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Eliminate focal and 360s, replace it with team-oriented projects and tangible goals. Everyone wants to be the MVP, but they don't want to win the Super Bowl for the team. This will take care of backstabbers, lazy managers, and power point bullshitters.
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Pay CEOs and VPs based on their real business unit growth. MCG engineers got more bonuses than 24/7 PTD engineers for the 40M tablets while operating at a loss.
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Get rid of managers without management skills or train them heavily. Being a 15-year technical expert that cut costs doesn't make you a manager. Cut the mafia style management and start listen to your engineers and ICs. Worry as much on generating revenue as cutting costs.
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Apply real diversity: do not just hire people for their color of skin of their sex. Hire them to break the mafia style hiring process: encourage diverse backgrounds, schools, experience (not just RCGs). Real minorities at Intel groups are from certain schools, certain level of experience, certain background or certain countries. Bringing a single woman or minority won't fix this problem.
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Diversify away from Moore's Law to become a service company: foundry, Smart TVs, mobile, wearables, FPGAs, software, security, cloud, IoT. All sound good and could have been great, but Intel must provide an integral solution to the customer, not just isolated components. The same people and culture are killing any of these initiatives.
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PTD: Stop hiring 24/7 glorified technicians with a Ph.D . Train your technicians and bring Ph.Ds for real R&D like EUV, Material Science, Quantum Computing, etc. The culture that worked 30, 20, 10 years ago during the Intel monopoly won't work in today's complex world.
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Integration: Eliminate all the business overlaps. You have groups at PEG, Advance Design, ATTD and CCG doing exactly the same things. Time to act as a single company, not as a tribal mini feudalism.
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Value maternity/paternity, sick leave: don't punish people for taking them. Everyone has a father and a mother. Families are the most important business unit in society and they also buy your products.
30 replies (most recent on top)
- Remove BK and unnecessary large number of VPs and managers
You want a BKM to save Intel? Remove BK.
The other day, someone asked me why we have four different systems that track the same thing. Focal, of course. You have to reinvent to get ahead in this game. As such, Focal is almost always the root problem for inefficiency
You know you're at Intel too long when you say the word 'technologist' . No one in the real world has that title.
WTF is that?
Either you're an engineer or you aren't.
It is the technologists who built Intel and made it what it is. It is wrong to say they can't do a good job managing it. Intel doesn't need professional managers. There are too many already. What it needs is real leaders. Not managers who call themselves leaders.
BKM is BK and M
5 is not a sound strategy.
It's basically what Intel is doing now.
Good luck with building things nobody wants.
OP a great and thoughtful post!!
Hopefully you don't work at Intel, you sound smart enough and observant enough that you'd have gotten off the sinking ship.
Too bad no one in any place of power will read this :-(
6 - PhD's doing mechanic work and grunt work is a disaster waiting to happen, and an abuse of a valuable degree. Would you want a PhD doing an oil change on your car? NO. would you want an auto mechanic doing process design at the transistor level? NO!
It's damned expensive to hire a PhD for work than could be done by a person with an associates degree.
Elon Musk seems to be on a buying spree. Maybe he could save Intel?
I read most comments and it seems that people don't read beyond item #1 before they start criticizing....that's soooo Intel. OP raises really good points and complement what most say about people not buying PCs anymore.
@iyg you missed the OPs point. Before new ventures you can to do some real house cleaning and create conditions for innovations. Read #5, all good ideas, poor execution.
You missed the point entirely.
@wfd not true. Cooling requirements, integrated features on chip like graphics, sounds, etc. Granted it's still x86, but not even Intel could come up with x86-64, it was AMD. Still they transitioned fine, even with the PowerPC threat. Do the test and try to build a laptop like you build a desktop. Intel bought DEC in the 90s, that could have been the start of low power ARM-like designs. Still thinking of isolated components, Intel need to provide overall solutions to the customer.
Bad example - desktops are the same as laptops just at a lower power envelope. They run the exact same software and leverage the same ecosystem.
Intel needs something completely new.
Again, drones and toys are not it.
Software is not it. Intel does not have A-list software people.
Memory is commodity.
5G is not going to work for the same reason software won't work - not enough expertise.
Intel's expertise is high volume manufacturing and CPU architecture. You need to leverage those pieces to build something new.
Custom foundry seems like the best bet but has failed for various reasons.
@iww. I couldn't agree with you more. To be as successful as it was in the past, Intel needs the leadership and the vision to find something everyone wants to have and eventually believes it absolutely needs to have and is willing to pay for--like the iPhone--or a service everyone uses, like Google or Amazon. Not sure if drones or bracelets or robots or sensors on snowboards is it. I don't know what it is. However, I don't think the Focal system does much to encourage risk taking or collaboration.
@iww....change the word PCs to desktops in the 90s. Intel transitioned to laptops recognizing the new trend, but didn't make it to mobile due to arrogance. I think OPs #5 talks about it.
@bfz Strong leadership: set an example with work ethics. Compromise with the board to let you work your way. Favor results over "friendship". Make people follow your lead, motivate them, most importantly LISTEN to everybody from lower grades all the way up, not just your VPs. Build strong partnerships with OEMs and customers, listening to their needs, not alienating them.
I think OP lays out very good specific points for a real shake up. The layoffs and bringing Murthy are far from a real shake up.
Rankings, ratings and forced bell curves were eliminated by most rational companies sometime ago (with the exception of Yahoo, and we know how swimmingly that's going). Meanwhile, Intel carries on.... http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-11-13/microsoft-kills-its-hated-stack-rankings-dot-does-anyone-do-employee-reviews-right
The problem isn't focal or anything operational.
The problem is STRATEGIC.
People aren't buying PCs anymore.
Thats the bottom line - no amount of focal change is going to change that. You'll just create a bunch of workers that are really efficient at creating things that no one wants.
Intel needs a new VISION for the future - I can tell you that drones, bracelets and dancing robots are NOT IT. Neither is commodity memory or 5G where we don't have the requisite expertise.
And now, most recently, Focal has gotten so cannibalistic that even long-term Successful is not good enough, and one slip to SL4 (say, for being on MLOA or starting a new role or just plain having a bad year), is enough to get you VSP'd at the least or ISP'd if they need the headcount.
Define "strong leadership" and "a real shakeup". You can't just offer up generic platitudes. What is the specific solution you propose given the current state of the business?
The Focal style of performance review has been eliminated by almost every major company because it makes collaboration and team-building difficult. It sets people against their own teammates, what with the rigid 'bell curve' of winners and losers that has to be enforced by management. Instead of working for the team, people are competing for limited rewards. A few years ago, around the same time Microsoft ditched it's Focal-esque system, Intel HR experimented with an anti-Focal system that got rid of 360s and rankings and ratings, focusing instead on career development or just plain honing and streamlining (LEAN) how you did your current job, for example, if you were not interested in 'developing' into something else. The goal was the team success, not who got the limited Os and the Es and the SL1 and SL2 plums. I was told it was rejected for rollout across Intel and died on the vine as an HR pilot program.
Anyone think BK is Steve Jobs?
There is no one with vision at the top.
The band of idiots leading Intel have brought you
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mcafee
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contra revenue
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IoT bullsh!t - jimmy, mica, etc
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Altera (now losing badly to Xilinx)
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balance sheet leverage
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12K layoffs
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the core business in free fall with no solution
Who is going to stop the madness?
An operations manager from QUALCOMM?
There is no visionary to save Intel.
Makes too much sense and an old dinosaur like Intel will never ever be able to do.
Great thread!
@ore That's why you need strong leadership. It's not just #5, it's the whole thing that is not easy. Like Jobs did with Apple in the 2000s. Intel is hijacked by the same culture Apple had in the 90s, it needs a real shake up.
Who was fired for contra revenue?
No one.
Not a damn one.
The board needs to be fired for gross negligence.
Good luck with #5 - LOL!
Have a look at the financials and tell me how that's working out. Intel is a manufacturing company, not a Google or an Apple.
Gold post