Via StockSnap on Pixabay
August 2021 - May 2022 were the hardest 10 months my family’s ever experienced.
My spouse and I had moved to Gainesville, Florida, so they could start a three-year residency at the University of Florida’s veterinary hospital. They’d picked UF to study neurology because, while vet residencies are notoriously brutal, UF had a reputation for work-life balance. We hoped this residency would be better after two years of 80-100-hour work weeks.
It wasn’t. My spouse worked just as many hours under even greater pressure. The residency required 10-12 hour days five days a week and most weekends. On-call rotations were even worse - doctors were expected to work 60-80 hours a week and come in at any hour of the night, for any length of time. You could get called in at 3 a.m. and work until 6 p.m.
When you work that much, it destroys the rest of your life. You can’t even enjoy your days off. Half your mind is still at work, and the other half is too tired to do anything fun. Your hobbies don’t bring you joy. Your friends barely see you. You start having weird physical ailments. You can barely sleep, or sleep way too much. Simple decisions become paralyzing. Remembering to take out the trash feels like astrophysics.
This memory stayed with me while reading Tae Kim’s new book The Nvidia Way. Kim recounts how a gaming peripheral maker founded in a California Denny’s became one of the most valuable companies on the planet.
The secret, according to Kim, is Nvidia’s unique culture. They communicate openly, maintain a flat organizational structure, and work hard.
Extreme commitment is critical to the Nvidia Way. Sixty-hour workweeks are expected as the bare minimum, even at junior positions. The workweek can stretch to eighty hours or more during critical periods in chip development—especially for hardware engineers—or as the result of a major and sudden change in corporate strategy, such as during the pivot to AI. (The Nvidia Way, page 241)
Co-foudner and CEO Jensen Huang exhorts Nvidia employees to work at “the speed of light.” This lets them adapt to a shifting graphics market and outrun their competitors.
So far, this culture has worked. As of this writing, Nvidia has a market cap of $3.24 trillion, just below Apple ($3.53 trillion). In a world ravenous for compute, they literally cannot sell enough graphics cards. They are wildly profitable and will continue to be for many years.
And yet, I could not help but notice the intense human cost of this success. Nvidia employees work a lot.
- Co-founder Chris Malachowsky would work all day, go home to eat with his family, then come back to the office and work late into the night.
- Head of sales Jeff Fisher once spent his entire Thanksgiving holiday on the phone dealing with a hardware manufacturing issue.
- An operations exec said they woke up daily at 4:30 a.m. and stayed on the phone until 10 p.m.
- Sales rep Derik Moore had to do a conference call on Christmas Eve.
Nvidia employees have to be “on” even in the bathroom!
Kenneth Hurley, a technical marketing engineer, was at a urinal when Jensen walked up to the one next to him.
“I’m not the kind of guy who likes to talk in the bathroom,” Hurley said.
Jensen had other ideas. “Hey, what’s up?” he asked.
Hurley replied with a noncommittal “not much,” which earned him a sidelong glance from the CEO. Hurley panicked, thinking, “I’m going to get fired because he thinks I’m not doing anything. He’s probably wondering what I’m doing at Nvidia.”
To save face, Hurley proceeded to list twenty things he was working on, from convincing developers to buy Nvidia’s latest graphics card to teaching those developers how to program new features on them.
“Okay,” Jensen replied, apparently satisfied with the engineer’s answer. (The Nvidia Way, page 81)
It’s not that I’m concerned for them—nobody’s forced to work there, and the book says employees get plenty of stock rewards—but it did make me reflect on my own career and choices. If changing the world requires this many hours, then I don’t think I want to do it.
To be frank, I am going to die someday. The average American male lives 74.8 years, and I am eight days from turning 32. Statistically, I have 42 Christmases left. I will not look back from the hospital bed and wish I’d spent more of them on conference calls.
Life is shorter than you think. That year in Florida, I met a (human) kidney doctor who worked for UF. He said he regularly had to tell people, “Sorry, your time’s up.” They would say no, that wasn’t right, they hadn’t even retired yet, they had so many plans, and he’d shrug. Their kidneys were done.
I don’t want to go out like that. I want to work as hard as I can for 40 hours a week, and then I want to go home. I want to spend time with my family.
This Christmas, I listened to a phenomenal live album, drank a nice herbal tea and watched a goofy comedy. Then, I flew to Kentucky to see my cousin get married. She snuck a bunch of us out of the reception to her suite so we could try some fancy Puerto Rican rum. We had a great time, and I would not trade that trip for anything.
I know some people feel differently. Judging by the book, Jensen derives his joy from business success. When that guy looks back on his life, he is probably thrilled with his choices. I respect and appreciate his dedication. Everybody at Nvidia who sacrificed their nights, weekends and holidays to change the world succeeded. They’ve made incredible products that I am grateful to get to use.
But I would caution anybody considering a schedule as busy as Nvidia’s. It’s so easy to sacrifice one more Saturday or one more Christmas. Those Saturdays add up, though, and before you know it, it’s years later, and you might not be happy with your choices.
If you want to dedicate your life to work, make sure it’s what you want. Don’t go out with any regrets.