Best culture in the valley but below average compensation for senior folks, very hard to grow
Pros
Unbeatably the best work culture and most of people you work with are super nice. Very open, collaborative environment, you can reach out literally to anybody (including CEO) and get help. CEO reads status emails (!) and engages in discussions (!) with the teams about product directions and strategies (this is in AV org, not sure about others). I love the idea of workstream (virtual team) that can quickly summon people across the org, I haven't seen this type of thing in other companies. I am a senior sw developer with 22 years in the Valley and worked at a few companies here and I can compare. NVIDIA is the best without any doubt. Benefits are mostly fine, very good health insurance choices, some perks but don't expect a lot. New building was nice, but it felt unfinished, and any improvements take long time. NVIDIA generally has less office politics than I've seen in other companies. (Still it exists and frustrating). The 2016-2018 stock run up was nice, I didn't make a lot of money but still I can't complain. A lot of your personal experience may depend on the team you join. There are absolutely horrible teams to work in (avoid IPP at all cost!), but also there are greatest and brightest teams. I did an internal transfer from an-ok team to a much better team (the transfer process was smooth and everyone was supportive). To compare my RSU increased more than 2x, with better wlb, I got much much more interesting projects, and the brightest minds to work with. So, lots depends on the manager and the team.
Cons
Growth for senior engineers like myself is really really not what it should be. RSU grants (vest over 4 years) are calculated as % of your salary, depending on your rating you get from 0% to 50%. You get rated NI (need improvement), FC (full contributor) with 2 categories A and B, and TC (top contributor) again with A and B. So TC-A gets 50% of salary in RSU grants - this is the absolute top compensation bump you could achieve no matter how brilliant you are and how big an impact you make. I think the other scale is FC-B gets 20%, FC-A 30%, and TC-B 40%. NI gets 0%. Let's say you're a senior making 200K/year, if you're TC-A like myself it means you get 100K in RSU over 4 years, or 25K per year. After a couple cycles (2 years) you'll realize it's really not worth it all the effort and hard work for just extra 10% of salary. Stock can grow of course, but stock can also fall. Endeavor building was not planned well - not enough bathroom capacity for number of occupants, people end up waiting for 10-15 minutes just to use a bathroom. Really don't know what to say here. Parking situation is horrendous - again due to bad facility planning. If you come to work at 11am or later, forget about finding parking, valet will be full, and you end up parking illegally in neighbor parking lot. Go to work and fear all day you car will get towed. CEO was asked this question - his answer was - don't come to work at 11. Yeah, but we still have our lives, doctor appointments, our kids and loved ones, so it does happen sometimes I have to come to work later than usual.
