The worst teams to work for at NVIDIA make banking look relaxing
Investment banking jobs involve a Faustian pact in which years of youth and virility are cloaked by 80-100 hour weeks in return for six figure pay and the chance to maybe move into private equity. Technology jobs at NVIDIA entail a similar pact, in which software developers work 24/7 in return for the chance to buy themselves on-brand lime green Lamborghini and multiple vacation homes.
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Working for NVIDIA can make you very rich. The company pays in stock and its stock price has risen 10x since 2021. Even now, employees reportedly get to purchase shares at a 15% discount. The CFO has stock worth nearly $800m. Mid-level employees are reportedly retiring with $62m each.
In return, though, Bloomberg says NVIDIA people are working junior banking hours+. Seven day weeks spent working until 1am or 2am are reportedly not unusual. Meetings are allegedly out of control. It's gruelling; people can be shouty.
However, some NVIDIA teams seem to be much worse than others. Writing on forum website Blind, multiple current and former NVIDIA employees advise avoiding the autonomous vehicle team in particular, which they claim is poorly managed and chaotic.
Several others advise steering clear of jobs in the networking team which is based around Mellanox, a company acquired by NVIDIA in 2019. The Mellanox culture is aggressive, complained one insider last year. Work life balance there is poor say others.
Others have complained recently of "crushing deadlines particularly in hardware," and warned against the embedded solutions teams.
Part of the problem seems to be that NVIDIA - despite being one of the most zeitgeisty AI companies, suffers from the curse of legacy technology. New hires complain that the "old-timers" who created this technology are cruising on their enormous cushions of stock while new joiners are micromanaged into resolving the problems they created.
Although NVIDIA pays generous stock packages, there are complaints that its salaries aren't so good compared to rivals and that its food is "meh."
One insider points out that all the people at NVIDIA buying Lamborghinis and holiday homes today are over-exposed to the potential popping of the AI bubble tomorrow. If the AI hype comes to nothing, "then your savings might reduce significantly," he warns.
NVIDIA's overworked insiders will therefore be watching keenly when the company unveils its Q2 results later. If the bubble bursts, they could always join the technologists queueing to join hedge fund Millennium.
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