Nvidia Engineer Explains Why Employees Do not Discuss About Fairness

• Justin Fung, a senior engineer at Nvidia, says staff do not speak about their fairness’s value.
• He stated in an interview with “Codesmith” that Nvidia is basically made up of long-time staffers.
• Fung stated he landed his personal position by creating a distinct segment set of abilities.

Nvidia remains to be staffed largely by the “previous guard” — they usually’re not paying a lot consideration to the corporate’s current rise to reputation.

So says Justin Fung, a senior engineer on the firm, who would not consider exterior curiosity is having a lot of an impact on Nvidia’s tradition.

“Individuals do not actually speak about how a lot their fairness is value, as a result of they have been by no means actually there for the fairness,” Fung stated in an interview with the “Codesmith” podcast. “They actually simply preferred what they have been doing.”

Nvidia has gained fame as one of many main corporations driving the AI growth, however earlier than that, regardless of having fun with comparatively constant success within the GPU house, it wasn’t a family title.

“It is a actually fascinating firm as a result of it solely grew to become well-known within the final 5 years,” Fung stated. The preliminary broader spark of curiosity from the skin world, he added, got here due to the gold rush on crypto.

“Individuals realized that you could possibly mine Bitcoin utilizing these computer systems,” he stated. “So, that was step one into the general public consciousness — after which the following huge one was clearly AI. Individuals found out that you could possibly run these neural networks on these GPUs, and that despatched it to the stratosphere.”

With its explosion in reputation has come a corresponding spike in worker compensation — with Nvidia’s median wage surpassing $220,000 as of 2024. For Fung, having a task at Nvidia represented a turnaround in his funds.

“All people is aware of the fairness, the inventory has risen exponentially during the last couple of years,” Fung stated. “I am in a really comfy place in comparison with the place I was.”

Fung stated Nvidia would not have excessive turnover, so lots of his coworkers are holdovers from when the corporate was primarily related to the gaming trade. They’re lifers who joined — and stayed — largely due to their ardour for the work.

“Lots of people have been working there earlier than this firm was well-known, they usually’d make gaming rigs,” Fung stated. “Lots of people that come from that period are very humble, simply from a earlier era of know-how.”

In reality, until it is intern season, Fung stated youthful staff are a comparatively uncommon sight.

“All people’s tremendous good and I really like all my co-workers, however I do not assume the turnover is as excessive, so you do not see loads of youthful millennials or Gen Z individuals there,” he stated.

In contrast to lots of its friends within the tech subject, Fung stated Nvidia by no means actually developed a “startup” tradition. As a substitute, he added, CEO Jensen Huang’s imaginative and prescient for the corporate has remained comparatively constant since its inception.

“Nvidia, regardless of being as common because it was, by no means actually had the tradition of being a startup — say Airbnb or Snapchat — the place there’s loads of younger individuals having enjoyable and doing work on the identical time,” Fung stated.”

And in contrast to different huge names in tech like Google or Fb, Nvidia is not within the enterprise of hiring “generalists” and plugging them in wherever they match, Fung stated. As a substitute, they’re typically in search of individuals with hyper-specific skillsets.

“I actually solely bought the place although, as a result of my alignment, my background, was like completely aligned with the position,” Fung stated. And I’ve seen lots of people apply to Nvidia who weren’t as fortunate.”

Nvidia did not reply to a request for remark by Enterprise Insider previous to publication.