Reflections on my 1st Year @ NVIDIA

Today marks my 1 year at NVIDIA! Woot woot! A few thoughts and reflections with a full year of being an NVIDIAn under my belt:

(1) NVIDIA is my 3rd 10k+ employee company I have worked at. And it is the most unique and different one yet. In the tech industry, every company claims to be a flat company: the type of company where every employee has autonomy and there is little hierarchy. Experience has shown me that there is a lot more talk than there is reality on this front. NVIDIA employs a highly matrixed and decentralized organization structure. What does this mean? In short, it means that virtually any person in the company can actually understand their entire chain of command from their role up to the CEO. It also means that the concept of borders or divisions between different parts of the company don't exist.

Why does this end up mattering? Because this type of structure promotes trust among team members, enables speed when executing and allows for anyone in the company to fix a problem regardless of where they sit organizationally. At the end of the day, everybody in the company rolls up their sleeves to get the work done. 

(2) Culture of One Team - One of the most common sayings I hear around the company is "Nobody fails alone". I didn't really get it when I joined, but I think I do now. The concept of the star athlete is what really comes to mind here and it simply doesn't work at NVIDIA. Whenever you work on a hard or challenging problem, you've got to lean on your teammates and not be afraid to ask anyone in the company for help. If you fail and you didn't ask anyone for help, then that act of failing is an individual act that goes against our culture. If you fail and you enlisted the help of others, failure is now a team act and we gave it our best shot. Don't get me wrong, we succeed a lot around here. But I feel it is important to phrase things in terms of failure because failing correctly inevitably leads to success.

(3) Communication - If you see something, say something. Nobody gets brownie points around here for storing up a bunch of information in their head and using it to their own advantage. Good writing matters. Writing effectively and sharing widely are core tenets and sending regular reports on your work and what is happening are critical elements of getting the entire company to understand and help you. It is also incredibly democratic in a place where there are a lot of employees. More eyeballs on something means more brainpower. More brainpower results in more ideas which leads to better outcomes. 

In short, year 1 at NVIDIA has been empowering and a lightspeed learning experience. Looking forward to what year 2 will bring and beyond!