Nvidia employees describe their CEO Jensen Huang as a “demanding” boss, someone who is “not easy to work for.” He agrees with their assessment, admitting that he is not an easy-going boss but also defending his tough work persona.
During his April 2024 appearance on ‘60 Minutes’, Jensen Huang, 61, was told how his employees view him. CBS News correspondent Bill Whitaker, quoting Nvidia employees, said that Huang is “demanding,” a “perfectionist,” and “not easy to work for.”
Huang agreed that the adjectives describe him “perfectly.”
The Taiwan-born entrepreneur, whose chipmaker company is today worth over $2 trillion, defended his leadership style.
“It should be like that. If you want to do extraordinary things, it shouldn’t be easy,” he told Whitaker.
A video of the segment has resurfaced on the social media platform X, where it has gone viral with nearly 2 million views.
Take a look at the video below:
Huang has helmed Nvidia for over three decades, weathering market uncertainties to transform the chipmaker into a Silicon Valley success story. Nvidia is one of the world’s only four companies valued at over $2 trillion, alongside Apple, Microsoft and Alphabet.
{{/usCountry}}Huang has helmed Nvidia for over three decades, weathering market uncertainties to transform the chipmaker into a Silicon Valley success story. Nvidia is one of the world’s only four companies valued at over $2 trillion, alongside Apple, Microsoft and Alphabet.
{{/usCountry}}“He is to some degree cutthroat,” Wladislaw Rivkin, associate professor of organizational behavior at Trinity Business School, told CNBC Make It. “He is the leader of a trillion-dollar valued company and has gone through a very rough selection process because there are many tech companies which are at the trillion or billion-dollar mark.”
Huang has earlier revealed that he handles 50 direct reports at Nvidia to stay up-to-date with what's happening at the company. "The more direct reports the CEO has, the less layers are in the company," he said at the 2023 NYT DealBook Summit.