5 ms·

His personal reasons may well include that he "personally hates working at Intel"

by Traster 6y ago

libertine 6y ago
When you have FU money and the expertise to be desired by anyone, doesn't seem like a bad reason.
- hitpointdrew 6y ago
  > and the expertise to be desired by anyone Seriously...Jim Keller doesn't apply to work places....places seek him out. The interview process is Jim interviewing the company, not the other way around.
bredren 6y ago
Big company, but having worked at and for Intel I would not be surprised. I don’t have nice things to say about Intel.
- UncleOxidant 6y ago
  Same here. It's a terrible place if you want to try to get things done. Meetings about meetings and nobody ever wants to make a decision.
rathel 6y ago
Oh yeah. I have friends who work or have worked at Intel. Management who runs this company are straight lunatics. The sheer amount of shelved projects, pointless reorgs, layoffs-for-show is staggering. I do work in a corp, but thanks God our leadership is much more down-to-earth, even if I earn less money, I am able to retain relative sanity (due to my allergy to bullshit).
mabbo 6y ago
There's something I can really respect about that, if that is the case. Imagine you hate working for your company, but you're still going out, giving positive interviews, and doing your job well. I know a lot of folks (almost certainly myself included) who struggle to not make it obvious when they loathe coming to work in the morning.
- toast0 6y ago
  One of my jobs, I was interviewing candidates on my last week. It was all fine, until the candidate asked "Why do you like to work on this team?" ... luckily we were at the end of time, so I could duck the question.
  - pkulak 6y ago
    That's insane that they had you doing interviews when they knew you were leaving.
    - toast0 6y ago
      Smallish team, I was good at interviews, and not disgruntled, sort of made sense? We had a quick feedback loop, so we would make our decision day of or next day. This candidate was great, and from what I heard, she got an offer from my team and another team at the same company, but chose the other one; I probably didn't sell the position well enough? Anyway, not the most insane thing Yahoo was doing at the time, lol.
    - ashtonkem 6y ago
      I got put on call during my last week once. My comment was “are you sure?”
chooseaname 6y ago
Could be that they brought him in for his expertise and then didn't let him use that expertise. Bad management has a way of doing that.
- phlakaton 6y ago
  I find it interesting that (as of this point) comments that speculate on health are downvoted, but comments that speculate on his relationship with management are not...
  - monadic2 6y ago
    Why is that interesting? Seems like normal, on topic behavior.
  - vulcan01 6y ago
    People tend to empathise with that which is more relevant to their own lives; more people will have a bad relationship with management than bad health.
    - phlakaton 6y ago
      Spoken like a young person who will no doubt live forever. ;-)
  - UncleOxidant 6y ago
    Why not both? Bad management can lead to bad health. But I don't think it was only management - it was the rank and file that didn't want to change as well. Trying to fight an entrenched system could definitely lead to illness.
- UncleOxidant 6y ago
  He was brought in not only for his expertise but in hopes that he could reform a sclerotic design process that's stuck in the 90s. AMD, Apple and Tesla (places Keller was before Intel) use a lot more design automation and thus are able to get more done/engineer. Intel has a patchwork of tools that are generally internally developed (and thus no one outside of Intel has expertise with those tools and expertise with those tools is not transferrable outside of Intel either) and different design groups have their preferred tools. From what I gather Keller was trying to bring in more industry EDA tools and standardize the design process between groups as well. From what I hear from people who were there he ran into all sorts of push back. So I gather he's decided to cut his losses and leave Intel to languish.
UncleOxidant 6y ago
He was brought in to try to modernize Intel's processor design process. To bring it into the 21st century. AMD and Apple (places where he'd been before) use a lot more design automation and thus are able to produce much more per engineer than Intel. Intel tends to throw more bodies at the problem which doesn't scale well. From what I've heard from people there he ran into too much institutional inertia and outright pushback. If Keller couldn't do it then Intel is just going to remain stuck.
- rathel 6y ago
  Might be true, recently there have been highly boasted improvements in the RTL-to-GDSII pipeline, using AI, as one does. Both from Cadence and Synopsys.

His personal reasons may well include that he "personally hates working at Intel"

libertine 6y ago

When you have FU money and the expertise to be desired by anyone, doesn't seem like a bad reason.

hitpointdrew 6y ago
> and the expertise to be desired by anyone Seriously...Jim Keller doesn't apply to work places....places seek him out. The interview process is Jim interviewing the company, not the other way around.

bredren 6y ago

Big company, but having worked at and for Intel I would not be surprised. I don’t have nice things to say about Intel.

UncleOxidant 6y ago
Same here. It's a terrible place if you want to try to get things done. Meetings about meetings and nobody ever wants to make a decision.

rathel 6y ago

Oh yeah. I have friends who work or have worked at Intel. Management who runs this company are straight lunatics. The sheer amount of shelved projects, pointless reorgs, layoffs-for-show is staggering. I do work in a corp, but thanks God our leadership is much more down-to-earth, even if I earn less money, I am able to retain relative sanity (due to my allergy to bullshit).

mabbo 6y ago

There's something I can really respect about that, if that is the case. Imagine you hate working for your company, but you're still going out, giving positive interviews, and doing your job well. I know a lot of folks (almost certainly myself included) who struggle to not make it obvious when they loathe coming to work in the morning.

toast0 6y ago
One of my jobs, I was interviewing candidates on my last week. It was all fine, until the candidate asked "Why do you like to work on this team?" ... luckily we were at the end of time, so I could duck the question.
- pkulak 6y ago
  That's insane that they had you doing interviews when they knew you were leaving.
  - toast0 6y ago
    Smallish team, I was good at interviews, and not disgruntled, sort of made sense? We had a quick feedback loop, so we would make our decision day of or next day. This candidate was great, and from what I heard, she got an offer from my team and another team at the same company, but chose the other one; I probably didn't sell the position well enough? Anyway, not the most insane thing Yahoo was doing at the time, lol.
  - ashtonkem 6y ago
    I got put on call during my last week once. My comment was “are you sure?”

chooseaname 6y ago

Could be that they brought him in for his expertise and then didn't let him use that expertise. Bad management has a way of doing that.

phlakaton 6y ago
I find it interesting that (as of this point) comments that speculate on health are downvoted, but comments that speculate on his relationship with management are not...
- monadic2 6y ago
  Why is that interesting? Seems like normal, on topic behavior.
- vulcan01 6y ago
  People tend to empathise with that which is more relevant to their own lives; more people will have a bad relationship with management than bad health.
  - phlakaton 6y ago
    Spoken like a young person who will no doubt live forever. ;-)
- UncleOxidant 6y ago
  Why not both? Bad management can lead to bad health. But I don't think it was only management - it was the rank and file that didn't want to change as well. Trying to fight an entrenched system could definitely lead to illness.
UncleOxidant 6y ago
He was brought in not only for his expertise but in hopes that he could reform a sclerotic design process that's stuck in the 90s. AMD, Apple and Tesla (places Keller was before Intel) use a lot more design automation and thus are able to get more done/engineer. Intel has a patchwork of tools that are generally internally developed (and thus no one outside of Intel has expertise with those tools and expertise with those tools is not transferrable outside of Intel either) and different design groups have their preferred tools. From what I gather Keller was trying to bring in more industry EDA tools and standardize the design process between groups as well. From what I hear from people who were there he ran into all sorts of push back. So I gather he's decided to cut his losses and leave Intel to languish.

UncleOxidant 6y ago

He was brought in to try to modernize Intel's processor design process. To bring it into the 21st century. AMD and Apple (places where he'd been before) use a lot more design automation and thus are able to produce much more per engineer than Intel. Intel tends to throw more bodies at the problem which doesn't scale well. From what I've heard from people there he ran into too much institutional inertia and outright pushback. If Keller couldn't do it then Intel is just going to remain stuck.

rathel 6y ago
Might be true, recently there have been highly boasted improvements in the RTL-to-GDSII pipeline, using AI, as one does. Both from Cadence and Synopsys.