Nvidia’s rocketry rise in AI chip market delivered behemoth returns, creating a wave of multi-millionaires among its workforce within a short span of time. But it came with a price of having a tiring work-schedule, where employees used to work all seven days a week.
Nvidia stands undefeated in its GPU-chip market enjoying 88% market share and alluring all major tech-companies including Google, and Apple as its customers. This made the company’s stock to sky-rocket providing returns of 3,776% since 2019.
Jensen Huang, Co-founder and CEO leading the company, has adopted a controversial leadership style, pushing the employees to be CEOs of their time rather than layoffs. The workforce of Nvidia can relish a discount of 15% in the company’s stocks, which transforms the lives of many employees.
Despite being wealthy, employees are handcuffed to meet their demanding work schedule which may go even late-night and seven days a week – the golden handcuffs.
Golden handcuffs
During a fireside chat with Stripe cofounder Patric Collison, Jensen Huang quipped that he prefers to “torture employees into greatness,” hinting the Nvidia’s intense work culture.
The schedules feel tiring even if we just come to know. One employee says that they were expected to work seven day a week, with their shift ending around 1 or 2 AM. Another staff member described being regularly pulled into between 7 to 10 meetings in a single day, which would escalate into heated arguments.
Both individuals confessed that they would have departed from the company sooner if it weren’t for the requirement to wait for their stock grants to fully vest. Employees who stick to the company over four years are held with strong financial incentive, which compels the employees to stay in a high-stress environment. As of 2024, Nvidia houses 29,600 employees and in a poll of 3000 employees, 76% has a net worth of over $1 million and 36% of them possess over $20 million.
Pressure-cooker yields Diamond
Nvidia’s workforce find themselves caught in a “pressure-cooker” atmosphere to stick to the demanding tasks, intense meetings, relentless expectations and alleged micromanagement. The work-culture can be perceived either as “perseverance will yield more” or “What’s the use of money without freedom?”. But I would say, anything that spoils your health, though it brings in money would cost you more.
For all the pressures they go through results in a wealth worth of a diamond, that they even do consider of ‘semi-retirement due to their substantial wealth from stock options.
This is also the reason for a low turnover rate of Nvidia’s employees at just 2.7%, compared to the semiconductor industry average of 17.7%. Indeed, Nvidia was ranked No.2 on Glassdoor’s annual “Best Places to Work” list in 2024, marking its fourth consecutive year among the top five companies.’
How much do Nvidia’s employees earn?
According to the roles in the company, average salaries range from ₹99.3 lakhs in total compensation per year for a Sales role to as much as ₹6.1 Crores for a Software Engineering manager role at the high-end, as per levels.fyi.
Considering all the roles, employees in Nvidia earn an average of ₹45.9 lakhs, mostly ranging from ₹25 lakhs to ₹1.63 crores based on 273 profiles in India.
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