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

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

#131

Post by nojvek »

IMO the biggest shift with remote work is building a culture of writing and async communication.

Like sitting down, thinking clearly, writing your thoughts and sharing.

At Stripe, this was perhaps the biggest differentiator in their culture compared to anywhere else I’ve witnessed.

Writing docs to clearly communicate where things are, where things are heading, where they should be heading was just as important as writing code.

Many in-office companies don’t have that. Some higher ups make decisions after verbal chat, throw it down the decision chain. Every level down, some details are lost and the ICs don’t know why they’re doing what they’re doing.

I have complicated relationship with Stripe, but their writing culture has made a forever impression on me.

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

#132

Post by HDThoreaun »

re-thc wrote: post #124
HDThoreaun wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IME some companies just aren't able to pull off remote without major productivity loss. The culture just isn't set up for it. I don't think it's impossible to "fix" these companies, but it is quite difficult and would probably require replacing the entire leadership team. Many boards are understandably opposed to that and go with "let's just go back to how things were" instead.

> IME some companies just aren't able to pull off remote without major productivity loss. What happened during the years of COVID? Was it fine? So could they really not do it? It's more a don't want to rather than can't.

No, generally these companies had productivity plummet during covid. Just my experience at a few companies that transitioned to remote.

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

#133

Post by smarmgoblin »

HDThoreaun wrote: post #120
benreesman wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a law firm, the most senior partner is a lawyer (and usually bills out among the highest). In a hospital, the head of surgery is a surgeon (and usually one of the best). In a fabrication shop, the boss is a pro with the materials. Software is, AFAIK, the only wildly demanding field where senior leaders who can’t even remotely do the thing is considered normal.

The leaders of hospitals almost always have MBA's, not MDs. Every medical department answers to the business analysts.

I was gonna make a comment saying “yeah but those MBAs aren’t dictating minutiae about how they complete their tasks (in the way software CEOs are assured we work better in an open-office shared desk hours from our homes)”

But actually there’s a ton of micromanagement in medicine too. It’s equally insane there though and transparently driven by profit motives over patient wellbeing.

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

#134

Post by Corrado »

haswell wrote: post #60
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 experienced this when we brought on junior members and an intern right as COVID hit. The short answer is that you do it like anything else you do remotely. Zoom, chat, email, regular check-ins. They join the standups and team calls, learn who to reach out to for help, are assigned a buddy, etc. There can be benefits in terms of teambuilding and camaraderie in a collocated environment, but I don’t think there’s anyt…

> And if they can’t collaborate remotely, they may not be a good fit for a remote company.

I work for a REMOTE first company and we had a junior developer that was struggling with not being in the office. The good news is that they were able to move to another company with a local office. The bad news is we didn't see that they were struggling until it was too late. Maybe if we were in the office we might have been able to reach out and help sooner.

I feel like employee happiness and job satisfaction is harder to manage remotely. Or it just might be that this employee wouldn't have worked out anyway. Who knows.

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

#135

Post by ryzvonusef »

sandworm101 wrote: post #31

Enjoy the remote work now. It is a bubble. Any job that can be worked 100% remotely can equally be 100% outsourced to a cheaper labor market. Those who had normal jobs pre-covid, and since are totally remote, ride a wave of higher wages. That wave will crash the day employers realize they can find cheaper talent online. If you work remotely then you have to be competative at an international level. Maybe you really a…

There is remote, and then there is "away from office building".

I doubt most jobs are truly "be in the Maldives 24/7/365, we damn care".

Most "remote" jobs are just "don't come to office, but do be ~nearby, for reasons".

These reasons are often some sort of legal/tax type things (data security, tax rate calculation etc) They want the employee to be in the same/similar jurisdiction as them, both to avoid any legal liabilities and to avoid extra work.

It's difficult to let your sensitive data flow across borders, for example, and now one wants the headache of multiple tax jurisdictions, etc.

Now, whether you are "actually" physically present in the specific region is a different question, but at least offices like to pretend you are close by.

Also, people DO like to have group sessions, so they like to call up people to get together and has out things every once in a while, they'd prefer people who can visit without visa headaches.

That's why I feel truly remote is not as big of a threat as people feel like, and as some one who'd like to avail remote options, I feel this has been an actual barrier in getting jobs, so I think you needn't worry about people like me taking your jobs :D

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

#136

Post by Corrado »

somsak2 wrote: post #106
fy20 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my first programming job I learnt Vim , simply because I saw other people doing it and thought it looked cool. I feel doing the same remotely would be tricky. Even if I learnt of it, how would I ever quit Vim and switch back to Slack?

Couldn't you see this just the same when screen-sharing over Zoom?

Yes, I think you could. However this type of interaction (screen sharing) is generally scheduled (stand up, all-staff, etc.) while most institutional learning is done off the cuff. For example, when I was a younger programmer I spent quite a bit of time outside with an older programmer. He would go outside to smoke and I would go outside to take a break. We talked a lot and I learned a ton of stuff on those smoke breaks.

At another job, long ago, we had a free soda machine on the first floor. So, every day around 2:00 several of us would get together, walk downstairs, grab a soda and talk about stuff. It was a great bonding experience and allowed us to become much closer as a team.

We've been trying to recreate these "water cooler" experiences with Zoom and screen sharing but haven't had much success. Everything feels forced. We have a daily "hangout" meeting; no one is forced to attend and most people don't. I've been trying to get management to have a 2-day on-site event every quarter but it hasn't worked out. We used to do a quarterly on-site event in the before times (pre COVID) but not anymore. Ironically, before COVID most of our employees were local and in-office and we still had on-site events for everyone.

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

#137

Post by throwaway2037 »

llamajams wrote: post #81
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 f…

    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.
This is an interesting point. It might be due to extrinsic vs. intrinsic motivation. Does anyone know a good way to measure people's motivation? I guess there should be a set of multiple choice questions that could be asked to evaluate someone's source of motivation, then tailor training to their needs.

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

#138

Post by throwaway2037 »

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?

    They don't make their own chips, right?
In 2023, this is a moot point. Neither does Apple. Neither does AMD. Neither does Qualcomm (which makes the vast majority of mobile phone CPUs). Neither does Broadcomm.

To your second point: I am surprised that AMD hasn't tried harder to chase the high-end enterprise GPU market. Maybe that is a longer term secret plan after they gain more CPU market share. It is possible that a GPU ecosystem cannot out-compete NVidia's CUDA at this point.

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

#139

Post by throwaway2037 »

dwnvotee wrote: post #42
sandworm101 wrote: post #31

Enjoy the remote work now. It is a bubble. Any job that can be worked 100% remotely can equally be 100% outsourced to a cheaper labor market. Those who had normal jobs pre-covid, and since are totally remote, ride a wave of higher wages. That wave will crash the day employers realize they can find cheaper talent online. If you work remotely then you have to be competative at an international level. Maybe you really a…

Outsourcing to Indian companies like HCL was a thing way before covid and remote work. Results were varied. I never felt threatened as a remote employee

In my experience, HCL "consultants" (non-full-time-employees) are consistently the worst for low cost, offshore talent. My old teammate used to say "HCL stands for 'hopefully can learn'."

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

#140

Post by throwaway2037 »

somsak2 wrote: post #111
sandworm101 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone looks to india, but that isnt the only cheaper labor market. If you work a tech job in the bay area, the most threatening labor market isnt india or china, but west virginia and alabama. The most direct threat isn't the overseas person willing to work for 10% of your wage, but your drop-in replacement willing to work for 80% of your wage because they are paying 50% less in rent.

Do you know anyone from these states? I know a bunch of folks and your characterization is inaccurate -- the talent that you have accessible from non-"premium" US markets is generally also not as good as what you'd find in NYC or the Bay Area. The set of people you're describing are those from these states that are both competent enough to work at a FAANG but also unwilling to move to an existing city that FAANG hire…

When living and working in a major regional city, you can really feel the quality difference between locals (grew-up in the city) vs move-ins. The people who move-in have much higher motivation. I have seen this same pattern repeat over and over again in my career in multiple major cities.
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