Welcome to Edition #99 of Gorick's newsletter, where Harvard career advisor and Wall Street Journal bestselling author Gorick Ng shares what they don't teach you in school about how to succeed in your career.
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→ Read time: 5 min
STORY
How NVIDIA’s superstar saved the company
You may have heard of NVIDIA, the semiconductor company fueling the AI boom and companies like OpenAI and DeepSeek that, in 2024, became one of 10 publicly traded companies to ever reach a trillion-dollar market cap (the others being Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Berkshire Hathaway, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, and Tesla).
But did you know that NVIDIA wouldn’t be where it is today without its head of GPU (aka chip) development, Jonah Alben?
It’s 2022 and NVIDIA, just named the “king of AI,” faced a crisis: The U.S. government had just imposed strict regulations on selling advanced AI chips to China—a market that NVIDIA couldn’t afford to lose because it accounted for one-fifth, or $17 billion, of the company’s revenue.
Immediately, Jensen Huang, NVIDIA’s CEO, looked to Alben for a solution.
There’s “no time to design a completely new chip for China,” Alben told his boss of 28 years.
Most people in such a position would have ended the conversation right then and there. But no: Alben kept thinking through his options—and then spotted an opportunity: NVIDIA was facing a ban, sure, but it wasn’t a total ban; it was that there were now limitations on NVIDIA’s most powerful chips.
And just like that, Alben successfully reframed the question—from “What do we do now that we can’t sell to China anymore?” to “What can we change about what we already have so we can continue selling to China while still meeting the new regulations?”
Alben then found his new mission—one that even the CEO didn’t know to ask for: To find a way to “reduce [NVIDIA’s chip] performance to meet U.S. rules.”
The solution he found? “Physically burning parts of the chip.”
Within two months, the modified chip arrived on the market—and NVIDIA’s business with China was back.
This wasn’t the first time Alben successfully reframed a problem.
- The issue: One time, a graphics chip stopped displaying movies properly—and a hardware fix (the worst case scenario) loomed.
- The reframing: It was then that Alben reframed the question from “How do we get the chip to work again?” (a general question) to “Which line of code might be causing this problem?” (a far more specific question).
- The result: After scanning the code “line-by-line” with his coworkers, Alben and the team found—and solved—the problem.
- The issue: Another time (back when he was a coxswain on Stanford’s crew team), Alben found himself slightly under the minimum weight, which would have normally required that the team add sandbags to the boat.
- The reframing: It was then that Alben decided to “chug” 8 pounds of water before being weighed—only to urinate it out.
- The result: The team didn’t have to “carry an ounce more than necessary.”
Reflecting on Alben’s role, a former senior NVIDIA staff member said,
“NVIDIA wouldn’t be NVIDIA without Jonah. He’s as important to the company as Jensen [the CEO] is.”
What does this mean for you? The next time that you use ChatGPT, Gemini, or any other form of AI, remember that the technology you’re using may not exist had Alben not reframed problems over and over again for NVIDIA.
UNSPOKEN RULE
Reframe the problem.
Alben taught me 2 things:
A) There’s more than one possible solution to your problem, and
B) There’s a better question than the one you’re asked.
And oftentimes, you—not your manager—will know what’s best.
Facing a problem?
- Try completing this sentence: “So, it looks like _______. I could just accept the reality. Or, I could try asking _______ (for a second opinion), researching _______ (to see if there’s another option), or trying _______ (myself to see if it’d work).”
- E.g., “So, it looks like my sponsor at work is retiring. I could just accept the reality. Or, I could try asking my sponsor to see if they can introduce me to their most trusted contacts, researching other rising stars I’ve had a strong working relationship with, or trying to stay in touch with this sponsor even after they’re gone.”
Asked a question?
- Try completing this sentence: “_______ is asking me _______, but what I think they’re really looking for is _______. So, the question they’re really asking is: _______.”
- E.g., “My manager is asking me how long it’d take to get a first draft of this analysis, but what I think they’re really looking for is just a few talking points that can help them sound smart at this meeting with my skip manager. So, the question they’re really asking is: What have we learned so far, what’s our initial hypothesis, what do next steps look like, and when can we give another update?”
You won't always end up with the right solution or the most efficient path forward, but you will at least take control of a situation that most people don’t think they can control.
Reframe the problem!
—Gorick
What’s an “unspoken rule”? They’re the things that separate those who get ahead from those who stumble—and don’t know why. You can learn more about these rules in the workplace in my Wall Street Journal bestselling book called—you guessed it—The Unspoken Rules.
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Sources:
- Jonah Alben
- “king of AI”
- one-fifth, or $17 billion, of the company’s revenue.
- There’s “no time to design a completely new chip for China,”
- “reduce [NVIDIA’s chip] performance to meet U.S. rules.”
- “Physically burning parts of the chip.”
- “line-by-line”
- “chug” 8 pounds of water before being weighed—only to urinate it out.
- The result: The team didn’t have to “carry an ounce more than necessary.”
- “NVIDIA wouldn’t be NVIDIA without Jonah. He’s as important to the company as Jensen [the CEO] is.”
