Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang: Get into people's headspace
Global tech giant Nvidia is promising to create a better work environment for its employees, building on the experiences of the company’s own top man.
At a Stanford Graduate School of Business event, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang explained the importance of having a company culture where every task is valued no matter how big or small they may appear.
“To me, no task is beneath me,” Huang said. “Because remember I used to wash dishes, and I mean I used to clean toilets.”
For Huang, his role in the company is to help guide workers in solving problems. He emphasises the importance of reasoning and learning from the knowledge and experiences of each other.
“I show people how to reason through things all the time – strategy things, how to forecast something, how to break a problem down,” the chief executive said.
Huang pointed to himself as an example, admitting that he is always willing to listen and learn from his colleagues.
“If you send me something you want me to help review, I’ll do my best and I’ll show you how I would do it,” Huang said.
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Revolutionising leadership in the workplace
In his speech, Huang admitted that what he is asking for is not easy for everybody. It takes a significant amount of emotional and intellectual energy to understand everything that is going on in workers’ minds.
“You have to at least get to their plane,” Huang said. “You have to get into their headspace and that’s really hard,”
Huang’s leadership philosophy runs opposite of what is happening in traditional company cultures. He dislikes the practice of keeping secretive information as a way to wield power within an organisation. He prefers a transparent form of leadership where direct reports are given to the CEO.
Instead of placing too much power in ineffectual leaders, Huang believes in empowering workers to excel at their roles. In fact, employee empowerment is one of the main missions of his stewardship of Nvidia.
“My main mission was to create conditions favourable for them to do their best work,” the CEO pointed out.
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Setting an example for other businesses
Nvidia is fast-becoming a top choice for people in the tech industry to work for.
In January, the chipmaker was named the second best American employer in Glassdoor’s Best Places to Work ranking. It was the fourth straight year that the company made it to the top five of the prestigious list.
To make it in the Best Places Work list, a company needs to consistently get positive reviews on Glassdoor from their own employees. The objective is to get an honest assessment of how employers treat their workers.
In the 2024 version of the rankings, an overwhelming majority (98%) of Nvidia employees approved of CEO Huang’s leadership of the company. Additionally, 94% of reviewers said they would recommend working at Nvidia to their friends.
“Nvidia is the best company you could possibly work for,” an anonymous Nvidia engineer wrote on Glassdoor.
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“Employees are basically provided with every single thing they need to be able to do their life’s work at Nvidia. I might just work here for the rest of my life and retire from here.”
Huang and Nvidia’s good leadership extends to other members of the company and not just the engineering team.
“Truly, I have never worked at a place like Nvidia,” another Nvidia employee wrote. “The culture is strong, morale is high, teams are supportive of each other and employees love their work.”
Other reviews highlighted Nvidia’s priority of hiring talent from different fields of expertise.
“Nvidia hires great people — in every discipline where we work, we have world-class experts and a deep bench,” the commenter on Glassdoor wrote. “Nvidia has a culture of