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The cultural rot of the management class of Intel has clearly been around since Andy Grove left. His paranoia was replaced by a monopoly cash-cow midset that re

The cultural rot of the management class of Intel has clearly been around since Andy Grove left. His paranoia was replaced by a monopoly cash-cow midset that rewarded management with an obsession and compensation solely on financial engineering and stock buybacks. They cared more about short term profits and avoided "irrational" potentially dubious long term profits. My favorite story is how their CEO Paul Otellini rebuffed Steve Jobs' offer to make the chip for the first iPhone. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/may/20/intel-smartphone-iphone-paul-otellini https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/may/20/intel-sma... Intel passed on the opportunity: "We ended up not winning it or passing on it, depending on how you want to view it. And the world would have been a lot different if we'd done it […]

artemonster 5y ago
Its like any other company then?
- 1cvmask 5y ago
  Well not really. IBM could have easily bought Salesforce more than a decade ago but the financial engineering mindset of the management preferred share buybacks. Meanwhile there are tech companies that invest for the long run like Amazon, Apple and Netflix.
melony 5y ago
Are there any concrete evidence that the earlier culture were truly superior? They had an initial technology lead because their founders were engineers who were experts in their field and they were early movers in a rapidly expanding blue ocean. If the company starts failing the moment the founders and original employees are gone, it is not fair to pin all the blame on the new management.
rektide 5y ago
Intel making Apple chips would have been a disaster, I think for both companies. Intel walked into disaster other ways, but this chip crunch is showing (alas, perhaps) some of the chipmaking rush to the bottom has not been sustainable. RPi and Rpi alone seems to define the competition to intel low end, still. AMD in particular has notably vanished from almost all byt higher ends of the PC market, has dropped their lower margin low end efforts. Fewer & fewer have been able to compete except at higher margin higher end profit points.
fomine3 5y ago
In retrospect, it's huge miss. But did anyone expect iPhone become huge success before release? It's not fair to blame in this case.

artemonster 5y ago

Its like any other company then?

1cvmask 5y ago
Well not really. IBM could have easily bought Salesforce more than a decade ago but the financial engineering mindset of the management preferred share buybacks. Meanwhile there are tech companies that invest for the long run like Amazon, Apple and Netflix.

melony 5y ago

Are there any concrete evidence that the earlier culture were truly superior? They had an initial technology lead because their founders were engineers who were experts in their field and they were early movers in a rapidly expanding blue ocean. If the company starts failing the moment the founders and original employees are gone, it is not fair to pin all the blame on the new management.

rektide 5y ago

Intel making Apple chips would have been a disaster, I think for both companies. Intel walked into disaster other ways, but this chip crunch is showing (alas, perhaps) some of the chipmaking rush to the bottom has not been sustainable. RPi and Rpi alone seems to define the competition to intel low end, still. AMD in particular has notably vanished from almost all byt higher ends of the PC market, has dropped their lower margin low end efforts. Fewer & fewer have been able to compete except at higher margin higher end profit points.

fomine3 5y ago

In retrospect, it's huge miss. But did anyone expect iPhone become huge success before release? It's not fair to blame in this case.