysfunctional places where see their job as only doing what they're told, and, culturally, anything else (e.g., questioning, taking initiative) as improper.
But if you have a place where everyone is focused on the company succeeding, and the 'only' apparent barrier is that they're not collaborating very well (e.g., not communicating or managing information well, or a brawler is steamrolling over better ideas), that might be a relatively easy dysfunction to improve. You could start by observing a single concrete meeting that's unproductive and/or fighting, figure out the effects and why, and go from there.
> A former marketing employee at Nvidia told Bloomberg News that she would often attend up to 10 meetings per day — each of them involving more than 30 people.
> The meetings would be characterized by shouting and fighting, but employees put up with it because of the “golden handcuffs,” according to the ex-staffer.
I feel like the more important question is not the hours worked but whether these meetings useful and constructive? If not, maybe these employees could provide more value to the company and have a better work/life balance? My understanding is that generally places (including not just companies, but countries) where the expected hours are really long, much of that time spent is not productive.
"A former marketing employee at Nvidia told Bloomberg News that she would often attend up to 10 meetings per day — each of them involving more than 30 people."
Ok, so it is not real work. Of course you can attend fake meetings for 16h per day, but you cannot focus on actual development for that long.
(Unless you work on a solo project that really interests you or have significant code ownership within the company.)
> sounds like they're setting themselves up for a mass exodus of talent when the stock inevitably falls
Or even if the stock stays up. The moment those options vest they'll have to either drop an even-more astronomical options package on those workers or allow them to leave with their fuck-you money.
NVidia has had an incredibly rise in stock price. That means for anyone who joined 1.5+ years ago, they are sitting on a life-changing but unrealized gain. That means two things:
1. They're afraid of getting fired before they can cash in;
2. The company knows this so can get more "free" work out of those employees without any really direct threat. All it takes is minor tweaks to how performance reviews work and having a quota for subpar ratings; and
3. In 2 years when those gains are all paid out, a ton of people will leave and those that stay will have absolutely no fear and no motivation to do extra unpaid work because they're independently wealthy.
This pattern has played out in many tech companies. Some companies (eg Zynga) went so far as to go to employees and tell them "I'm going to fire you if you don't agree to reduce your stock compensation" [1]. In addition to being scummy, it's kinda funny considering where Zynga has ended up.
This is the thing. I don't understand how the company is going to function once all those folks become multi-millionaires. It is a really odd situation .. I don't know if something quite like it occurred. Even G, M and F had slower slopes I think in terms of stock price. Nvidia wasn't known to have the best engineers (not disrespectful but don't think it was as hard to get in as the other tech companies 4-5 years back). I heard a story that at Microsoft back in the old days, people would wear a badge saying FUIV (FU I'm vested).
The way (most) management thinks is everything is fine because attrition is low. Nevermind that your probably still losing your best people, your culture sucks, your people aren't actually productive, and the second the company hits a rough patch and their grants are underwater- everyone will leave.
The article reports that one worker has 10 meetings a day with more than 30 people in them. Even if every single person, including the good ones, stayed, that's a company that's drowning in process and politics. In my experience it's not the 10x'ers that determine success, it's how many 0.1x'ers are hanging around, sucking productivity of everyone else.
Almost like people are willing to work really hard off they face a stake in the success of something. I’ve heard too many dumb owners/execs lament that salaried workers with no stock or other skin the have don’t work hard enough. Follow the incentives, dummy.
these posts are likely press release. investors love to eat those "we can exploit workers". i bet this will be to Nvidia story on the bloomberg terminals all Monday.
also it's probably damage control because amd is reporting 15fps in AAA titles with their *integrated* gpu this week.
Investors are certainly not happy with stock dilution through the options.
Its also a make or break period for generative AI. If I was at Nvidia and owned stock options, I'd certainly give it my all to ensure Nvidia can make hay while the sun shines.
15 FPS is also irrelevant. Gaming GPUs are going to be dominated by raytracing power for the future, once you go raytracing you can't go back.
Doesn't look that bad from an "Asian work culture" perspective.
Is Nvidia more functionally organized or BU organized. From your experience, are functionally organized highly performing companies' meetings generally more passionate, while BU organized highly performing companies' meetings generally more political?
So snarky. It is just a job, a company pays people to make products that they can sell to people for more money, bcs it is necessary for their products or else. Just like you go to a supermarket and buy products, that enrich your life and satisfy your belly. I would not call this "sucking money", its just trading.
Most do it once or twice in their life for a couple years and come back to normal relaxed day job (although some are absolute champions and will tough it out long term).
I've always figured a job like this at Nvidia would be the equivalent of "I'm going to go up north for a while and come back".