Nvidia’s CEO was labeled a 'demanding' boss by staff. But experts say you have to be cutthroat

Nvidia's CEO Jensen Huang knows he's a tough boss and has no regrets about it.

In a recent interview with "60 Minutes," employees at the company's Santa Clara headquarters told correspondent Bill Whitaker that the entrepreneur is "demanding," a "perfectionist," and "not easy to work for."

Huang, who co-founded the chipmaker in 1993 which is now worth over $2 trillion, said this described him "perfectly."

"It should be like that. If you want to do extraordinary things, it shouldn't be easy," he told Whitaker.

This isn't the first time Huang's leadership style has come under the spotlight. He previously told CNBC that he has "50 direct reports" to stop unnecessary layers of management developing at the company — most CEOs have about 10 direct reports.  

He said he expects senior executives to operate very independently with little guidance and pampering.

In the age of the empathetic leader, Huang's tactics may be a little controversial, but experts say that you have to be relentless to run one of the largest companies in the world.

"He is to some degree cutthroat," Wladislaw Rivkin, associate professor of organizational behavior at Trinity Business School, told CNBC Make It. "He is the leader of a trillion-dollar valued company and has gone through a very rough selection process because there are many tech companies which are at the trillion or billion-dollar mark."

Many smaller companies have gone bankrupt but Nvidia "survived," Rivkin noted. You must be "resilient" to operate at that level, he added.

Additionally, Huang's tenure in Silicon Valley has lasted over three decades which is "quite rare," according to Sankalp Chaturvedi, a professor of organizational behavior and leadership at Imperial College Business School.

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