Employees at Nvidia Corp., led by billionaire co-founder and CEO Jensen Huang, work in a stressful and grueling work environment that leaves them little time to enjoy the high salary the graphics chip maker pays them, a report says.

A former employee who asked not to be identified told Bloomberg that working at the California-based company was like a “pressure cooker.” The man, who worked in technical support for enterprise customers at Nvidia and quit in May of this year, said he was expected to work seven days a week without a break, often until 1 or 2 a.m.

He and another woman, also a former employee, said Nvidia meetings often became heated, with shouting, screaming and fights commonplace.

The woman, a marketing executive who left Nvidia in 2022, told Bloomberg she tolerated the company’s toxic work culture for two years because of the “golden handcuffs,” and reportedly attended as many as seven to 10 meetings in a single day.

What is Jensen Huang’s working style?

CEO Jensen Huang has 60 direct reports at Nvidia, according to a Bloomberg report. The Taiwanese-born billionaire had instructed his employees to regularly send emails to a central email address listing the five things they were working on. Every now and then, he would respond to these emails, asking for more details or giving instructions.

Huang, 61, said earlier this year that he preferred to “torture his employees into greatness” rather than fire them.

“It’s not entirely serious, but people know I’d rather torture them to peak performance. So I’d rather torture you to peak performance because I believe in you. And I think coaches who really believe in their team torture them to peak performance. And a lot of times they’re so close, don’t give up. They’re so close to peak performance,” Huang said in an interview in June.

Nvidia employee turnover rate significantly lower than industry average

In fiscal year 2024, Nvidia reported a turnover rate (percent of employees leaving the company) of 2.7 percent, compared to the semiconductor industry average of 17.7 percent, according to the company’s annual sustainability report. This is almost half the company’s turnover rate (5.3 percent) in the previous year.

A key factor in Nvidia’s low turnover rate is that employees are given stock grants that vest after four years.

Jensen Huang co-founded Nvidia Corp. in 1993 and currently owns about three percent of the company.

With a net worth of $40.7 billion, Huang is the 17th richest person in America and the 76th richest person in the world, according to Forbes.