Working Until Dawn 7 Days a Week but "I Won't Quit"... Nvidia's Turnover Rate Dramatically Decreases

Jensen Huang, CEO of NVIDIA, is taking a selfie with a female fan at the IT exhibition "Computex 2024" held in Taipei, Taiwan, last June.
[Photo by Yonhap News]

Employees at Nvidia, an artificial intelligence (AI) semiconductor company, have been found to work intense hours up to dawn seven days a week. Despite this work environment, the turnover rate this year has halved compared to last year, due to high salaries and incentives.

On the 26th (local time), Bloomberg News reported through interviews with 10 current and former Nvidia employees that "many Nvidia employees have become wealthy but still experience a stressful work life," and "after the company's valuation surpassed $1 trillion (approximately 1,335 trillion KRW), the turnover rate dropped to 2.7%, half of last year's 5.3%."

A former employee, A, who worked in the technical support department for corporate clients, said, "I had to work seven days a week, often until 1 or 2 a.m.," adding, "The workload was even heavier for those in the engineering team." He compared the work environment to a "pressure cooker" and said there were frequent shouting matches during meetings. Having resigned in May, he said it was difficult to decide to leave due to the high salary level.

B, who worked in the marketing team until 2022, said, "I attended 7 to 10 meetings a day, and more than 30 people in the meetings often shouted and fought," adding, "Thanks to the golden handcuffs (incentives), I endured for two years. It was an opportunity to gain more wealth."

Last year, Nvidia's turnover rate was 5.3%, but after its market capitalization surpassed $1 trillion, the turnover rate dropped by about half to 2.7%. This is significantly lower than the semiconductor industry's overall turnover rate of 17.7%. The reason for the low turnover rate was attributed to "stock grants" (giving company shares for free). Nvidia's stock price has risen more than 38 times in five years since 2019.

Jensen Huang, Nvidia's co-founder and CEO, said in an interview with CBS, "If you want to do something special, you have to push employees hard because it is not easy work."