Globally great (if you get a job in the US locations), locally (in India) just a cost center...
Pros
On the software side, the first 6 months to a year are a real learning curve - the SW stack is very well-designed, and there's lot to learn about how to write a scalable driver architecture. Some of the engineers I worked with (in Us/Pune) were phenomenally good, and lot could be learned from them.
Cons
Local managers in Pune are the ones who were in the startup (PACE) acquired by NVidia USA about 10 years back to form NVIDIA Pune. As such, to begin with their engineering calibre weren't up-to the mark w.r.t the other engineers elsewhere in NVIDIA, and since they've been out of touch with the technical side for so long, it can be very frustrating as an engineer to work under their management. OTOH, the managers in Santa Clara were/are top-notch engineers, and hence its very difficult for an engineer in Pune to win a new project/feature to work on - his/her manager would lack the technical spine to get the project, instead would be content to take on code-janitoring duties (getting their engineers to run endless simulations on minor chip revisions, creating throwaway release branches etc). Its no wonder that the Pune engineering corps is a perfect example of the "Dead-Sea Effect" - the engineers with good career prospects have a) either done a masters in US and joined the NVIDIA office in Santa Clara, doing real engineering work OR b) Moved to other places that offer engineering growth and satisfactory compensation (companies like Qualcomm, Intel, Samsung to name a few).
