Surrounded by moss, in a boiling valley with not a breeze to be seen or felt, Jensen Huang stumbled upon an unlikely mentor while off the beaten path.
“Anybody who’s been to Kyoto knows how incredibly hot it is during the summer,” Huang said at the Chinese American Semiconductor Professional Association in 2023, speaking of his time in a temple in the city, which hosts the most extensive collection of moss in the world. There, Huang received the best career advice.
Inside the temple was an old man, “squatted down, working on the moss.” Tourists passed by him, as did Huang and his family. But Huang suddenly stopped, noticing that the man was tending to the garden with a bamboo tweezer and a bamboo basket with, at most, three tiny pieces of dead moss inside it.
“What are you doing?” Huang asked.
“And, he says he is taking care of his garden,” Huang remembered. After the Nvidia CEO inquired, the man added that he had been working there for almost 30 years.
Looking at his tools, Huang pushed further, wondering how the elderly man was able to tend such a big garden with such small tools. “He said something that is perfect, he said ‘I have plenty of time,’” Huang recalls.
“That’s the best career advice I can give you,” Huang says. “Most of the time, I wait for things to come to me. I’m rarely chasing things.”
The gardener’s words— and Huang’s interpretation—could also be seen as a reference to French Enlightenment philosopher Voltaire, whose satirical novella and masterpiece “Candide” offers the lesson that one must cultivate their own garden and find fulfillment through productive work. The 18th century thought leader would likely have a thing or two to say about the 17th wealthiest person in the world trying to emulate his philosophy. “The comfort of the rich depends upon an abundant supply of the poor,” Voltaire once said.
Even if he claims to not be chasing success, the CEO has found a great deal of it while riding the AI wave. Coming off an incredibly strong quarter, Nvidia has even other business leaders giving them creds.
“These two numbers have never been next to each other in the history of capitalism,” Box CEO Aaron Levie tweeted regarding the company’s released revenue and data-center category’s percentage growth. And Huang has profited immensely off of his company’s achievements, his net worth surging to $90 billion in light of recent stock performance.
Looking back on his long stretch of time at Nvidia and the gardner’s ethos, he offers a kernel of advice—“dedicate yourself to learning all the time, doing the best possible work you can,”
Whether or not it’s authentic, Huang tells a story of trying to stay grounded and give himself fully to the moment, choosing to go watchless, in part, because of this desire. It might be unlikely that a billionaire executive who is running the new era of tech is truly able to stay at peace, but Huang is attempting to.
“I’m focused on now. I’m enjoying my job,” he said. “I’m the longest running tech CEO in the world. I am largely unemployable now, and thank goodness I enjoyed my job.”