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Intel's main problem is its people. Sorry to say. The management culture there is insanely siloed and toxic, full of scar tissue from previous periods of polit

Intel's main problem is its people. Sorry to say. The management culture there is insanely siloed and toxic, full of scar tissue from previous periods of political turmoil and a few relentless sociopaths who absolutely will not stop climbing just because it's obviously damaging to the company. The engineering culture is full of secrets, moats, and the general sense that while making progress might be your job, stopping it is everyone's job. And there are always more of them than there are of you. Perhaps most fatally, responsibility for decisionmaking is ultimately delegated to the process of decisionmaking rather than the people involved. The resulting proliferation of checkboxes and box checkers have elevated dysfunctions like "the perfect being the enemy of the good" and "none of us is as dumb as all of us" into de facto mottos for large parts of the company. All of this happens against the backdrop of eroding mind and marketshare, a total lack of real product clarity, and a pervasive culture of bullshit that puffs politically convenient non-accomplishments into events worth of companywide applause while spinning, downplaying, or even hiding bad news of calamitous import. Intel has vast reserves of talent but without deep (IMO, impossible) cultural changes it will inevitably fail under its own weight.

age1mlclg6 2y ago
I had to create an account to say that I agree with this comment. I am a former Intel engineer who worked there for 8 years. I left Intel 2 years after the ACT mass layoff in 2016. The culture there is extremely toxic from top to bottom. The VP's and top level executives were out to get stocks and golden parachutes. The middle managers played politics. In addition, they also pulled a blind over leadership on many significant happenings. The engineers / technicians kept secrets as a way of keeping themselves relevant and valuable in case of layoff events. The main and sole money maker for Intel is getting quality silicon out of the door and that should be the number one objective for everyone. However, due to stack ranking, that is getting as many bullet points as possible in order to appear relevant when it comes annual review or mass layoff events, many people come up with bullshit projects that while on the surface look extremely impressive, have nothing relevant to pushing quality silicon out. The middle managers play favorites and push or highlight those bullshit projects. When they fly expensive executives around for the BUM's (Business Update Meetings) or to pitch some bullshit ideas, not many had the courage to ask the relevant questions. The few who asked them were met with canned and non-informative responses that only showed that these expensive suits had no awareness of what was going on externally. At the same time, we were too busy patting ourselves on the back, claiming that we were number one. We were too busy playing political games and competing internally that we forgot about the real external competitions, and then it was too late and they zoomed right past us. I doubt the CEO (past and present) or VP's care or even have an inkling on what has been going on in the culture.
- arresin 2y ago
  It sounds a lot like the chaos and inefficiencies of the caste system. Hmm.
  - xwolfi 2y ago
    Tbh, it sounds like every group of humans...
  - age1mlclg6 2y ago
    [dead]

age1mlclg6 2y ago

I had to create an account to say that I agree with this comment. I am a former Intel engineer who worked there for 8 years. I left Intel 2 years after the ACT mass layoff in 2016. The culture there is extremely toxic from top to bottom. The VP's and top level executives were out to get stocks and golden parachutes. The middle managers played politics. In addition, they also pulled a blind over leadership on many significant happenings. The engineers / technicians kept secrets as a way of keeping themselves relevant and valuable in case of layoff events. The main and sole money maker for Intel is getting quality silicon out of the door and that should be the number one objective for everyone. However, due to stack ranking, that is getting as many bullet points as possible in order to appear relevant when it comes annual review or mass layoff events, many people come up with bullshit projects that while on the surface look extremely impressive, have nothing relevant to pushing quality silicon out. The middle managers play favorites and push or highlight those bullshit projects. When they fly expensive executives around for the BUM's (Business Update Meetings) or to pitch some bullshit ideas, not many had the courage to ask the relevant questions. The few who asked them were met with canned and non-informative responses that only showed that these expensive suits had no awareness of what was going on externally. At the same time, we were too busy patting ourselves on the back, claiming that we were number one. We were too busy playing political games and competing internally that we forgot about the real external competitions, and then it was too late and they zoomed right past us. I doubt the CEO (past and present) or VP's care or even have an inkling on what has been going on in the culture.

arresin 2y ago
It sounds a lot like the chaos and inefficiencies of the caste system. Hmm.
- xwolfi 2y ago
  Tbh, it sounds like every group of humans...
- age1mlclg6 2y ago
  [dead]