Is Your Team Too Comfortable to Win: Lessons from NVIDIA

There's a new article from Business Insider about NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang being concerned about employees at his company getting too comfortable, and slipping into "semi-retirement mode". This feeling is also supported by the company's commitment to its employees: the last formal job cuts and layoffs at Nvidia were 15 years ago.

So what does "too comfortable to win" mean in NVIDIA's case? Here are some bits from insiders, who talked to BI:

• in NVIDIA it's more difficult to get fired than to get hired.
• there's little competitive pressure from other big companies like Amazon or Microsoft.
• middle managers at Nvidia make $1 million per year.
• employees who have been with the company for a while have enjoyed all the benefits of the company's growth. Their nest eggs grew 1,200% during the last five years, and almost 12,000% if they stayed with the company for over 10 years.

Last but not least, the fact that NVIDIA is winning and continues to do so with every new hype cycle, and enjoys the lead position for so many years makes the job of your average manager a little less challenging.

Compensation 101 states: "Incentives shape behaviors". In this situation, the big question for NVIDIA is what kind of behavior do you want your employees to adopt?

The article says that Jensen Huang had two things to say to his team members:

• he explained that those working within the green team must see the job as a “voluntary sport”, appealing to passion, prestige, and taking pride in their work.
• suggested senior staff should act like a CEO of their own time, in an adult, responsible way.

If you translate it into plain English it would say something like "Do your job!"

NVIDIA's case serves as a great example of some of the dangers of a strong employee-centric culture. Having 98% approval on Glassdoor might not be such a good thing. Appealing to incentives and motivations outside the realm of pure comp , hiring hungry people, and launching new exciting initiatives might be some of the things that NVIDIA is going to try in the future. After all, the best motivations exist beyond pure compensation.

Source: Business Insider, Tom's Hardware