Nvidia's employees are becoming millionaires while enduring grueling seven-day office shifts, making employees at rival companies like Google and Meta jealous.
An employee at Nvidia, the AI chip maker whose stock price has soared this year and made it one of the world's most valuable companies, used Blind, an app that allows tech workers to post anonymously, to answer a question a Google employee had asked an Nvidia engineer: “How rich are you guys?”
“We bought a $100,000 family car with cash so we didn't have to think about it,” the Nvidia employee wrote on the social media app.
“It really depends on the level,” he wrote, adding that their net worth is “only” around $3 million, but that they “are not even entitled to 3M yet and are very blessed.”
In response, employees at rival technology companies, including Silicon Valley's most prestigious, Google and Meta, have expressed envy.
“The more I hear about Nvidia employees and their wealth, the more jealous I get,” a Meta employee wrote on the Blind app.
A Meta employee complained, “Some people work just a few years to build generational wealth, but I have to work forever to retire comfortably.”
Another Meta employee wrote to Blind that their neighbor, who joined Nvidia as an entry-level engineer five years ago, is now worth $20 million.
An employee of Snap Inc., another tech rival, wrote to Blind that he and his wife, 32, are worth $14.8 million.
But compared to his “old friends” at Nvidia, “each of them has over $25 million in assets.”
“This is crazy,” a Snap employee wrote to Blind.
Speaking about his newfound wealth, the Nvidia employee ended his post with, “Thank you, JHH.”
“JHH” stands for Jensen “Jensen” Huang, NVIDIA co-founder and CEO, who has been credited with building the company into one of the world's leading makers of semiconductors used to power artificial intelligence.
Under Hwang's leadership, Nvidia's stock price has risen more than 3,700% over the past five years.
Huang also boasts that he is reluctant to fire employees, preferring instead to “make them suffer in order to make them great.”
Some current and former Nvidia employees have described a high-pressure environment that required seven-day weeks, long hours and frequent yelling matches and fights in meetings.
But the employees are determined to fight it all because of the “golden handcuffs” the company imposes on them in the form of a stock compensation package that vests after four years, meaning that once the vesting period is over, employees are free to exercise their stock options.
The Post has reached out to Nvidia for comment.
