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Jensen Huang on why he rarely fires people and will instead “torture them into greatness”

January 24, 2025

Jensen once told Stripe founder Patrick Collison that he didn’t like firing people and seldomly did it. When asked to elaborate on this, Jensen responds:

“I’d rather improve you than give up on you. When you fire somebody, a lot of people will say ‘it wasn’t your fault,’ or ‘I made the wrong choice.’ But I used to clean bathrooms and now I’m the CEO of a company. I think you can learn it. There are a lot of things in life that I think you can learn and you just have to be given the opportunity to learn it… I don’t like giving up on people because I think they can improve.”

He continues:

“It’s kind of tongue in cheek, but people know I’d rather torture them into greatness. I’d rather torture you into greatness because I believe in you. And I think that coaches that really believe in their team torture them into greatness. Oftentimes they’re so close. Greatness will sometimes come in one day with an ‘I got it!’ — that feeling that you didn’t get it yesterday and all of a sudden one day something clicks. Could you imagine giving up that moment right before you got it? I don’t want you to give up on that, so I’ll just keep torturing you.”