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Nvidia, one of tech's hottest companies, is fine with remote work

fortune.com

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Re: Nvidia, one of tech's hottest companies, is fine with remote work

#81

Post by llamajams »

hipparchus wrote: post #49

Ok, I'll bite the bullet: how do you train interns and/or junior employees in a fully remote environment? I only have two years of experience so I'm still super new, but it's something I'm confronted with this, and I just don't know how to train people in a fully remote environment. It's from little things to catching an intern who doesn't know a couple extremely handy shortcuts with tools that they are still learnin…

I have brought up a dozen or so freshies over the last thre years, with mixed results. My approach has changed since the beginning. Initially I would spend a lot of time; casual chats 1-1 and with teams to establish personal bonds, long sessions going over documents, the domain, active support and coaching over progressively harder tasks. This was not successful at all. Now, I just drop them off a cliff. Within the fist week, I have a short chat to get a feel, and throw them a non priority not too difficult task with no deadline. The ticket contains barely enough information. I add them to a few chats, point them to the docs home page and say goodbye. Based on the turnaround time and the quality of the work submitted abd how they go about seeking help I get a REALLY good gauge about their aptitude and attitued. They are either active about doing the task or they putter around and come up with excuses. Don't care much about code quality unless it's actually horrendous. This is great at catching ppl that faked their was through the interviews, the leetcode monkeys and other less desirable traits. Based on this the next task either involves a lot of collab or little to none. As and Bs get a difficult independant task, C's get an easy to medium task that needs a lot of interaction. In both cases they are "prod" issues that, the importance of the delivery and the deadline are stressed, they have to do an internal and external demo at the end. Team members are on standby for support or takeover if absolutely needed. This approach is WAY more sucessful. And stressful as well for the newb, but trial by fire seems to be the best way to get people integrated and being productive. Everything is learning on the fly, domain, process, culture, tools, everything. Compalined about not enough docs? Ok you go make the docs? Didn't like some part of the process? You make sure it changes. Didn't get enpugh support? You schedule the support call.

The biggest learning for me was that the amount of time spent coaching was inversely related to the "success rate". For those who genuinely wish to learn whatever the approach is makes little to no difference, for the others it makes a massive difference. Some hate it initially, but the consensus is that they all appreciate being a valuable contributor. Noone wants to be stuck in the back cleaning up docs or writing sorry tests for so done else's shitty code or doing wild goose chases or ,"ramping up" for months.

We have a strong team/collab culture. Everyone is "nice" the worst thats going to happen is that people leave you on read. My advice to all is to not worry about "bothering" people. Bother as many people as possible, ask all the dumb questions. You DM 10 people or post in a GC with 50ppl the same question in a minute. If I don't have the time I won't respond, but someone else will. If you need I'll stay on a call with you for hours while I do my work. So I actually think the amount of support available remotely is much more than the office, if you get over your hangups.

Struggling and being lost, wasting hours or days on the dumbest issue are all part of the process and there's no way around it, so the sooner you get comfortable with it the better. We work in domains where Google runs out of answers very quickly, the SR guys are still figuring things out and half the time noone knows what in world is happening right now. Getting on your own two feet is your responsibility.

Re: Nvidia, one of tech's hottest companies, is fine with remote work

#82

Post by penguin_booze »

In their ability to change colour on demand, those in C suite can put even the best of chameleons to shame.

If executives' enthusiasm for remote work during pandemic days were an erect phallus, employees who counted on executives' words have climactic fluid on their faces. I expect nVIDIA to be no different; it's only a matter of time.

Re: Nvidia, one of tech's hottest companies, is fine with remote work

#83

Post by lowtech8 »

hipparchus wrote: post #49

Ok, I'll bite the bullet: how do you train interns and/or junior employees in a fully remote environment? I only have two years of experience so I'm still super new, but it's something I'm confronted with this, and I just don't know how to train people in a fully remote environment. It's from little things to catching an intern who doesn't know a couple extremely handy shortcuts with tools that they are still learnin…

Hire good people. And good people want to work remote.

Re: Nvidia, one of tech's hottest companies, is fine with remote work

#84

Post by datavirtue »

Tech has always been hybrid with some people being 100% remote. I'm not sure what the point of all these articles are. Even at companies that had a butts-in-seats minimum days per week rule it was always guidance and actual compliance was left to the local manager.

I would have a problem with metric based enforcement such as we are seeing with Amazon, though. Seems like management just wants to lay down rules and have them followed.

Re: Nvidia, one of tech's hottest companies, is fine with remote work

#85

Post by datavirtue »

WanderPanda wrote: post #55
credit_guy wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A company with a good product will thrive no matter the policy A different way to say it is "If you found a gold mine, you can afford to do things others can't". 99% of companies don't sit on gold mines like Nvidia.

It‘s like unions squeezing out more than market rates, it eventually renders the companies uncompetitive

Then companies should lobby to make unions required.

Re: Nvidia, one of tech's hottest companies, is fine with remote work

#86

Post by tverbeure »

rnikander wrote: post #63
credit_guy wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A company with a good product will thrive no matter the policy A different way to say it is "If you found a gold mine, you can afford to do things others can't". 99% of companies don't sit on gold mines like Nvidia.

What is Nvidia's gold mine? They don't make their own chips, right? Doesn't that mean that other companies can quickly catch up, if they are even behind?

What does Microsoft make? You download bits over a wire and store them on your personal SSD. They don’t make SSDs so it should be trivial for other companies to quickly catch up.

For the sake of argument, let’s reduce Nvidia (my employer but I don’t speak for them) to just a silicon vendor.

You’re not only ignoring the work of thousands who design the stuff that goes on that silicon, the billions of $ in R&D, you’re also dismissing the decisions about what to put in that design, way before other people do it. Some of those decisions were made years before the actual implementation started. It happens to be something a few people at Nvidia are very good at.

Re: Nvidia, one of tech's hottest companies, is fine with remote work

#87

Post by endur »

hipparchus wrote: post #49

Ok, I'll bite the bullet: how do you train interns and/or junior employees in a fully remote environment? I only have two years of experience so I'm still super new, but it's something I'm confronted with this, and I just don't know how to train people in a fully remote environment. It's from little things to catching an intern who doesn't know a couple extremely handy shortcuts with tools that they are still learnin…

Not sure about intern, but I've onboarded a lot of new people and I love it. I just take 1-3 hours a day and have them share their screen and work on their task.

Once they're comfortable, the sessions turn from a pairing session to a planning session that doesn't last as long, and with a few 10 minute checkins.

Eventually the person ramps up. You just need management to carve out time for this so you aren't overloaded, and you need to make it clear that the person isn't interrupting you, it is part of your job to help them, even being proactive and asking people if they want an extra pair of eyes for those who don't feel comfortable asking for help when they need it

Re: Nvidia, one of tech's hottest companies, is fine with remote work

#88

Post by datavirtue »

ejb999 wrote: post #41
artemonster wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am perfectly fine with that, what are you trying to say with this?

Do you want to compete with people who are just as smart or smarter than you, probably speak multiple languages, and are willing to work for 5-10% of what you get paid? pretty sure that is what the OP is trying to say. Some will thrive, many will not.

I have worked with a lot of people who would smoke me on an aptitude test but there is often a littany of reasons you wouldn't want them anywhere near your development team.

In most cases they hang at average because what we are doing is just CRUD and they have little initiative to dive deep into requirements refinement, product innovation, mentorship and other things requiring business acumen or outreach.

Nevermind that some of them are just grumpy assholes high on pedantry.

Re: Nvidia, one of tech's hottest companies, is fine with remote work

#89

Post by _cenw »

ethanbond wrote: post #36
_cenw wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe that's a small part, but even if you look internationally, 87% of CEOs in the 2023 CEO KPMG poll want return to the fiefdo-- office. https://kpmg.com/xx/en/home/media/press-releases/2023/09/ceo...

Do similar tax breaks not exist outside the US? Seems like a sensible thing for the municipality to provide and for businesses to accept, in general.

At least none I'm aware of that are bound to occupancy.

Re: Nvidia, one of tech's hottest companies, is fine with remote work

#90

Post by datavirtue »

candiddevmike wrote: post #20
lvl102 wrote: post #8

Why are companies so hellbent on asking their workers to waste hours in commute? WFH hurts people with “soft” skills the most. MBA types.

I like the "privilege for me, none for thee" theory: executives have typically always worked wherever. Suddenly giving that privilege to others upsets the natural order. The people under you aren't supposed to be your equals. You as an executive are supposed to jet around the country/world into offices full of smiling faces who will worship the ground you walk on.

This. Management should be screened phsycologically for toxic self-centered tendencies and treatment provided.
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