'No free snacks, no free coffee': NVIDIA's surprising office culture shocks the internet

NVIDIA, one of the world’s most valuable technology companies, appears to be taking a different approach to workplace benefits than many of its Silicon Valley competitors. Software engineering expert Gergely Orosz shared his insights about X after visiting the company’s headquarters and said one of the biggest surprises was that employees had to pay for snacks and coffee. This is in stark contrast to companies like Google and Meta, which have long been known for offering free meals, snacks and drinks as part of their employee benefits.

According to Orosz, NVIDIA employees don’t seem to mind the policy. He quoted developers who joked, “We use a thing called salary to buy things we actually need.”

The visit also revealed other aspects of NVIDIA’s workplace culture that differ from many large tech firms. Orosz said AI companies, including OpenAI’s Codex team, have dedicated office space at NVIDIA headquarters where they have employee office hours. He described it as something he had never seen before, suggesting it reflected NVIDIA’s unique position as the platform powering much of the AI industry.

Orosz also said he finds the atmosphere inside the company to be “positive, focused, confident and relaxed.” He noted that many employees spend years at NVIDIA, and some even return after leaving to work at startups. He added that changing teams in the company seems relatively easy, while managers are willing to hire people without deep knowledge if they believe they can learn quickly.

“I talked to a bunch of developers and also a few non-developers on the teams.

Everyone I met felt like a mix of positive, focused, confident and cool. “Boomeranging” on NVIDIA seems to be common (I met a developer who worked for 1 year at NVIDIA, left to start a startup, then came back 6 years ago).

The average tenure seems high. Changing teams is easy and the manager I spoke to is someone who invests in people (like putting ppl on a team without deep experience in what they are doing (building AI agents)) because they know people are fast learners,” he wrote.

Despite being a publicly traded company, Orosz said the team he met worked with the speed and flexibility of a startup. He added that almost every interview mentioned NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang, indicating that the CEO continues to have a large influence on the company’s culture and direction.

Orosz said his observations were based on meetings with one team, and that he plans to publish a more detailed description of NVIDIA’s work culture in the future.

The post quickly went viral on social media, amassing over two million views and a flood of reactions.

(Disclaimer: This report is based on user generated content from social media. Livemint has not independently verified and does not endorse these claims.)