Jensen Huang Resigns: Why CEOs Keep Breaking the Rules They Wrote

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has resigned after a New York Times report published Wednesday revealed an extramarital affair with a subordinate — the company's vice president of health care and one of his 60 direct reports.

The affair violated Nvidia's own code of conduct, which instructs employees to avoid situations creating conflicts of interest, including "personal relationships," and states the company will "promptly investigate" reports of misconduct. Huang wrote the rules. He's gone anyway.

This is Huang's second entanglement to surface. The new affair carries fewer national security implications than his previously reported entanglement with an alleged Chinese spy, but both point to the same pattern: a chief executive who didn't expect consequences for relationships with people inside the company.

How common is this pattern?

Very. Huang joins a growing list of CEOs forced out over inappropriate relationships:

• Steve Easterbrook, former McDonald's CEO, was ousted in 2019 over a relationship with a subordinate. McDonald's later sued him for concealing other relationships and misleading investors, and he was forced to return his $105 million severance package.
• Alan Shaw, former CEO of railroad Norfolk Southern, was fired in 2024 over a relationship with the company's chief legal officer.
• Laurent Freixe, former Nestlé SA CEO, was dismissed last year after an internal investigation confirmed a relationship with a subordinate he had initially denied.
• Ashley Buchanan, Kohl's CEO, was recently forced out when the board learned he had steered millions of dollars in business to a vendor he was dating without disclosing the relationship.
• The Astronomer CEO resigned after a viral video showed him canoodling with his chief people officer at a Coldplay concert.

Leslie Moonves rounds out the category, fired over sexual harassment rather than an affair. The throughline: policies forbidding romance between managers and direct reports exist at most large employers, and executives cross the line anyway.

What does the research say happens next?

Amy Nicole Baker, a professor at the University of New Haven who studies workplace romance, argues #MeToo changed far less than assumed — in both CEO behavior and corporate response.

"The stock price goes down, at least in the short term," she says, citing her own research on how stock prices react to sexual harassment allegations or affairs involving the CEO. "And usually CEOs are removed and replaced."

That second part matters for boards. Baker says directors treat CEO indiscretions as diagnostic data, not isolated incidents. "Boards look at CEO behavior as a signal for what could be going on in the internal management of the company," she says. An affair sets off alarm bells about what else a chief executive might be hiding.

Why do powerful executives keep doing this?

Baker points to the psychology of power itself. "People show less restraint when they are in power, and they're also more likely to perceive someone else sending them sexual signals when they're actually not," she says. "So the research on power can tell us a little bit about why this keeps happening."

People in power tend toward impulsivity and comfort with risk — traits business environments often reward. Company culture can compound the problem when it's informal and pushes people to test boundaries. "If you're willing to break a rule in one way, it's probably more acceptable to tacitly break a rule in a different way," Baker says.

Has #MeToo changed anything?

Not at the top, according to Baker. The intense scrutiny of Huang may deter some CEOs briefly, but she expects the pattern to hold.

"In terms of the CEOs and their propensity to get involved in risky workplace relationships, that doesn't seem to have changed," she says. "More people are willing to say, 'Yes, this happened to me. Yes, this is an issue. Yes, this is a problem.' There's certainly more recognition and awareness. But when it comes to people at this highest echelon, I'm not seeing a change in behavior."

Nearly a decade after #MeToo went mainstream, awareness is up, reporting is up — and the corner office keeps making the same bet that it won't get caught. Nvidia's board just proved, again, that it's a bad bet.