[HN Gopher] Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang: "I discourage 1-on-1s"
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       Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang: "I discourage 1-on-1s"
        
       Author : djhope99
       Score  : 21 points
       Date   : 2024-06-02 20:05 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (twitter.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
        
       | djhope99 wrote:
       | "I don't do 1-on-1s, and almost everything I say, I say to
       | everybody all the time. I don't really believe there's any
       | information that I operate on that only one or two people should
       | hear about... I believe that when you give everybody equal access
       | to information, that empowers people. And so that's number one...
       | Number two, if the CEO's direct staff is 60 people, the number of
       | layers you've removed in a company is probably something like
       | seven."
        
         | starky wrote:
         | I think this statement is really missing the point of 1-on-1's.
         | They should be time set aside for the employee to talk about
         | whatever is on their mind. It is ideally an opportunity for
         | them to bring up any issues or concerns they might be having
         | but is either unsuitable to or they are uncomfortable bringing
         | it up with the larger group. Often the response is indeed,
         | "Thanks for letting me know, I'll communicate that to the
         | team." but it would have never been brought up if that time
         | wasn't set aside to chat.
         | 
         | Sure, when you are directly reporting into the CEO you are
         | probably in a position where you are expected to lead it out
         | yourself unless it affects the entire company strategy, so it
         | is less useful, but if you are working with ICs then they are
         | still very useful.
        
           | DHPersonal wrote:
           | The link seems to address that concern. It reads to me as if
           | the view is that if the concern can't be shared with the
           | group then it needn't be shared at all. Discussing it in the
           | group benefits everyone because everyone can hear the concern
           | and the response to it.
        
             | lupire wrote:
             | Which is an extremely naive view. Some concerns are
             | sensitive.
        
             | viraptor wrote:
             | There definitely are concerns which shouldn't / don't need
             | to be shared widely, when they're about specific people or
             | about interpersonal issues. There's also potentially lots
             | of stuff that should be communicated to the team, but they
             | don't need to know the details of the issues. You
             | definitely don't want to start a "John is avoiding work
             | recently" conversation in a group, exactly because everyone
             | can hear it and respond to it. Maybe the manager needs to
             | have a private chat with him, or maybe the manager already
             | knows that John had a death in the family that affects him.
             | Not everything needs to have more people involved.
        
       | NotGMan wrote:
       | >> if the CEO's direct staff is 60 people, the number of layers
       | you've removed in a company is probably something like seven."
       | 
       | This is a great insight since so much gets lost in the management
       | layer which causes frustration for devs while the CEO doesn't
       | have a clue what's actually going on in the trenches.
        
         | lupire wrote:
         | But doesn't also much get lost when the manager can't keep up
         | with 60 reports?
         | 
         | Mathematics teaches us that the distance in a tree, from root
         | to leaf, where each node is a linked list, is minimized when
         | the branching factor is e, the base of the natural logarithm.
         | For example, e is the most efficient base for writing integers.
         | 
         | Management isn't quite the same, but branch size is are
         | relevant.
         | 
         | Management isn't
        
           | viraptor wrote:
           | Have you got a source for e as the optimal branching factor?
           | (On average it feels plausible, but haven't seen a
           | confirmation) But I don't get the idea about writing numbers
           | in base e - by definition integers in base e are the least
           | efficient, because they'd be infinite.
        
             | gravescale wrote:
             | It's called radix economy:
             | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radix_economy
             | 
             | A non-integral number like _e_ is obviously of limited
             | utility in physical systems because having _e_ adders in
             | your ALU doesn 't make much sense.
             | 
             | 3 is closer then 2 to _e_ , which also why ternary
             | arithmetic was attempted for a while, but the massive
             | advantage of binary in terms of implementation (much easier
             | and far lower power to have a transistor slam a voltage
             | high or low than keep it somewhere in the middle) won in
             | the end.
        
       | seatac76 wrote:
       | It probably makes sense for a CEO who is direction setting and
       | probably has other defined methods of feedback collections.
       | 
       | For normals ICs 1:1s are crucial for career development. You
       | absolutely need a space to talk candidly with your manager.
        
       | lupire wrote:
       | Since he is a founder and CEO, I'm not sure his opinion on 1:1
       | meetings is relevant. He's not a people manager.
        
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       (page generated 2024-06-02 23:01 UTC)