4 ms·

If Pat's recent performance at VMware is any indicator...I wouldn't put that much faith in his ability to turn things around. He was very good for VMware early

If Pat's recent performance at VMware is any indicator...I wouldn't put that much faith in his ability to turn things around. He was very good for VMware early on in his tenure, but as competition from IaaS and other players making inroads in on-prem virtualization platforms intensified, his leadership seemed to falter. VMware began to churn and burn through acquisitions without much success, became entangled in a toxic relationship with Dell, and only managed to make marginal gains in terms of home-grown product innovation. The last couple years of his tenure were an especially noticeable period of decline, with massive losses in employee morale and retention, as well as continually degrading release quality. As a former employee (I left just before Pat did), I left the company with the impression that Pat and the rest of the execs were asleep at the wheel while the heads of various business units simply ran amok.

dsizzle 5y ago
Hmm, thanks for the inside perspective from VMWare. I can still believe things would be different at Intel, because of his long history there, and he seems pretty passionate about it (although maybe he seemed that way at VMWare too?)
- sithadmin 5y ago
  Passion for technology and compassion for people are probably Pat's greatest strengths as a leader, but I'm not convinced that those alone are enough to shift an enterprise towards success when it's facing an existential crisis.
  - lugged 5y ago
    Intel has a history of big plays, I'll be taking a punt on them, just as soon as this slow growth and missed earnings errode their stock price over the next couple years.
    - totalZero 5y ago
      I don't think you'll get a couple of years to buy in. There seems to be a lot of noise in the triangular thought bubble between Chinese fab, Taiwanese independence, and semiconductor shortages. Big developments on any of those fronts may force the US government to step in and do something more substantial than giving tax incentives to buy lithography scanners.
geertj 5y ago
> If Pat's recent performance at VMware is any indicator...I wouldn't put that much faith in his ability to turn things around. His track record at VMware was also my major concern when deciding whether to invest in INTC stock recently. In the end I decided for myself that VMware was probably unsalvageable. They had a dominant position in the datacenter (and still have), but were unable to compete effectively in the cloud as there is too little overlap between the VMware culture, commercial model, and product with what's needed to run a hyperscale cloud. Gelsinger managed to become CTO at Intel in 2001, which is I think is not something you can do if you don't have any leadership skills. Given that the Intel mission is pretty clear, and given that I don't think Intel needs to total cultural overhaul (just the management), my view is that he has a decent chance.
dehrmann 5y ago
They're pretty different scenarios because VMware was facing headwinds with cloud providers making them redundant. Intel is dealing with not having a good mobile offering, being behind on fab tech, and being behind on CPUs. The difference is people still want what Intel is selling, just a better version of it.
audiometry 5y ago
What happened with Dell abs VMware? I noticed recently Michael Dell has been on a publicity interview tour to promote his auto-hagiography and of course says nothing bad about the Dell - VMware merger.
- sithadmin 5y ago
  For starters, Dell and VMware didn't merge. Dell merged with EMC and thus took a majority stakeholder position in VMware stock, letting Michael Dell stack the board and generally steer things in Dell's favor. In my personal opinion, this was generally to the detriment of VMware's products (downward pressure to focus on features that made little or no sense, except to give Dell marketing talking points; bad impact on morale by doing things like decreasing employee benefits quality so DellEMC and VMware could jointly reap discounts), played a role in frivolous acquisitions, and generally (and understandably) caused OEMs other than Dell to disengage and keep VMware at arms-length.

dsizzle 5y ago

Hmm, thanks for the inside perspective from VMWare. I can still believe things would be different at Intel, because of his long history there, and he seems pretty passionate about it (although maybe he seemed that way at VMWare too?)

sithadmin 5y ago
Passion for technology and compassion for people are probably Pat's greatest strengths as a leader, but I'm not convinced that those alone are enough to shift an enterprise towards success when it's facing an existential crisis.
- lugged 5y ago
  Intel has a history of big plays, I'll be taking a punt on them, just as soon as this slow growth and missed earnings errode their stock price over the next couple years.
  - totalZero 5y ago
    I don't think you'll get a couple of years to buy in. There seems to be a lot of noise in the triangular thought bubble between Chinese fab, Taiwanese independence, and semiconductor shortages. Big developments on any of those fronts may force the US government to step in and do something more substantial than giving tax incentives to buy lithography scanners.

geertj 5y ago

> If Pat's recent performance at VMware is any indicator...I wouldn't put that much faith in his ability to turn things around. His track record at VMware was also my major concern when deciding whether to invest in INTC stock recently. In the end I decided for myself that VMware was probably unsalvageable. They had a dominant position in the datacenter (and still have), but were unable to compete effectively in the cloud as there is too little overlap between the VMware culture, commercial model, and product with what's needed to run a hyperscale cloud. Gelsinger managed to become CTO at Intel in 2001, which is I think is not something you can do if you don't have any leadership skills. Given that the Intel mission is pretty clear, and given that I don't think Intel needs to total cultural overhaul (just the management), my view is that he has a decent chance.

dehrmann 5y ago

They're pretty different scenarios because VMware was facing headwinds with cloud providers making them redundant. Intel is dealing with not having a good mobile offering, being behind on fab tech, and being behind on CPUs. The difference is people still want what Intel is selling, just a better version of it.

audiometry 5y ago

What happened with Dell abs VMware? I noticed recently Michael Dell has been on a publicity interview tour to promote his auto-hagiography and of course says nothing bad about the Dell - VMware merger.

sithadmin 5y ago
For starters, Dell and VMware didn't merge. Dell merged with EMC and thus took a majority stakeholder position in VMware stock, letting Michael Dell stack the board and generally steer things in Dell's favor. In my personal opinion, this was generally to the detriment of VMware's products (downward pressure to focus on features that made little or no sense, except to give Dell marketing talking points; bad impact on morale by doing things like decreasing employee benefits quality so DellEMC and VMware could jointly reap discounts), played a role in frivolous acquisitions, and generally (and understandably) caused OEMs other than Dell to disengage and keep VMware at arms-length.