Very succinct summary - with the contrast (from an investor perspective) magnified by the fact that Nvidia has stable management that has delivered over a number of years, compared to Intel's untested CEO and recent history of significant mis-steps.
I'd expand this further to say Nvidia has an enthusiastic, highly-charismatic CEO who literally has groupies (e.g., when you see him at conferences.) For a big-time CEO, he is also surprisingly nice and approachable -- I've now interacted with him on three separate occasions. It makes me like him, his company, what he does.
I realize that is touchy-feely but I wonder how common this sentiment is.
I realise I did Nvidia a dis-service as Jen-Hsun and team are obviously much, much more than just 'stable'.
Never met him, but seems very impressive and approachable - how many CEOs would give a talk to students sitting on the steps of a university entrance? [1]
Just to add though that having groupies is not necessarily a positive for investors!
He definitely seems approachable. Someone I knew from school interned at nvidia and supposedly he hosted a party at his house for the interns (possibly just PhD interns) and let people rev one of his fancy cars
Oracle also threw us a party as new hires at Mark Hurd's "house" (party villa) in Atherton. HR and all of the top dogs were there except for Larry and the Board of course. It was a nice gesture but he had a lot of security combing the house at all times and we weren't allowed to bring our phones even.
Definitely a well intentioned gesture but as always in SV corporate world, just becomes weirder by the minute :)
was an intern at nvidia. He's very approachable and all interns are invited to his huge ass california house. I saw came out of a meeting and just said hi to him. He's pretty much an engineer just like everyone except he's a CEO and he doesn't have that douchebag vibe like most tech CEOs are.
As someone trying to start a company of my own, I really enjoyed that talk he gave on the steps, where he talked about how nvidia was born and grew up. Highly motivating. In fact I curate such entrepreneur talks.
Those are his personalities, but much more important I think is that Jensen is actually a product CEO. A Product person would care about your product beyond it is just selling well. Not something could be said about Intel CEOs.
Dr Lisa Su is a product CEO as well. She had a much tougher time with AMD's debt and lack of resources, but still manage to pull things off. And small Fun Fact. Jensen and Dr Lisa Su are actually family relatives.
I think they are both interesting in being both product focused and having a deep understanding of the technology - which is a fairly unusual and a very powerful combination.
Agreed on the management. Regarding Intel’s CEO, Bob Swan is a finance guy with no history or background in semiconductors. It remains to be seen whether someone with no real background in technology or in the semiconductor industry can turn things around at Intel.
Apparently his current strategy is to just cut costs like craz-, I mean, like every CEO who was once a CFO. I know driver developers who work there and are stuck with old broken laptops of previous generations because there's no budget (they call it BTI) to upgrade. No dogfoodin for them. Even the previously free fruits are now just one per day per employee.
perks are very very hard to take away. THe lower morale, and in many cases cause the best employees to leave, not because of the actual perk, but because of what that means - That the company doesn't value its employees.
I agree, I've seen many companies cut perks and yet not save any money, they just reduce morale.
> but because of what that means - That the company doesn't value its employees.
reducing perks is also a danger sign that a company is in a death spiral. If the company is to the point where it's worrying about $200 a week in fruit across N thousands employees then that can be indicative of other internal problems
It's also very indicative at this time, during pandemic about those companies chopping regular employees pay versus not doing anything to top line C suite.
Many companies reduced pay by 10%-20% or stopped 401k match or even pay raise when C suite still made profits from recent stock moves.
If the lunchroom is like the orphanage in Oliver Twist, and you have 12 inch VGA monitors, well, that's just the way it is.
At another company, if one day you notice that the coffee in the break room is no longer organic, even if it's of good quality, and the string cheese is only restocked twice a day instead of three times, that's a bad sign. Somebody is trying to save money. That may not mean the company is in trouble but it's a sign something isn't as good as it once was.
I've always personally envisioned AMD's graphics driver team as a bunch of underdogs pulling off serious wizardry on a shoestring budget and still being criticized by the public for having any bugs at all.
