Intel has been a company in decline ever since Craig Barret’s reduce American head count and move the business to India and China. Instead of being an exciting place to work, we had to endure statements like I can get 4 Indian or Chinese engineers for the price of one American. We had to endure the specter of job elimination through globalization or mandatory attrition. No wonder the competent left Intel or retired. It has taken years but now Intel is devoid of technically competent people and is populated by power point and excel jocks who do not have the slightest idea of what they are doing. Intel has become a sort of technical employer of last resort for those who cannot find employment in one of the leading technology firms. Unfortunately Intel needs first class talent to solve its design and process execution issues, but is unlikely to find such people given such an negative working environment.
20 replies (most recent on top)
Companies like Intel with broken cultures can strategize... or pay Bain to create slides about strategizing... but - because the culture is broken - they can't execute.
There is zero trust between employees and managers and managers and leadership. Or - in most cases - even between employees. As someone else said, it's a viper pit.
@etbn+16bLww4e Never heard of. Intel has a fab in Da Lian, China. It was put there probably under pressure from the Chinese government for raking in so much money there. It runs a separate process and makes something.
Intel's problem is not outsourcing but In-sourcing: hiring bad, disqualified people to fill managers' head count growth ambitions. Once these people are in, they create meetings, cook up AR's, bossing people around, and bring in more people of their own tribe. They replaced Intel couture, milked the existing profit, and drove out good people. That is what you end up with.
@1wwv+16bLww4e So what about the Pudong plant?
America is a country in decline
If a company had a good culture and evaluated talent and groomed it accordingly than the BoD and CEO could bee seen as visionary and stewards.
But a tech company competes on a multi legged effort: Vision/Strategy, execution that rely on deep understanding within the company in gaps and technology inflection opportunities.
Craig Barret the last CEO with any technology credentials had ARM, communications and software pieces all put in place for positioning the company to be the mobile and cloud and silico. monster for the next 20 years.
PSO was a bean counter and squandered it all by retrenchment on x86.
BK the SJ State BSer has no clue to technology or the deeper and subtle technology nuances and could be sold any snake oil from drones to Murthy snake oil.
The problem still starts with the BoD and even after removal of Andy doesn’t have the right people to probe Bean Counter Bob as to what is amiss, with Jim’s leaving and the lack of honest and good people the decline will continue.
Unlike Kodak or Motorola, Intel got a gold mine that keeps minting money like IBM and can hide decades of rot and poor decisions, but the rot is deep in the roots and prevalent from first line manager to the BoD and Chairman.
It’s my opinion that some will claim the Chairman has the credentials but sadly most of the BoD, CEO and a senior VPs don’t have the acume not track record what Intel needs to do to stop the rot.
AMD, MS were either lucky or very good at selecting the right person at the right time.
The time was 10 years ago and now even more urgent. I think it may be too late, like IBM, GE and BA, once past a tipping point no one person will recover it, maybe government can rescue but what a sad ending
The stock is undervalued, they will make ever more money and profits but doesn’t change the rotting tree nor the end game is assured, sad as Intel did more to silicon and enabling everything but sadly PSO, BK and Andy B assured it’s unrecoverable path
No. BK and Barrett were supposedly engineers, yet they delivered no vision and direction beyond cost cutting. While it is true that high technology company like Intel needs a technologist as it's CEO, what Intel needs more is trust, accountability and integrity among all it's mid level to Senior Management. MIA, unavailability, lack of empathy, participation, psychopathic micromanagement define this class of employees, who are called "leaders" going by their rank and paycheck. They have zero trust among the people they are supposed to be leading. Replacing the CEO won't fix the systemic cultural infection. Today it's more than obvious that BK is a failure. Back when he was the CEO, everyone who was a grade 10 or above parroting his "virtuous cycle" catchphrase, without ever challenging what it really meant. Such is the sheepish conformity among these "leaders".
Perhaps Intel needs someone like AMD's Dr. Su, an engineer, not a bean counter Intel CEO Bob Swan.
We heard and seen too many Fake Good News of project X, Y...on Circuit while the reality is 180% different. The old say is: “As long as you somehow reported good it will buy you time to jump ship. time to make 3 envelopes”.
Very sad to see AMD ate their lunch due to massive layers of bad managements across most of the departments top to bottom.
This day has been 20 years overdue. Intel is a comedy of errors with all of BK’s distractions and hiring third tier people from outside and hoping for a Hail Mary save. TD and the fabs havent been competitive in 10 years or felt that pressure. Intel had a chance to be a big investor in TSMC and get capacity when Hsinchu was a dirt field but arrogance made that a non starter. I know I was there.
Let’s revisit all the rot in the company, for the last two decades not much changed, there was rot at Intel was long ago, since the 90s.
No, the fall all started in Hillsboro, when Intel has silicons leadership that hid all the design inefficiencies, manufacturing inefficiency and management and leadership inefficiencies. Intel was printing money for a good two decades and bad design and poor management permeated all of the company. The one saving grace was fear and hunger and the ability to like clock work produce a new node ahead of everyone else, but arrogance and lying started to permeate the senior LTD management. The last two process nodes really showcased the loss of the silicon leadership. To work in LTD is to be arrogant and deceiving and to the rest of the company, now the world pretty much knows how even with the best engineers with all the money if managed by rotten and deceptive leaders can’t deliver.
Sadly the new structure and the new sheriff is ill equipped to fix any of it. She has never worked in TD and is as ill equipped as Murthy to rescue the Titanic. If her job is the shutter the place then she can do it, resurrect it no way
Intel's decline has been long coming
- Technical leadership has been gutted when people like Gelsinger, Perlmuter,Diane Bryant and Skagen left Intel due to internal politics
- Andy Bryant pulled BK into CEO job , and BK was a disaster. He was fascinated with all useless technologies like drones , smart watch, smart shirt , charging bowl etc,, He also pushed TMG guys into many leadership positions within the company. These guys had no vision but dour and morose personalities and alienated the best engineers.
- Too many entitled seniors who have enormous pay packages and political connections , who wont leave until they are given golden chutes.
TSMC is a company with Chinese Culture: low key, detail oriented, down to earth. Their employees have excellent education in physical sciences such as chemistry and physics. The company, down to the engineers, is open minded and dynamic. It has a lot of attributes that Intel once had. They once look up to Intel as a model. Many ex-Intel work there.
@1ljk+16bLww4e I disagree with you dude !
Don’t blame outsourcing. It is about recruiting and retaining talents. In other words, Intel has done poor job in innovation and finding the best talents global wise
People who are saying outsourcing work to low cost geos was a good move are completely wrong !
Actually it demotivates employees who are working on main product lines in one way or the other. Thus causing delays and execution failures and limits innovation.
Since 2015, People who were hired from outside at leadership positions never ever knew how to lead a company the size of intel because intel was a company full of talent and innovation .
I don’t know know why no one blew a whistle to SEC when they saw this coming . I partly take some ownership of not whistle blowing but I did not knew how to and partly because I was under the corporate culture pressure.
Intel can still beat TSMC if they get their sh– together .
One more thing is , intel must not hire anyone from outside in leadership roles.
Intel must not tapeout from TSMC.
Companies that are heart and soul of the USA must maintain and continue to put effort to fight and stay at the leading edge.
Remember TSMC is not a US company but from Chinese republic.
- BK hastened the decline by hiring incompetent 'minorities' with compulsory promotions.
- Then there were the layoffs and VSPs in 2016. People who took VSPs were ALL good people.
Of the people who were given ISPs, say 50% of them were were good employees, many of them got 1 stock level-4 or 5.
- The fat man with no factory experience was hired to lead fabs!!
CEOs, VPs have been one joker after another!!
Moving to China and India hasn't hurt other semiconductor companies, or tech companies either. Look at the companies that are eating Intel's lunch. It's a problem with leadership.
Intel has not outsourced any of the manufacturing to India or China. While India and Chinese branches have a strong presence in data center, AI, and software. All; those are doing pretty good (in fact saving Intel from a total collapse). So probably Intel wouldn't have been in this mess if it had outsourced some of the manufacturing to India or China.
There is potential for talent in a few areas, but the working environment and management k–ls it. The environment causes everyone to silo information/skill to watch their own @ss in the viper pit. There is highly educated people all over the place and I would say most folks only tap about 10% of their potential at work. The work just isn't that challenging or interesting, and their managers make it worse.
I wholeheartedly agree information tech / security within intel is in the exact same state. No talent directors that continue the same ignorant decisions time and again, asks to “go fast” move quick with teams that have 2 to 3 members. The Jerks are left.