- Elon Musk is a fan of Jensen Huang’s work ethic.
- Huang said he once worked as a dishwasher and toilet cleaner at breakfast chain Denny’s.
- The Nvidia CEO said the experience shaped his hands-on work style.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s tireless work ethic has helped transform the semiconductor giant into one of the world’s most valuable companies.
So it’s perhaps not surprising that Hwang’s client, fellow billionaire Elon Musk, is a fan of his management style.
“Absolutely the right attitude,” Musk said in a post on X on Sunday. “During the COVID-19 toilet paper shortage, I was there making sure we had toilet paper in our factories and offices.”
Musk was responding to a clip of an interview Huang gave at the Stanford Graduate School of Business in March, in which he spoke about his experience working at breakfast chain Denny’s.
“To me, no job is a bad job, because I used to wash dishes,” Huang said. “I also cleaned toilets. I cleaned a lot of toilets. I cleaned more toilets than all of you combined.”
Huang said the experience had a major impact on shaping his work style, which involves taking a hands-on approach to solving problems with staff.
“You can’t ask me to do something that’s too much,” Huang said. “If you send me something and ask me to help you review it, I’ll do my best and show you how I do it.”
Meanwhile, Musk isn’t afraid to take action himself.
The Tesla CEO said that at one point he would sleep overnight at the electric vehicle giant’s factories so he could personally inspect cars coming off the production line.
“I was sleeping on the floor, not because I couldn’t go across the street to a hotel, but because I wanted it to be worse for me more than anyone else in the company,” Musk told Bloomberg in 2018. “Every time they were in pain, I wanted it to be worse for me.”
To be sure, Musk’s admiration of Huang may not just be based on a shared passion for the job: Musk hasn’t shied away from taking shots at other billionaires known for their dogged work ethics, including Mehta’s Mark Zuckerberg and “Shark Tank” star Mark Cuban.
Musk’s friendly approach may instead have more to do with how their fates are intertwined: After all, Musk’s AI ambitions, including Tesla’s goal of developing self-driving cars and his desire to make xAI the world’s leading AI company, make the Nvidia chip acquisition a matter of survival.
By the way, Musk and Huang appear to have a mutual respect for each other.
“Tesla is far ahead in self-driving cars, but at some point all cars will have to have self-driving capability,” Huang told Yahoo Finance in an interview in May.
“Thanks Jensen,” Musk replied in X’s post.
Representatives for Musk and Hwang did not immediately respond to BI’s request for comment sent outside normal business hours.
