news

한어Русский языкEnglishFrançaisIndonesianSanskrit日本語DeutschPortuguêsΕλληνικάespañolItalianoSuomalainenLatina

As the most successful company in the AI ​​boom, Nvidia's stock price has soared 3,776% since 2019, which has also caused the company's employees to become worth a lot of millionaires. However, some media reported that Nvidia employees are still in a state of "having money but no time to spend it". The tight working hours and high pressure make them have no time to enjoy the rich life brought by wealth.

Bloomberg News interviewed 10 Nvidia employees who requested anonymity, and some said that Nvidia founder and CEO Huang Renxun has established an expectation that promotes hard work and overwork, and the company's management structure is chaotic, with a manager potentially having dozens of direct reports. Huang Renxun previously said he prefers to "torture them until they become excellent" rather than fire employees like competitors do.

A former employee who worked in technical support for enterprise customers said he was required to work seven days a week, often until 1 or 2 a.m. He said many of his former colleagues, especially members of the engineering team, worked even longer hours. He described the work environment as a pressure cooker, but the generous compensation package made it difficult for him to leave. He left in May and requested anonymity so that he could speak candidly about the company.

Another former marketing employee who left in 2022 said she often attended 7 to 10 meetings a day, each with more than 30 people, during which there were often arguments and shouting. But she said she endured it for two years, also because of the good pay.

Nvidia declined to comment for this story.

Nvidia has not had much trouble retaining employees in recent years, in part because its stock awards are typically vested over four years, which incentivizes employees to stay to get their full compensation package. According to Nvidia's 2024 Sustainability Report, the company's employee turnover rate was 5.3% in 2023, but after the company's market value exceeded $1 trillion, this turnover rate was almost halved to 2.7%. In comparison, the employee turnover rate of the entire semiconductor industry is much higher, at 17.7%.

Analysts believe that the phenomenon of "lying down and waiting for stocks to mature" is very common in the technology industry, but this phenomenon does not exist in Nvidia. A current employee said that the practice of lying down and waiting for stocks to mature will make employees incompatible with others in the company, and those who try to do so have become the target of internal criticism.

According to a former employee, at a staff meeting late last year, employees complained to Huang that some of their colleagues were in a "semi-retired" state.

One former engineering employee said those who have been with the company for nearly a decade should have accumulated enough wealth to retire, but many haven’t done so because they still have millions of dollars waiting for them when the next stock award comes due.

Media reports say Huang has 60 direct reports and he doesn't have time for red tape, detailed PowerPoint presentations or one-on-one meetings. He personally gets involved in seemingly insignificant decisions, such as the selection of photos for marketing campaigns. Huang is known for requiring Nvidia employees to regularly send a list of five things they are working on to a centralized mailbox. Huang sometimes responds directly to these emails, asking for more details or issuing instructions.

Huang said his leadership style was influenced by facing “real adversity” while running Nvidia for more than three decades. He told employees he was pushing them to do their life’s work. “If you want to do extraordinary things, it shouldn’t be easy.”

Most employees appear to approve of Huang’s unusual leadership style. Huang’s approval rating on job search site Glassdoor is 97%, higher than his peers at Alphabet Inc. (94%), Apple Inc. (87%), Meta Platforms Inc. (66%) and Amazon.com Inc. (54%).

A previous article in Wall Street Journal stated that Nvidia will announce its second-quarter results after the market closes on August 28th, Eastern Time (August 29th, Beijing Time). Wedbush said that this event may be the "most important" event in the technology industry in many years.

Analysts generally expect the company's revenue for the new quarter to be $28.67 billion, a year-on-year increase of 112.2%. Although this is a slowdown compared to the growth of more than 250% in the same period last year, the growth is still strong, and earnings per share are expected to be $0.64.

Despite the recent cooling of AI investment enthusiasm, Wedbush remains firmly optimistic about Nvidia. Matt Bryson, an analyst at the agency, said that the $1 trillion AI spending "wave" that it had previously predicted is underway, and technology companies are still in the early stages of investing in AI hardware.

HSBC is also optimistic about Nvidia. On August 21, HSBC analyst Frank Lee raised Nvidia's target price from $135 to $145 and maintained a buy rating. Lee believes that Nvidia will continue to grow due to continued strong demand for AI GPUs, and "product roadmap delays will have limited impact on earnings."

HSBC expects Nvidia's second-quarter sales to reach $30 billion, exceeding the company's guidance and market expectations of $28 billion and $28.6 billion.