Nvidia Founder Tells Stanford Students Their High Expectations May Make It Hard For Them To Succeed (fortune.com) 98
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Fortune: We are often told that setting the bar high is key to success. After all, if you shoot for the moon and miss, at least you'll land with the stars. But Nvidia's CEO Jensen Huang wants privileged Gen Z grads to lower their expectations. "People with very high expectations have very low resilience -- and unfortunately, resilience matters in success," Huang said during a recent interview with the Stanford Graduate School of Business. "One of my great advantages is that I have very low expectations."
Indeed, as the billionaire boss pointed out, those at elite institutions like Stanford probably have higher expectations for their future than your average Joe. The university is one of the most selective in the United States -- it ranks third best in the country, according to the QS World University Rankings, and the few students who get picked to study there are charged $62,484 in tuition fees for the premium, compared to the average $26,027 per annum cost. But, unfortunately for those saddled with student debt, not even the best universities in the world can teach you resilience. "I don't know how to teach it to you except for I hope suffering happens to you," Huang added. [...]
For those fortunate enough to never have personally experienced hardship growing up, Huang doesn't have any advice on how to welcome more of it into your life now. But he did have some advice on embracing tough times. "I don't know how to do it [but] for all of you Stanford students, I wish upon you ample doses of pain and suffering," Huang said. "Greatness comes from character and character isn't formed out of smart people -- it's formed out of people who suffered."It's why despite Nvidia's success -- the company has a $2 trillion market cap -- Huang would still welcome hardship at his organization."To this day I use the phrase 'pain and suffering' inside our company with great glee," he added. "I mean that in a happy way because you want to refine the character of your company." Essentially, if you want your workforce to always be on their A game, don't let them rest on their laurels.
Indeed, as the billionaire boss pointed out, those at elite institutions like Stanford probably have higher expectations for their future than your average Joe. The university is one of the most selective in the United States -- it ranks third best in the country, according to the QS World University Rankings, and the few students who get picked to study there are charged $62,484 in tuition fees for the premium, compared to the average $26,027 per annum cost. But, unfortunately for those saddled with student debt, not even the best universities in the world can teach you resilience. "I don't know how to teach it to you except for I hope suffering happens to you," Huang added. [...]
For those fortunate enough to never have personally experienced hardship growing up, Huang doesn't have any advice on how to welcome more of it into your life now. But he did have some advice on embracing tough times. "I don't know how to do it [but] for all of you Stanford students, I wish upon you ample doses of pain and suffering," Huang said. "Greatness comes from character and character isn't formed out of smart people -- it's formed out of people who suffered."It's why despite Nvidia's success -- the company has a $2 trillion market cap -- Huang would still welcome hardship at his organization."To this day I use the phrase 'pain and suffering' inside our company with great glee," he added. "I mean that in a happy way because you want to refine the character of your company." Essentially, if you want your workforce to always be on their A game, don't let them rest on their laurels.
There are two NVIDIA founders (Score:2)
Once is one of the richest men in the world. The other gave almost all of his money away to charity. I know which one I trust and admire.
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Translation from corp-speak (Score:4, Insightful)
Translation from corp-speak:
New graduates shouldn't expect to be paid well, and should be happy with whatever table scraps the owner class is willing to give them.
Character isn't caused by suffering. Suffering is caused by suffering. Character is caused by being *willing* to suffer for what you know to be right, and is proven by doing so when push comes to shove. But those folks had character before they suffered. The suffering merely demonstrated it to others.
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Gen-z/Gen-alpha spirals or have mental health issues at the first sign of adversity.
Perhaps. But adversity doesn't turn them into better people.
Suffering doesn't make people great. It just makes them suffer.
If you were starting a global organization and wanted to hire the best people, would you start by recruiting in some African slum because that's where people suffer the most and are, therefore, the greatest?
Re: Translation from corp-speak (Score:1)
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He's talking to a bunch of Stanford students. They're the children of the owner class. They have high expectations and Dad's going to make sure they're met.
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I can tell from your text that you've never really suffered. While it could be argued that suffering demonstrates my resilience, all it really does is make me an angry, selfish, hateful prick. I'm pretty successful, but it wasn't for the suffering. I was a much nicer person before, and I know I would have been just as successful without the endless misery.
Struggling against *minor* adversity can shape you positively (or perhaps it would be better to say that getting everything handed to you on a silver platter can shape you negatively). But when it gets too adverse, it has the opposite effect, breaking you, causing you to hide from the world and shut down entirely. When I think of suffering, I think of the latter, and there's nothing good about that. Ever.
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I hate that this is true, but I have been observing it. The perception of what challenges can be conquered and which will overwhelm them are wildly out of calibration.
On the other hand, the first rungs of success are significantly more difficult to reach than they once were. This fails to inspire confidence in the young that success is possible and that their attempts are worthwhile.
They're being preached to about maintaining a healthy work/life balance while they're being shown that such limited investme
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New college grads can get around $200k/yr total compensation. I'm not sure what more people expect. If that person's salary is matched by a partner's, and they do an FHA first time home buyer's loan, they can afford a house in the Bay Area. Just barely. Which means they will be one of the rare few in Silicon Valley that buy their house before they are 30.
Re:Translation from corp-speak (Score:5, Insightful)
New graduates shouldn't expect to be paid well, and should be happy with whatever table scraps the owner class is willing to give them.
Except he's not wrong. This is how it always has been. Too many people go to university thinking they are going to come out at the other end instantly showered in riches, and for the overwhelming majority (even for nice places like Stanford) they are WRONG.
Character isn't caused by suffering.
That wasn't his point. If you expect the world you will experience endless disappointment. Disappointment breaks resilience down over time, it's just human nature. If your expectations are realistic you're much more likely to remain strongly motivated to do more.
Yeah, but you're leaving something out (Score:2, Informative)
It's because we have massive trusts and monopolies and no Unions. In Florida 80% of *all* medical facilities are owned by one company. There's no wage competition. Nowhere you can go for better pay.
The kids know that. They're waiting for their boomer parents & grandparents to sod off to the nursing home
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You don't get better pay because your modern world doesn't support better pay, and frankly it shouldn't. Most graduates are fucking dumb and dangerous idiots whose grand achievement is thinking they know something when in reality they know nothing. I was no exception. We interviewed graduates yesterday and they had no practical or usable experience at all. Why should they expect to command outstanding wages? A typical electrician who dropped out of high school can do more than an Electrical Engineering grad
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A typical electrician who dropped out of high school can do more than an Electrical Engineering grad that first week.
After that first week, you realize why you hire educated people and not high school dropouts.
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You seem to miss my point. University does not produce people educated to be immediately productive in your field of work, the exception for that is research. What is your suggestion? Don't ever hire university grads and only hire experienced people? Just how well do you suspect that will work out for society in the long run?
The "educated" people coming out of even the best universities, to be frank, don't have a fucking clue how their field works. That's the whole point of graduate programs.
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You go to college to get an education. You go to a trade school to learn a trade. If you go to college to learn a trade, either you or the college has made a serious mistake.
What is your suggestion?
We used to put effort into training new hires, helping them learn the business and our way of doing things. We didn't expect a kid fresh out of college to be productive on day one. We understood the value of institutional knowledge and knew that even a modest six-month investment in a new hire would more than pay for itself down the
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You don't get better pay because your modern world doesn't support better pay, and frankly it shouldn't.
You can fuck right off with that line of thinking. Pay should be sufficient to afford shelter and food regardless of ANY other factors; otherwise, that society has no justifiable reason to exist.
Pay less? Go fuck yourself.
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They're waiting for their boomer parents & grandparents to sod off to the nursing home so they can fix it. About 5 or 6 years from now.
This is how I know you are young. We thought the same things at your age. It is hilarious at how much you believe things will get fixed. You don't even understand how we are imprisoned; how do you expect to ever get free?
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I don't know what goes into strong character, but I've seen enough bad character to be horrified. Years ago working at Enormous State University and the Year 2000 was looming, companies were hiring anyone that had a CS course in their background. I recall 3 students who were going to leave their education can go make money. I tried arguing that education is something no one can take away from you and it made more sense to become well-heeled academically so that you could do better later. And the Year 2000 b
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Everyone always has counter anecdotes to any statement but I feel like sharing this one so...
My boss 20-odd years ago lured me away from the degree mills and his many years of experience in business was that educated programmers were nigh on useless in the real world compared to the self taught. Their "deeper understanding" of compiler theory and CPU architecture was chicken feed compared to a teenager who cycle counted a 68000 to fit something in an h-blank that shouldn't. But then, just because you can wr
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We lie to our kids. Tell them that education is the key to earning a good wage, and taking on a mountain of debt is okay because it will be rewarded. Then they find that wages are too low to afford rent and other basic necessities.
Often the people saying that got their education for free, at a time when far fewer jobs required a degree. Employers want trained people, they just don't want to pay to train them or any more than poverty level wages.
It's no wonder that a lot of gen Z are opting out of this and a
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If you think things are bad for the kids who went to college, you should see how bad things are for kids with just a high school diploma.
College more than pays for itself. That's an indisputable fact.
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New graduates shouldn't expect to be paid well, and should be happy with whatever table scraps the owner class is willing to give them.
Except he's not wrong. This is how it always has been. Too many people go to university thinking they are going to come out at the other end instantly showered in riches, and for the overwhelming majority (even for nice places like Stanford) they are WRONG.
And yet even this doesn’t begin to describe the real problem we have today. Because of the political influence in American education, the curriculum has become quite creative. And by that I mean worthless to society. Greed is selling hobbies as fetishes as degrees now, because feelings were all it took to sucker a student into paying, in a lending system that approved every feeling.
If you really want to help out every future graduating class, tell that billionaire speaker to go sit and talk with t
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What a stupid thing to say. You should have stayed in school.
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What a stupid thing to say. You should have stayed in school.
Uh huh. Tell me again how a trillion dollars worth of college bailout, is just a figment of my imagination, along with the reason for it.
Stay in school. How ironic that has become the stupid thing to say.
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Tell me again how a trillion dollars worth of college bailout, is just a figment of my imagination
It's a very obviously a figment of your imagination.
along with the reason for it.
It's a figment of your imagination because no such thing happened.
Stay in school, kids. Don't be like geekmux.
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Tell me again how a trillion dollars worth of college bailout, is just a figment of my imagination
It's a very obviously a figment of your imagination.
Tell you what, since you’re convinced I’m delusional and the American education system is functioning very well and spitting out highly educated graduates that are greatly sought after, let’s take your advice, shall we?
Let’s not change a damn thing with education, continue to expand every curriculum to meet every feeling that an 18-year old adult child has about what they want to do in life, ensure Federal funding continues for The College Experience, and let’s see how long my
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You made a very specific claim that is transparently false. Cry harder.
Re: Translation from corp-speak (Score:2)
Re:Translation from corp-speak (Score:4, Insightful)
There are plenty of Stanford graduates who haven't suffered as much as they need to in order to achieve what they desire. Some of that may be no fault of their own or merely a matter of luck. But sooner or later, life will hit you harder than you want it to and if you aren't tough enough it will absolutely break you no matter how tough you think you are.
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Nvidia is known as one of the companies at the top of the pay scale for new grads. Despite the fact that they are working in areas at the cutting edge where they will not be contributing a great deal to the company until they have learned a great deal.
It is also known for being one the hardest companies to get into and to succeed. They claim that Google (who claims only to accept Grade A candidates) often accepts their rejects.
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It is also known for being one the hardest companies to get into and to succeed. They claim that Google (who claims only to accept Grade A candidates) often accepts their rejects.
I'm sure the reverse is also true. Sometimes people do better on one interview than on another one, and can easily just be a matter of luck.
Also, Google has actual free training classes where you can get practice at doing the sorts of things you do in their interviews — not the actual questions, but previous actual questions that have been banned because they ended up on websites somewhere or whatever. I'm guessing NVIDIA doesn't do that.
So if you wash out from an NVIDIA interview, there's a decent
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That's why you see all this talk of dictatorships around the world. The powers that be, your betters, have about 5 or 6 years to put at stop to all this darn Democracy or
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He is clearly young and naive. Probably from upper middle class, but could be from wealth.
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You see the rise of dictatorships because there are always assholes willing to demonize the "other" and feed that paranoia to their people in lieu of actually offering programs to make their lives better. Their argument is: so you have problems, you wouldn't have problems if those "other" people would just do as I say or be gone.
People do not study history, they rarely have. However, after WWII, it was apparent how foolish dictatorships were if you didn't live in the Soviet Union or China or N. Korea. It wa
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Translation from corp-speak:
Welcome to the first annual Nvidia hunger games.
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Character is caused by being *willing* to suffer for what you know to be right, and is proven by doing so when push comes to shove.
No mod points right now, so I will use words: That was a VERY insightful thing to say.
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Indeed. The correct answer to this asshole is "FU". But the current generation does it better: They will just ghost him. I am old-school, so I think it is polite to at least answer. A weakness, I know.
Few Stanford students have debt (Score:4, Interesting)
Stanford fully funds the education of anyone from a low income background: 80 percent of Stanford undergraduate students leave Stanford with zero student loan debt. Of the remaining students who do take out loans, the median amount of debt upon graduation is $14,600—less than half the national average.
Reference: https://stanfordmag.org/conten... [stanfordmag.org]
What a guy! (Score:5, Funny)
He sounds like he's really fun at parties.
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What I don't get is why so many people like having a ruling class. It's weird. Why do so many people want to be told what to do by somebody with more money than them?
I guess they dream of telling people with less money than them what to do. But outside of ordering a hamburger no pickles and then yelling about the lack of or excess of ketchup to some poor kid they don't really get to do that...
Still, that's what they traded
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He sounds like a psychopath [...] What I don't get is why so many people like having a ruling class.
I think there's an underlying thought that they too could get to be part of the ruling class too if/when they decide to be psychopathic enough.
Why do so many people want to be told what to do by somebody with more money than them?
It's a kind of Calvinistic[*] offshoot. Well obviously that person is better than them because that person is richer. If you're lucky you'll be let in on the secret to being very ric
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[*]is that the right one?
Yes.
We already know where Huang sees students... (Score:2)
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Admonishing others for seeming entitled while slinging text you've purposefully tagged to be larger than everyone else's kindof erodes the moral high ground your argument perches on, you know.
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while slinging text you've purposefully tagged to be larger than everyone else's
There is no guarantee he did that to make his text appear larger. He may just prefer fixed width fonts; otherwise, your point is completely valid.
Can't say he's wrong (Score:2)
You can say you don't like it, but historically, most great things have been built by societies and by people who endured some ugly stuff and learned their lessons the hard way.
I was told a similar thing about grad school when I was a kid: you're not going to make any progress or learn anything if it's easy. You have to struggle and find yourself alone at sea if you expect to discover something new. If you're not out in the wilderness, you're not treading new ground.
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easy times make for soft people
soft people make for hard times
hard times make for hard people
hard people make for easy times
reader is advised to not self-insert any particular era or people, and the wiser will realize the trends are really just everywhere all at once if you scale out even slightly
after all, small minds discuss people, a singular instance, one data point - meanwhile The Idea is the more reliable takeaway
Re: Can't say he's wrong (Score:1)
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You can say you don't like it, but historically, most great things have been built by societies and by people who endured some ugly stuff and learned their lessons the hard way.
I was told a similar thing about grad school when I was a kid: you're not going to make any progress or learn anything if it's easy. You have to struggle and find yourself alone at sea if you expect to discover something new. If you're not out in the wilderness, you're not treading new ground.
And this, right after another thread where kids get Ivy League credentials just because their parents are rich. LOL.
Re: Can't say he's wrong (Score:1)
Que?
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I think it's more complicated than this. How I see it, facing adversity gives you an opportunity to learn - you are confronted with a problem to solve, and coming up with correct solutions to the problem gives you a bigger arsenal to deal with other problems in future. Always staying in your comfort zone means there will never be problems to solve and no opportunity to learn.
But, you have to come up with correct solutions to the problems you're facing for this to be useful. It's very easy to learn the wrong
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I think there's also a survivorship bias here. Someone who makes it through adversity will generally be stronger for it, but it's easy to forget about all the people who faced adversity and didn't come out on the upside. See, for example, the perennial problems of drunkenness, addiction, etc. - often (though not always) among those trying to escape adversity or difficulties of some kind.
Most people who are applying for jobs at NVIDIA probably grew stronger because of any adversity they faced, rather than
Good guy Huang (Score:4, Insightful)
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If your job is being replaced by AI you were already working like a robot and was always going to be replaced by AI. This should be a good advanced warning to people.
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which means scraps for plebes
The era for scraps is done. AI will eat ALL of the scraps. This does not bode well for huge segments of the population. There will be automated guns patrolling all fertile lands to keep the plebes from trying to drop out of society and make a living from the planet.
I will be dead before that reality arrives, but it is coming.
Or like dating (Score:4, Funny)
You don't study to be CEO (Score:1)
Huang has a point (Score:2)
It seems obvious to everyone how f*cked up this is. But Huang has a point. Prior suffering may well encourage resilience to anxiety and perhaps depression. We've all had the experience of our anxiety turning out to be pointless. We probably moved towards being less anxious in future.
We're all going to suffer. Only the dead don't suffer. Freaking out over suffering just increases the suffering. Learning how not to suffer is a key skill in life and it's not through avoiding our emotions.
But Huang is ha
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I like your comment, but "Press on" doesn't resolve trauma.
Clearing techniques do.
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Huang does NOT have a point. At all.
Being challenged allows you to grow and change. 'Suffering' happens frequently when challenged, but the suffering is NOT THE FUCKING POINT.
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Thank you. That says it very well.
Maybe he means "suffering" in a much more abstract sense, as in something more like "cognitive dissonance", but that wasn't the impression I took from the post.
There's the idea of "productive struggle" in learning, but that's more along the lines of growth from being challenged, as you said.
On the other side of the coin, complete lack of suffering, or even privilege, tends to lead to expectation, whereas adversity tends to lead to adaptation. But trying to find the adapt
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Suffering can go one or two ways. It can make people be sympathetic towards others in similar situations. But very often, it makes people shut out the world. The latter is obviously a departure from reality to some degree or other.
There are further distinctions from there. Sometimes, people turn super egotistical. Some try to maintain some sanity and others turn depressed.
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You basically echoed his point...
Ah yes, the rich guy telling the aspiring (Score:2)
To tone down their expectations despite the onslaught of being told from every angle that striving for the most is how you make it.
Laughable.
The best college graduate is still inexperienced (Score:2)
Graduates might be book-smart. But universities don't teach students what software engineers actually do. Generally, they teach coding. In real software engineering, coding is a small part of the job, with much larger parts devoted to process, such as understanding requirements, estimating, debugging, and compliance, not to mention dealing with stupid executives who think that software is black magic.
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That depends on what course you take. Everything you list was covered in my MSc Computer Science (Software Engineering) degree. Most courses at least offer an optional module on software engineering, and it's often a mandatory one.
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Even if you had courses on these subjects, it's a far different thing to learn from a textbook how to write a story, from a glorified story problem, than to get actual requirements from business stakeholders.
I've hired a lot of young college graduate developers over the years, and so far, every single one of them was green. Many of them were smart, many learned quickly. But I've yet to meet a fresh college graduate who was really *ready* to hit the ground running as a developer. There's a reason experience
So Sad (Score:2)
I graduated during the so-called "great recession" so I really have no sympathy for these "Gen Z" kids.
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Like, we all worked our way up.
Regular bowel movements (Score:2)
This is punditry, with no controls for threa
Unrealistic expections (Score:3)
I have lost count of the taxi drivers and convenience store workers I have spoken to with an IT degree (often doing that as a job for a few years after they got their degree) who all ask similar questions and give very similar answers when they found out I worked in IT.
Them: "I have an IT degree. How do I get a job in IT, you work in IT. How did you get your job in IT?"
Me: "Get an entry level job. That's how I started and then with the experience worked my way up to better jobs."
Them: "I don't need to do that, I have a degree!"
Me: "Without experience, your degree is not worth much. It is good to help you get an entry level job, get some experience then go for the better jobs and your degree will be worth more then."
Them: "My career advisor said I don't need to do that and that I can get a 6 figure paying job as soon as I finished my degree!"
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Them: "My career advisor said I don't need to do that and that I can get a 6 figure paying job as soon as I finished my degree!"
Keep in mind “Them” in this case is represented by a college marketeer selling paycheck delusions to an 18-year old child who holds the legal capacity to sign loan paperwork.
Without a parent present.
We’ve seen criminal entrapment accusations stick with less effort. Not sure why we tolerate this.
Huang is a great cause of suffering. (Score:1)
Visiting campus in 2015 (Score:2)
Stanford is a hotbed of dreamers. I got to see firsthand students walk-in to Prof’s offices with their latest start-up pitch. Quite frankly, it was half-assed ideas built on Hopium FB-style dorm room what-if’s.
SteveJobs didn’t emerge from Stanford but his vision was for its students to think and see opportunity to make the world a better place. Silicon Valley venture capitalists seeded a startup money virus that short circuited the process.
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oh really? average Standford MBA starts at $188K per year, data researcher $114K, software engineer $126K
Not too shabby, but maybe you're the kind who tries to make themselves look or feel better by belittling others?
Why we shouldn't trust sound bytes (Score:3)
"After all, if you shoot for the moon and miss, at least you'll land with the stars."
Strictly speaking, you're far, far more likely to burn up on reentry.
Study (Score:1)