SUCCESS
‘I Hope Suffering Happens To You’: Nvidia CEO’s Case For Hiring For Grit Over Pedigree
“I wish you ample doses of pain and suffering.”
That is the unconventional message Nvidia CEO and founder Jensen Huang had for students at Stanford University, his alma mater, where he spoke last month at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.
According to Huang, elite educational pedigrees alone are not necessarily the best predictor of success.
“Greatness is not intelligence. Greatness comes from character. And character isn’t formed out of smart people, it’s formed out of people who suffered,” said the Stanford alum.
Instead, the man who presides over one the world’s most valuable companies in terms of stock market valuation, now looks to find certain traits in job applicants that include resilience, grit and determination, which he contends lead to innovation and success in the workplace.
Counterintuitively, Huang believes that having very high expectations coming out of an Ivy League education can potentially set people up for less resilience when faced with failure or adversity, which are inevitable in any career path.
“Unfortunately, resilience matters in success,” he said to the students. “I don’t know how to teach it to you except for I hope suffering happens to you.”
His comments indicate a view that real-world experience, involving struggles, obstacles and suffering, can instill the resilience needed for long-term success. Therefore, he believes that employers should look beyond just the prestige factor of a university and more closely at the inner drive, mindset and resolution of potential hires.
“To this day I use the phrase ‘pain and suffering’ inside our company with great glee,” said the chief executive. “I mean that in a happy way, because you want to refine the character of your company. You want greatness out of them.”
In 2011, Huang shared a similar sentiment in another speech he gave at Stanford, stating, “Unless you have a tolerance for failure, you will never experiment, and if you don’t ever experiment, you will never innovate. If you don’t innovate, you don’t succeed.”
McKinsey Is Paying Its Employees To Look For Other Jobs
Consulting firm McKinsey & Co. is paying its underperforming staffers to embark on the job hunt.
Instead of taking on new projects, managers at the consultancy’s U.K. offices will receive nine months of pay and continue to have access to its career-coaching services while looking for a new position, London-based newspaper The Times reported over the weekend. There are some strings attached, however: If managers don’t find another job at the end of the nine months, they have to leave the firm.
The opportunity is also on offer at its U.S. offices, sources told the publication, but it’s not known if there are any pay or duration differences between the two programs.
A McKinsey spokesperson told The Times that the program will allow employees to “grow into leaders, whether they stay at McKinsey or continue their careers elsewhere” and that the actions are part of an “ongoing effort to ensure our performance management and development approach is as effective as possible, and to do so in a caring and supportive way.”
Workers Are Now Putting In About Four Hours Less A Week Compared To 2021
A new report by ActivTrak, a workforce analytics company, found that between the first quarter of 2021 and the third quarter of 2023, the average length of the workday fell by 15%, or 47 minutes. The analysis found that the typical workday spanned nine hours and five minutes at the end of 2023, compared to nine hours and 52 minutes at the beginning of 2021.
The analysis looked at over 135,000 users across 958 companies, looking into nearly 97 million hours of data. The study largely analyzed employees in white-collar professions like finance, professional services, insurance, and legal services.
The analysis found employees finished their tasks in less time, with slight declines over the three-year period in focus time and productive time. There was a slight increase in time spent on collaboration, such as messaging. Efficiency overall remained flat even as days shrank by nearly an hour.
ActivTrak data shared with the Wall Street Journal showed the average worker logs off at about 5 p.m. on Monday through Thursday. On Friday, workers sign off at 4:03 p.m., about an hour earlier than at the start of 2021.
This comes amid a continued push to get people back in the office as remote job openings dwindle. Though many now have to factor in commute times, slightly shortened days could keep workers more on track.
Employees spent eight minutes more per day being productive, as measured by time spent engaging with apps for "focused, collaboration, and multitasking activities," in the first half of 2023 compared to the second half. If an organization has 1,000 employees making $60,000 on average, it would gain the equivalent of 18 additional employees and $1.1 million in savings if the level of productivity in early 2023 was maintained, the report found.
Though workers are putting in fewer hours, they're also increasingly disengaged. The report found that 20% of employees were disengaged, which it defines as spending more than 75% of time in a state of underutilization, or under the daily number of hours employers set for workers to be productive. The percentage of disengaged employees was just 12% in 2021. Still, fewer employees — just 7% — were at risk of burnout due to overutilization.
America’s ‘Deskless’ Hourly Wage Workers Will Reveal The Most About How AI Changes Jobs
Despite attracting a lot of attention in job market coverage, the world is not made up of salary-earning data analysts and software engineers. In fact, 55.6% of all U.S. wage and salary workers were paid at hourly rates in 2022, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Industries like health care, hospitality, retail and manufacturing make up this massive cohort, and that doesn’t even include the gig work economy.
In that majority lies a pressing question: How will the introduction of artificial intelligence impact hourly workers?
According to workplace management software company Deputy’s Big Shift Report 2024 on the evolving labor market, 70% of shift workers expressed the belief that AI will bring changes to their jobs.
But AI won’t be the same as past technology-led changes to labor. Previous technology and industrial revolutions have primarily disrupted the blue-collar sector, but according to Silvija Martincevic, CEO of Deputy, since AI is digitizing general intelligence, “we actually think that this is the first time where there will be massive disruption to knowledge workers.”
She foresees resilience to AI disruption in sectors requiring a human touch, like elderly care, hospitality and other services. “All of these industries are staffed by hourly workers,” she said.
Remote Workers Who Return To The Office May Be Getting Pay Raises, As Salaries Rise 38%
A potential benefit for returning to the office full-time? A bigger paycheck.
There's been a remote work revolution, bolstered by the COVID lockdowns. But some recent data from ZipRecruiter suggests agreeing to fully return to the office to do your job has some benefits: more Benjamins.
Workers with jobs fully done in the office were paid, on average, $82,037 in March, up more than 38% from a year ago, according to ZipRecruiter's internal data of worker salaries.
In comparison, remote workers were paid $75,327, an increase of just 9%.
Those with hybrid jobs – part in-office, part remote – were paid $59,992, an increase of 11%, the online job firm's research found.
Sega Of America Union Workers Secure Raises, Layoff Protections With First Collectively-Bargained Contract
Unionized workers at Sega of America have secured a major victory after voting to ratify a first collectively-bargained contract.
The news was described as a "watershed moment" for AEGIS-CWA union members, who will now benefit from an improved contract that contains better protections for organizing workers and guarantees basebuilding raises for every employee in the unit.
The ratified contract also includes layoffs protections (including the recall rights for temporary layoffs and severance for permanent layoffs); a commitment to properly crediting all workers on relevant projects (including early QA testers); and a codified commitment to continuing hybrid work initiatives for at least six months. It was noted that Sega doesn't currently intend to change its hybrid work policy, but now AEGIS-CWA has that commitment in writing.
AEGIS-CWA also secured a codified annual bonus plan, retirement benefits, health insurance, parental benefits (include permission for parents to pump breast milk on the clock), and expanded bereavements leave. Better pathways for requesting job-related trainings were baked into the new contract alongside a commitment that will require Sega to provide a worker-led committee with advance notice when it wants to implement policy changes, including those related to AI usage.
How To Get A Job In Tough Times: All The Advice You Need To Succeed From A Top Executive Recruiter
There’s an old saying, “Tough times make tough people.” In this book, Jack Kelly will help guide you every step of the way in your job search to ensure that you stay strong, resilient and positive, and get that great, new job.
