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Intel's disruption is now complete

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Re: Intel's disruption is now complete

#361

Post by llaolleh »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #298
wisty wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn't Steve Jobs usually greenlight 2 or 3 teams to design then just pick the most promising one to go to production? Sometimes it makes sense to have a bit of competition, but having multiple prototypes (often with slightly different design parameters - e.g. a reliable design, an advanced design, and a moonshot) is a better competition than having managers attacking each other with passive-aggressive Powerpoint sho…

I worked at a company founded by an ex-Apple CEO. He tried this technique because Steve Jobs did it. The problem was that it doesn’t work at all unless you truly have 2 or 3 entire teams of fully competent people to pull it off. It can work at Apple because they’re absolutely massive and they only focus on a very small number of products. In our case, making two teams work independently on the same problem just creat…

This is very interesting. Just because a technique works for situation A doesn't mean it works for situation B. Also, maybe this ex-Apple CEO didn't have the capability to pull it off.

Re: Intel's disruption is now complete

#362

Post by sanderjd »

izacus wrote: post #343
sanderjd wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems true, but I guess I also have more empathy for decision-makers: to me it seems like it is far from obvious who should take on which projects. Pretty much by definition, the organization is structured so that its current projects have sensible homes, but when a totally new project comes up, it is unlikely to fit perfectly anywhere in that structure. If it did, it wouldn't be totally new! None of the options…

The problem I've observed is also that (for performance / reward purposes), managers lie as hell when it comes to their team performance. The bigger the company, the less actual signal is received by upper managers because everyone doctors the hell out of this numbers. It might be impossible to even KNOW who the best team in your company is.

Yes. In fact, I would argue it should not be possible to have this "the best team" - if teams in different parts of the org are directly comparable, then they must be doing the same exact thing, and why do you have multiple teams scattered around doing identical things? That is, a well structured org will have teams working on Thing A and Thing B. If a brand new Thing C comes along, it isn't either Thing A or Thing B, and you have no real information on how good either team will be at Thing C, all you can know is how good they are at Thing A and Thing B respectively.

Re: Intel's disruption is now complete

#363

Post by graton »

Animats wrote: post #134
yesimahuman wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of when I went to visit Intel a few years ago. I was shocked at the bare bones amenities and that employees had to pay for everything (snacks/drinks/etc.). That might sound insignificant but in the talent war in SV that stuff mattered a lot back then. It was a stark contrast from nearly every other fast-growing tech company in the area.

Ah, Intel. Acre-sized floors of tiny cubicles. Everything is grey. Really.[1] I visited Intel HQ once, and it really did look like that. Is it still like that? [1] https://youtu.be/gXReifFHXbY?t=44

Actually that was back when they were nice cubicles. Sure the colors weren't great, but the cubes were about five feet high and relatively big.

They blocked out most of the sound and very few visual distractions when you were sitting down. They worked well if you wanted relative peace and quiet to concentrate.

Since then they have switched to open-concept with cubes about half the size and walls that are maybe four feet high. So now people have plenty of visual distractions and a lot more noise. Didn't help they added sit-stand desks so you will have people who get on calls while standing and can be heard 30+ feet away.

Re: Intel's disruption is now complete

#364

Post by colinmhayes »

xenocyon wrote: post #316
whack wrote: post #194

This is a controversial opinion, but I don't agree with the idea that big corporations should make an entry into every single adjacent market. If the company has core expertise and advantages that can deliver a decisive win in a known-lucrative market, then it's a no brainer. But if that's not the case, why run around chasing shadows everywhere, instead of focusing on harvesting the markets where you're already winni…

> The purpose of a corporation... to maximize returns for its investors. That's a common misunderstanding. "In nearly all legal jurisdictions, disinterested and informed directors have the discretion to act in what they believe to be the interest of the business corporate entity, even if this differs from maximizing profits for present shareholders. Usually maximizing shareholder value is not a legal obligation, but…

Lmao you're on this again. Stockholders control the company. Their goal and "purpose of a corporation" are synonyms, even if legally companies aren't forced to maximize profits. In fact, the legal requirements have nothing to do with the purpose of the company.

Re: Intel's disruption is now complete

#365

Post by FabHK »

BurningFrog wrote: post #253
VHRanger wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's more dependent on a firm's monopoly power than scale or wealth. If you're in a competitive market you're forced to innovate. If you're a monopolist you can just sit there and extract wealth. Which Intel was for a while. By the way, your little theory has support and a name, it's the resource curse in political economics.

Also wanted to mention the resource curse. When billions are raining from the sky, whether you do good work or not, the rational plan is to fight over those free resources, rather than work to create new ones.

Aka "Dutch disease"

> coined in 1977 by The Economist to describe the decline of the manufacturing sector in the Netherlands after the discovery of the large Groningen natural gas field in 1959

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_disease

Re: Intel's disruption is now complete

#366

Post by reaperducer »

lostlogin wrote: post #146
reaperducer wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xserve Apple’s Xserves were awesome. Not cheap. Only marginally competitive. But a joy to work with because of all the nice little details like a FireWire port on the front so you could boot it off of an iPod.

> But a joy to work with I think you are using the past tense. Those things are still in production in some places. I wish they weren’t. Also, I’d like one as a chassis for a Pi or NUC cluster.

I've seen them on fleaBay pretty cheap. Sometimes by the palette.

Re: Intel's disruption is now complete

#368

Post by klelatti »

imhoguy wrote: post #185
supernova87a wrote: post #127

Maybe this is a bit of a side topic, and I'm a layman, but I'm interested to know why the M1 chip is able to perform so surprisingly better? And why Intel or others can't just come up with a similar design, if it's clear from the specs/die images what's being done? Is it years of work to figure out the placement of CPU/GPU/memory units on the die, routings, and come up with new instruction sets? I imagine this wasn't…

I would quote Orwell here: "Who Controls the Past Controls the Future". It is about lack of control over legacy killing the progress. The power of Intel is "proven" legacy, but building completely new architecture is expensive and prone to adoption failure (Itanium?) when Intel has no control over OS (Windows), apps or virtualization software. Then Apple has control over all that: they can make hardware (scaled up mo…

I think that the ARMv7 -> ARMv8/Aarch64 move is interesting in this context.

Arm has swapped a large part of its application user base from 32 bit to a completely incompatible but more modern 64 bit ISA and Apple has cast off the 32bit legacy completely due to its ability to control the whole stack.

Re: Intel's disruption is now complete

#369

Post by graton »

screye wrote: post #13

I am not sure what Intel can do to come back to a strong position. Afaik, all of Nvidia, Apple and Qualcomm (dunno about AMD) pay significantly higher wages than Intel. If Intel is starting off on the back foot and cannot get top talent, then their decline is all but guaranteed.

Yep. Intel aims to pay in the 50th percentile for jobs. The problem with that is that many FAANG like companies can literally pay the top employees twice or more to come work for them.

A lot of the top-talent has left Intel and I think that will continue. Unfortunately for Intel most of the mediocre employees have stayed.

Re: Intel's disruption is now complete

#370

Post by conradfr »

Animats wrote: post #134
yesimahuman wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of when I went to visit Intel a few years ago. I was shocked at the bare bones amenities and that employees had to pay for everything (snacks/drinks/etc.). That might sound insignificant but in the talent war in SV that stuff mattered a lot back then. It was a stark contrast from nearly every other fast-growing tech company in the area.

Ah, Intel. Acre-sized floors of tiny cubicles. Everything is grey. Really.[1] I visited Intel HQ once, and it really did look like that. Is it still like that? [1] https://youtu.be/gXReifFHXbY?t=44

In the comments:

"I worked there when this was filmed. Immediately following the airing there was so much shame that they launched a whole office redesign and open office concept. Nothing like some well deserved ribbing to shake things up!!!"

"The "gray on gray" quip led to an attempt to add color to some office buildings. The open office redesign looked much better than the 80s and 90s cubicles, at least the one I saw in Santa Clara. Much more current, modern aesthetic, without walls. I left the company a couple of years after that so not sure how well it took hold. Friends who stayed said it didn't work out too well but it's been years since then (Conan did this bit in 2007)."

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