Inc.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s billion-dollar work ethic is fuelled not by ambition but by fear, driving him to work every single day, holidays included. However, as Gen-Z rejects burnout culture, science and shifting workplace norms are challenging the myth that endless grind equals greatness.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang Says His Secret Fear Is Going Bankrupt
Author: Kit Eaton
“All work and no play…” is how the age-old saying about overwork begins, and though that ethos made Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang a billionaire, it’s something that Gen-Z workers, who prefer to protect their mental health, take to heart much more than their older age cohorts. Huang, born in 1963, is a Baby Boomer—and this might be why Huang admitted in a recent episode of the Joe Rogan Experience podcast that he works each and every day of the week, and on holiday days. All of them.
Huang said that what drives him forward isn’t the quest for success, as one might expect of the leader of one of the most valuable companies in human history — last month the AI chip maker was the first company ever to reach a market capitalization of $5 trillion. Instead Huang insisted that fear drives him: he said that he’d used the phrase “30 days from going out of business” for 33 years. That feeling “doesn’t change,” he said, “the sense of vulnerability, the sense of uncertainty, the sense of insecurity — it doesn’t leave you.”
What he fears is that everything could all go away, that all that success could disappear in a flash, which he acknowledged is “exhausting” to the point that he’s “always in a state of anxiety.” This fear also seems to compel the chip executive to work every day of the week, including every holiday. Both of Huang’s children also work at Nvidia, and both work every day as well. Considering he defines a holiday as being able to hang out with his kids, you may imagine that Huang considers working with them quite a boon.
Huang also brushed all of this off with a slightly glib statement about his work ethic: “I was born with the work gene, the suffering gene,” he insisted. He also said that he has a “culture of staying super alert,” but noted that there’s “no easy way of being alert except for paying attention. I haven’t found a single way of being able to stay alert without paying attention. And so, you know, I probably read several thousand emails a day.” He starts this onerous task at 4 a.m., every day.
Huang really seems to take the notion of “inbox zero” to the max, but he also seems to be pushing himself to almost inhuman levels of effort to keep on top of all of Nvidia’s business. His work habits go beyond the “996” work ethic that has people working from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. six days a week—a practice that begin in China’s pressure cooker business climate and has now apparently spread to Silicon Valley startups.
Huang’s thinking on work hours is echoed by people like Gen-Z entrepreneur Emil Barr, who’s behind the successful Ohio-based social media marketing company Step Up Social, and who hit the headlines this summer for insisting that Gen-Z’s preference for better work-life balance and shorter work weeks is actually a kind of “trap” that may keep Gen-Z’s workers “comfortably mediocre.”
But there’s plenty of evidence that Huang, Barr, and CEOs who work long hours in the office and who press their workers to follow the same thinking are wrong. Science shows that working a 40-hour work week may actually make you better at your job because you’re not so worn out that you miss key facts or events. Further research makes the case that if you work over 40 hours consistently, you may actually be wasting much of the extra time being unproductive. In 2017, scientists determined that 40 hours is actually too much time to spend at work for peak efficiency. Meanwhile the push for a four-day work week has been going on for decades, and has gotten a modern twist with suggestions by some AI hawks that powerful AI tech may help make a new working regimen a widespread reality, since it boosts worker efficiency so much.
There’s plenty to ponder if your company culture includes working much longer hours than the typical 9 to 5. Not least the fact that Gen-Z, the generation now entering the workforce (and managerial roles) in ever-increasing numbers, really doesn’t like working the 9-to-5 grind, and would much prefer alternative, flexible, shorter working hours.
Credits: TCA, LLC.