Nvidia

1. Be part of a company that is paving the road to the future of computer graphics (gaming, movies, virtual reality), AI (autonomous cars and more), and high-performance parallel computing.

2. Very smart and friendly coworkers, down to earth and approachable.

3. A good mix of older, experienced people and young, energetic people.

4. Management is very technically savvy.

5. Good leadership in general; people are thanked and treated with respect.

6. Very few levels of management; leadership is very accessible.

7. Discounted cafeteria: $4-6 USD for lunch, $0-1 USD for dinner.

8. Easy to access different teams in general, with few walls.

9. Pretty good and open communication; not much is hidden. The company places a high amount of trust in people to do the right thing.

10. Stock is booming, great if you have options or other stock-based compensation.

11. Competitive base salary (total package is a bit behind the likes of Facebook and Google).

12. A lot of talent and experience in both hardware and software (especially embedded), and a generally fairly healthy balance and support in the organization between hardware, software, finance, HR, and so on.

1. It is hard for some teams and people to preserve work/life balance. Some weekend work and email checking occurs. This depends a lot on the team and person.

2. Only twice a year is the employee stock purchase plan offered. So if you join at the wrong time, you get burned and do not get to participate for six months.

3. Stock options are only selectively distributed, based generally on how well you negotiated at hire. Some people got good deals, while other people got nothing, so they receive no benefit from the stock rally.

4. Office cubes can be a bit cramped, but at least it is not an open office. One can concentrate with headphones on, and it is not too bad. It would be nice to have a bit more space and white noise, though.

5. Promotions and bonuses are only given once per year. Twice per year would be nice.

6. There is not much parking during peak times.

7. It suffers from demo feature creep and does a bit of smoke and mirrors in marketing. However, the management is aware of the issues and knows how to make real products. So this is mainly an issue in early-stage projects where a lot is in flux.

Give more stock options to more staff, especially when you bring in senior people (i.e., not college grads).

Reward everyone based on skill, not just those who are good at playing hardball on contract negotiation.

This can lead to some bad feelings later when people realize they did not get equity skin in the game on the level of others.