A tech company known for pushing its employees hard and keeping them tied to their jobs is in the spotlight again.
AI company Nvidia is an AI company that has a reputation for demanding long work hours, as much as seven days a week and as late as 2 am.
The company's owner Jensen Huang previously justified his work culture by stating: 'If you want to do extraordinary things, it shouldn’t be easy."
In saying that, Huang believes his work culture has contributed to the success of the company, a $3.1 trillion chipmaker whose semiconductors power artificial intelligence technology.
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Now, Huang has been met with controversy again as he spoke about his 'torture' approach to his employees.
In a recent interview posted across X and other social media platforms, Huang explained his approach to handling employees who aren't performing well. Instead of straight-up firing them, he would rather keep them and push them to improve.
'When you fire somebody, you’re saying, a lot of people say: "It wasn’t your fault," or "I made the wrong choice," or "there are very few jobs",' Huang responded when asked why he doesn't fire people.
'I rather improve you than give up on you...I don't like giving up on people because I think they could improve. And it's tongue in cheek but people know that I'd rather torture them into greatness [than give up on them].'
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Huang also shared a personal story about his humble beginnings where he started work cleaning toilets.
'Look, I used to clean bathrooms, and now I’m the CEO of a company. I think you can learn it. I’m pretty certain you can learn this,' he said.
'And there are a lot of things in life that I believe you can learn, and you just have to be given the opportunity to learn it.'
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Not only that but Huang feels true 'greatness does not come from intelligence.'
Instead, 'Greatness comes from character, and character isn't formed out of smart people: it's formed out of people who have suffered.'
People have taken to the popular internet forum Reddit to share their opinions.
'Yes, we need our AI programmed to believe that humans require pain and suffering,' the first user wrote.
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'What’s up with this guy? He’s like prepping workers that suffering is good. Pretty dystopian,' another pointed out.
Others have agreed with Huang's approach in that enduring hardship can lead to growth.
'Suffering is the way, everyone should be catastrophically broken at least once in their life,' one user added.