5 ms·
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 knowle
by 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 agoMoar. 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 agoI 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.