Nvidia

I have bled green - worked for NVIDIA longer than anywhere, and I've been around a long time. I've seen it grow from tiny to huge. The growth was phenomenal until 2008 or so.

There are some great and very smart people here.

Products are good quality.

Mistakes are used to learn from.

There is a very distinct culture here: work hard and well, work hard. It's a relatively flat organization.

Politics exist, but I always felt like I could pretty much talk to anyone in the organization at any time to get things done.

Business-wise, the CEO bet the farm and lost (too late) on a lot of recent products, and is now trying to pick up the pieces. The problem is, because of previous success in the PC business, they think they can replicate that success, but revenue has been stagnant (+/- within $4B/year) for the last 5 years or so. Gross margins are high, probably because they are so cheap on spending.

I have had the pleasure of having fantastic bosses for the first phase of my career there and absolutely awful bosses more recently (unfortunately, they think they are good).

Culture in my group involves yelling occasionally. This was precipitated in the early days by the CEO and seems to be the norm and accepted. On the one hand, when it's yelling at the situation, I can take it. When it's yelling at me for no good reason other than lack of tact, it's time to consider my options elsewhere.

I used to work hard and feel good about it, as the stock was going up and it made sense. I could see my impact on the company. I used to pride myself on not being a cog in the machine, like at some other companies where you are a nameless engineer just doing your job. I really felt like I made a difference. Unfortunately, this is no longer true for me and I think for a lot of others.

People used to stay long, work hard, and feel good about it. Now I think there is resentment (for those that work long), and others just pretty much work and go home.

I'd really like to see NVIDIA succeed. I don't think it will fail, but I also don't see replication of success from the good old days.

It used to be that we'd cut our losses and move on, even when 50% through a project. I respect that – it shows balls. But when they continue to bet the farm on technology that is better but costlier than the competition, well, the revenue isn't there to grow top to bottom like it was in the PC days.

Stock price has been stagnant – doesn't that tell you that the market doesn't see growth either?

My guess is no one has invented the "next big thing" that will keep this company afloat or take it to $10B a year like Jensen predicted (how many years ago?).