Having started from humble beginnings to founding tech darling Nvidia, CEO Jensen Huang believes that no task is beneath him. And in a post on social media, world’s richest man Elon Musk agreed with the sentiment.
World’s richest man, Elon Musk, who recently crossed the record $700 billion worth milestone, in a post on social media platform X (formerly Twitter), agreed with and boosted Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s view on work ethic and leadership.
“This is the way,” wrote Elon Musk on a clip of Jensen Huang’s March 2024 interview at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where the Nvidia chief recalled his time doing odd jobs such as a busboy and a waiter.
“You can’t show me a task that’s beneath me. I’m not doing it only because whether it’s beneath me or not. If you send me something and you want my input on it, and I can be of service to you, and in my review of it, share with you how I reasoned through it, I’ve made a contribution to you. I’ve made it possible for you to see how I reasoned through something,” he said.
On how this shapes his leadership, Huang added, “And by reasoning, as you know, how someone reasons through something empowers you. ‘oh my gosh, that’s how you reason through this! It’s not as complicated as it seems’. And so I show people how to reason through things all the time. Strategy, how to forecast, how to break a problem down, and you’re empowering people. That’s how I see it.”
Born in Taiwan and immigrated to the US at age five, the 61-year-old billionaire holds a bachelor’s degree in engineering from Oregon State University and a master’s degree in engineering from Stanford University.
“When you fire somebody, you’re saying, a lot of people say: ‘it wasn’t your fault’, or ‘I made the wrong choice’, or ‘there are very few jobs’. Look, I used to clean bathrooms, and now I’m the CEO of a company. I think you can learn it. I’m pretty certain you can learn this. And there are a lot of things in life that I believe you can learn, and you just have to be given the opportunity to learn it,” Huang said.
“I had the benefit of watching a lot of smart people do a lot of things. I’m surrounded by 60 people. They’re doing smart things all the time, and they probably don’t realize it, but I’m learning constantly from every single one of them. And so I don’t like giving up on people because I think they could improve,” he added.
“And so it’s tongue in cheek, but people know that I rather torture them into greatness. So, I would rather torture you into greatness because I believe in you. And I think coaches that that really believe in their team, torture them into greatness. And oftentimes, they’re so close, don’t give up. They’re so close to greatness,” Huang said.
