On: Jensen Huang resigns

Not sure people have grasped how serious this all is; the second affair alone would fell most CEOs because it was with an employee.

But my guess is, he'd rather resign on this note than what will come out in a few weeks.

> the second affair alone would fell most CEOs because it was with an employee

I mean realistically, no it would not. They do not resign for that in general. It is tall order for them to resign or leave when there is credible or proven accusation of actual abuse or harassment, there is not even that in play.

No, they really do, even at big firms.

McDonald's, Intel, CNN, NBC, CBS, Astronomer, Best Buy, Nestlé, Kohl's, Comtech, BP, CBOE, Barclay's.

Not hard to find examples from the last ten years.

I checked CNN thing (picked randomly) and:

> At CNN, Mr Zucker faced criticism from those who believed the network gave too much coverage to the former president, especially during the Republican presidential primary. Mr Trump has also criticised what he saw as unfair coverage.

I will happily argue that affair was just an excuse for other reasons. His coverage was not pro-Trump enough.

> I will happily argue that affair was just an excuse for other reasons. His coverage was not pro-Trump enough.

Well you could, but considering:

1) Zucker's "too much coverage" that was internally complained about was him trying to be pro-Trump, not anti- (regardless of what the then-still-disgraced former President whined about)

2) his resignation came in 2022 while CNN was still largely free of the right-wing pressure campaign it has been under in the last 18 months pre-merger

3) … in the middle of an internal sex scandal investigation involving someone else, in the #MeToo era, when the company was trying to make it very clear that it would not tolerate such things

I think it would be quite a stretch to make your case.

Jeff Zucker was not even fired for the relationship, but for failing to tell the board about it as company rules said he must.

Again: top CEOs do indeed resign over this stuff. Because it is serious: it opens them up to blackmail and opens the company up to lawsuits.

I said "not pro-Trump enough". I did not said "anti Trump". Yes, it is long standing conservative tradition to call yourself victim when having pro-you bias.

2.) It was not free of that pressure, it was just not that super high yet.

My case is that sex alone wont make it. It is easy to make my case, you are kind making it for me by adding more reasons why it was not just afair on itself.

I'm supporting your argument by offering a straightforward, easily proved counter-argument to it? You're wrong, it's that easy.

> I said "not pro-Trump enough". I did not said "anti Trump".

He was not ousted from CNN for not being pro-Trump enough. If anyone at CNN ousted him for politics-related reasons, it would have been because he was too pro-Trump. Because he was, for example, helping Trump before the election debates, offering to have a weekly show with him etc. This pissed off a lot of his colleagues.

None of that is why he was fired (not least because it would have happened a lot sooner than 2022).

He was fired because he broke corporate rules in a way that embarrassed them when they were trying to boot out Chris Cuomo for being a genuine abusive boss.

That is the reason, end of story.

> If anyone at CNN ousted him for politics-related reasons, it would have been because he was too pro-Trump.

Oh, please. That was already time when everything Trump related was whitewashed and sanitized, biased pro-Trump. While conservatives constantly complained and managed to put mediocre conservative pundits in.

And even in YOUR story it is someone elses abuse that needed to happen for him to be pushed out - combined with political pressure. The affair alone is not something they care about. And even that abuse needed to happen during #meetoo, they dont care about that either outside large public pressure.

I know we're all very sensitive these days. But he was running a multi trillion dollar company.

I'm quite interested to know what you mean here, between the lines. OK, he was running a multi-trillion dollar company, are you saying currently it's a over-reaction because of that, and the reaction would have been justified if it was smaller/bigger company? I'm really not sure what the underlying point you're trying to make here.

The guy changed the world, heaven forbid he sleeps with a few extra women. They were age appropriate for him. The guy's getting more punishment than the Epstein class did.

It is not about the sex! It is about the corruption/lying to the board/misuse of company resources/risk of abuse of power/impact on other people's career progression.

He clearly is a high agency person, and has to be to have founded Nvidia. The board might have messed up here.

He has had undeclared relationships with two of his subordinates (one a direct report).

I think you don't understand that this creates _enormous_ legal liability for Nvidia. It's straightforwardly bad news and people get fired for it.

What constitutes “enormous legal liability” for a company of nVidia’s size?

The sky is the limit. The problem with high-level CEOs having affairs with subordinates is that they create extra scope for insider trading, for blackmail (and thus for espionage, corporate and otherwise), as well as the ordinary stuff like people defrauding the company in various ways, staff being compelled to keep the secret, staff finding that their own promotion is impossible because the person boffing the boss gets their job, the subordinate themselves effectively finding they can't break off the relationship, all sorts of stuff. Lawsuits all over the place and usually some other secrets come out.

Whether or not you're arguing that Nvidia should just say, well, the worst his shagging around is going to cost us is X billion, price it in and let it slide, as so many seem to be, I can't give you a number.

But ethics, the law, it actually does matter.

At the end of the day, all that really matters is impact on the bottom line.

And the board of that company decided that the risks he presented to the company outweighed the benefits.

He's facing one of the largest divorces in history, you don't think that would be a little distracting?

And if you don't know why leaders can't have relationships with their employees, that ignorance is on you. You're trying to insult other people but it just makes you look bad.

Can't legally, or are you just talking about social pressure/policing? Because everyone involved are adults, and knew what they were doing.

Besides that, it comes down to how well he's able to separate personal life and work, and whether he continues to add value for shareholders (which Nvidia has clearly been an absolute outlier at doing, during his tenure).

But it looks like they won't give him a chance anyway.

I guess I mean corporate rules with actual teeth.

A lot of marriages survive even after stuff like this. Especially in Asian cultures. The fact that his wife is White is the only thing that hurts him on his chances here.

She'd be stupid as hell to divorce him.

Or she'd be more than adequately rich, worth around $75bn, able to do whatever the hell she wants with the rest of her life, able to have impacts independent of him, and free of a sleazy worm who humiliatingly cheated on her twice.

“Twice” is public information. The things that happened twice have high probability to occur more often.

Indeed! There’s a whole “another shoe to drop” vibe around this.

Edit: and there it is. Two employees, not just one.

A multi-trillion dollar company... so the standards are lower?

I think the implication, rather, is that the bar for dismissal should be higher.

Those are effectively the same thing.

That does seem to be the way of the world lately. Sure this person is awful but look at the shareholder value they have created!