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How was Keller able to pull off so much impactful work over so many organizations? i.e. what proportion of his impact was attributable to novel ideas, solo engi

How was Keller able to pull off so much impactful work over so many organizations? i.e. what proportion of his impact was attributable to novel ideas, solo engineering implementation ability, engineering leadership, or just darn good timing?

trustingtrust 3y ago
You should see his interviews with Dr. Ian Cutress. The man basically knows everything in the industry in and out and knows how to create great teams. I want to interview for Tenstorrent at some point and would love to work for him. I feel being part of great teams is what he has been fortunate with. People very easily forget the rest of the team in chip design and make it about one person. I feel he's a true leader in chip design teams, but I also think he has worked with many great people to achieve that.
- atonse 3y ago
  People like this are extremely rare and talented, AND they are able to build amazing teams. Other super talented people want to work with a Jim Keller. So a company hires a Jim Keller not just because you want his brain, but because you can then go to the next 20 amazing people in the industry and say "come work on Jim Keller's team" – now you have 20 min Jim Kellers on your team and that is enough to move mountains in an extremely specialized field such as chip design.
- belval 3y ago
  The cult of personality is always an enticing idea, it's pretty much certain that Jim Keller had a stellar team to work with in all of those places. That being said, even a strong team is still usually only as good as its leadership. You can have all the great ideas in the world, but if the organisation does not allow you to pursue them (or on the other extreme, allows everyone to work on what they think is best) you will still fail to execute. At the end of the day you need someone to make the correct decisions every step of the way.
  - toast0 3y ago
    One thing I gathered from interviews is that Jim Keller is good at identifying good people already on the teams and inspiring and working with them to set the priorities and goals to make a better product. The team that built Zen isn't that much different than the team that built Bulldozer, but Zen is a much better product. He's also pretty good at spreading the credit around. Having a good grasp of everything in the whole stack is obviously helpful for setting priorities and goals, and there's a lot of leadership skills involved in getting people to work together and follow the organizational goals. Having a track record of success is obviously helpful, too.
celeritascelery 3y ago
I was at Intel when Jim Keller came. He was one of the most inspiring technical leaders I have ever encountered. He obviously had very strong engineering knowledge as well. When he came in, he took some time to really understanding our process and challenges. Then he created 5 areas that Intel needed to improve. He said “we are going to fix these, or burn down the place trying”. And these weren’t vague goals like “execute more effectively” or “be customer obsessed”, but really concrete and measurable things like “reduce empty silicon area by 50%”. He had a task force of principle engineers on each task, and every meeting he would spend almost the entire time going into detail of the progress and challenges on them. Anytime someone would complain and say the goal couldn’t be done, his response was “AMD did it, why can’t you?”. He was always trying to simplify things and cut through complexity. His vision was that if we hit those 5 targets, we would win the market. As an engineer, his clear vision and strong technical understanding made him the best leader I have ever been under. it’s a pity he left Intel so quickly. After he was gone, his 5 goals basically fell by the wayside. I don’t think people like being told they’re doing it wrong. I still try to listen to any podcast or interview with him, because I think he has many deep insights.
- comboy 3y ago
  Moar. Maybe you have some more stories or insights from him. I'm a shameless fanboy. I also listened to I think every podcast (not many of them unfortunately, Lex ones seem the best as expected). This guy oozes wisdom.
  - celeritascelery 3y ago
    I will share one more story. Some of the leaders were saying they couldn't hit the validation milestone because of all the things that had to completed before they could sign-off. Jim Keller's response was: "This is how were going to validate this chip: 1. go to the beach 2. open your laptop 3. run the chip in emulation through boot 4. tape-in! (send to the fab) 5. take the rest of the year off at the beach " His point was that we need a simple focus on proving the chip works and then shipping it. If any validation milestone or objective is not directly connected to that, it's not worth doing. We don't need all this extraneous validation and multiple layers of rechecking. Just emulate the thing and then your done. In his interview with Jordan Petersen he talked about how some people spend all their time "admiring the problem"; Trying to understand and categorize it. Keller didn't want to spend any more time talking about the problem then needed. He was focused on finding good solutions (and it had to be a good solution), and then executing them.

trustingtrust 3y ago

You should see his interviews with Dr. Ian Cutress. The man basically knows everything in the industry in and out and knows how to create great teams. I want to interview for Tenstorrent at some point and would love to work for him. I feel being part of great teams is what he has been fortunate with. People very easily forget the rest of the team in chip design and make it about one person. I feel he's a true leader in chip design teams, but I also think he has worked with many great people to achieve that.

atonse 3y ago
People like this are extremely rare and talented, AND they are able to build amazing teams. Other super talented people want to work with a Jim Keller. So a company hires a Jim Keller not just because you want his brain, but because you can then go to the next 20 amazing people in the industry and say "come work on Jim Keller's team" – now you have 20 min Jim Kellers on your team and that is enough to move mountains in an extremely specialized field such as chip design.
belval 3y ago
The cult of personality is always an enticing idea, it's pretty much certain that Jim Keller had a stellar team to work with in all of those places. That being said, even a strong team is still usually only as good as its leadership. You can have all the great ideas in the world, but if the organisation does not allow you to pursue them (or on the other extreme, allows everyone to work on what they think is best) you will still fail to execute. At the end of the day you need someone to make the correct decisions every step of the way.
- toast0 3y ago
  One thing I gathered from interviews is that Jim Keller is good at identifying good people already on the teams and inspiring and working with them to set the priorities and goals to make a better product. The team that built Zen isn't that much different than the team that built Bulldozer, but Zen is a much better product. He's also pretty good at spreading the credit around. Having a good grasp of everything in the whole stack is obviously helpful for setting priorities and goals, and there's a lot of leadership skills involved in getting people to work together and follow the organizational goals. Having a track record of success is obviously helpful, too.

celeritascelery 3y ago

I was at Intel when Jim Keller came. He was one of the most inspiring technical leaders I have ever encountered. He obviously had very strong engineering knowledge as well. When he came in, he took some time to really understanding our process and challenges. Then he created 5 areas that Intel needed to improve. He said “we are going to fix these, or burn down the place trying”. And these weren’t vague goals like “execute more effectively” or “be customer obsessed”, but really concrete and measurable things like “reduce empty silicon area by 50%”. He had a task force of principle engineers on each task, and every meeting he would spend almost the entire time going into detail of the progress and challenges on them. Anytime someone would complain and say the goal couldn’t be done, his response was “AMD did it, why can’t you?”. He was always trying to simplify things and cut through complexity. His vision was that if we hit those 5 targets, we would win the market. As an engineer, his clear vision and strong technical understanding made him the best leader I have ever been under. it’s a pity he left Intel so quickly. After he was gone, his 5 goals basically fell by the wayside. I don’t think people like being told they’re doing it wrong. I still try to listen to any podcast or interview with him, because I think he has many deep insights.

comboy 3y ago
Moar. Maybe you have some more stories or insights from him. I'm a shameless fanboy. I also listened to I think every podcast (not many of them unfortunately, Lex ones seem the best as expected). This guy oozes wisdom.
- celeritascelery 3y ago
  I will share one more story. Some of the leaders were saying they couldn't hit the validation milestone because of all the things that had to completed before they could sign-off. Jim Keller's response was: "This is how were going to validate this chip: 1. go to the beach 2. open your laptop 3. run the chip in emulation through boot 4. tape-in! (send to the fab) 5. take the rest of the year off at the beach " His point was that we need a simple focus on proving the chip works and then shipping it. If any validation milestone or objective is not directly connected to that, it's not worth doing. We don't need all this extraneous validation and multiple layers of rechecking. Just emulate the thing and then your done. In his interview with Jordan Petersen he talked about how some people spend all their time "admiring the problem"; Trying to understand and categorize it. Keller didn't want to spend any more time talking about the problem then needed. He was focused on finding good solutions (and it had to be a good solution), and then executing them.