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Intel CEO Bob Swan to step down, VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger to replace him

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Re: Intel CEO Bob Swan to step down, VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger to replace him

#161

Post by normlEyezd »

ksec wrote: post #99

"Notable absent from that list is he fired Pat Gelsinger. Please just bring him back as CEO." - [1] 2012 on HN, when Paul Otellini Retired. "The only one who may have a slim chance to completely transform Intel is Pat Gelsinger, if Andy Grove saved Intel last time, it will be his apprentice to save Intel again. Unfortunately given what Intel has done to Pat during his last tenure, I am not sure if he is willing to pi…

Devils advocate from a throwaway for reasons; Pat foisted VMWare on a small startup trying to find its engineering footing culture wise, after being invited in to advise on the business side (loan his name mostly).

Cost a bunch of engineering time and forward motion, internal politicking. Eventually it got binned after months of not getting what we wanted out of it. There was no technical reason for it.

Maybe hardware really is his thing, but that quid pro quo hurt productivity.

Re: Intel CEO Bob Swan to step down, VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger to replace him

#162

Post by jacques_chester »

effie wrote: post #156
hangonhn wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked at VMware when Pat first became the CEO. Pat is very much an engineer. If you ever wanted an engineer as your CEO, then that's Pat. That comes with some goods and some not-so-greats. Pat isn't very inspiring, at least not when he first became CEO. But I always got the feeling that he genuinely love engineers and is more comfortable around them than anything else. I once hosted a fun little engineering challe…

What are your thoughts on VMware? It seems they are too in decline...

I work for VMware, via the Pivotal acquisition.

My purely personal view is that VMware's second act has begun and it'll do well. Pat deserves some of the credit for accepting that Kubernetes would be the future of the business and throwing his weight behind it.

There are aspects of Pat Gelsinger's leadership that I dislike, but they're orthogonal to his management style and foresight. He's been effective.

Re: Intel CEO Bob Swan to step down, VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger to replace him

#163

Post by chrisseaton »

SoSoRoCoCo wrote: post #63

Gelsinger was pushed out as CTO after horribly failing to address AMD's competitive threats. I have no idea how he wormed his way back in, but this does not bode well for Intel's future: Gelsinger is proof of the "Peter Principle", being promoted too high. EDIT: I was a bit harsh, toned it down. EDIT 2: This is probably petty, but I can't ignore the fact that there was a significant hubbub at Intel regarding him usin…

Richard Stallman uses the title 'Doctor' with only an honorary doctorate - people seem to think it's fine for some reason.

Re: Intel CEO Bob Swan to step down, VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger to replace him

#164

Post by roomey »

samaxe wrote: post #104
roomey wrote: post #2

No harm to VMware on this I think. As it pushes into SAAS it really does need a big shake up. Not that Pat wasn't good, but it is an old company with a lot of inertia, some fresh blood and fresh ideas could really be beneficial. Hopefully the next CEO is as committed to all the other stuff, like treating the employees very good and the community stuff. The best bit of the company isn't the tech at all (in my opinion)

They need to get out from under Dell’s thumb. Until then no new CEO will bring significant changes.

I'm not sure I agree with that. I've been there now over 8 years and the only difference since Dell bought emc is they are cross selling. In terms of product development, staffing, benefits etc they have no influence. This is in opposition to EMC, who had a lot of benefits and nice things like free coffee cut to match with dell.

Re: Intel CEO Bob Swan to step down, VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger to replace him

#166

Post by bjornsing »

chrisseaton wrote: post #163
SoSoRoCoCo wrote: post #63

Gelsinger was pushed out as CTO after horribly failing to address AMD's competitive threats. I have no idea how he wormed his way back in, but this does not bode well for Intel's future: Gelsinger is proof of the "Peter Principle", being promoted too high. EDIT: I was a bit harsh, toned it down. EDIT 2: This is probably petty, but I can't ignore the fact that there was a significant hubbub at Intel regarding him usin…

Richard Stallman uses the title 'Doctor' with only an honorary doctorate - people seem to think it's fine for some reason.

Isn’t it a bit petty to deny him that? It seems a hell of a lot harder to me to get a honorary doctorate than a normal PhD, and I can think of a lot of PhDs who deserve their doctor title a lot less than Stallman.

Re: Intel CEO Bob Swan to step down, VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger to replace him

#167

Post by belval »

bluGill wrote: post #159
belval wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's actually more complex than that, when a big company wants to reduce workforce they will fire the bottom and offer retirement packages to their oldest employees which are above or near retirement age, sometime as much as a full year of salary. The intuition is that older employees cost more and by cutting them you can reduce your payroll more significantly while doing what looks like smaller employee cuts from th…

Those older employees better be replaceable! Many will be gone in a few more years because they retire anyway, so you should have a plan in place to save their knowledge. The above applies to everyone. When I was an intern the company folklore was full of horror stories because the last guy knew anything about a very profitable product died suddenly. (the product was for mainframes: clearly near end of life, but it w…

I would venture that this is indeed how these exec rationalize the whole process. No one should be irreplaceable and therefore the move make sense. Even though management bashing is trendy these days, most managers/execs know these things and are not the idiots we satirize them to be.

Even Swan is probably not an idiot, he simply expected everyone to struggle as much as Intel on the 7/10nm node and when TSMC just breezed past Intel and AMD came out with a much better product than anticipated he found himself in very hot water.

(He could also be quite the idiot, I don't know him)

Re: Intel CEO Bob Swan to step down, VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger to replace him

#168

Post by mrg3_2013 »

ksec wrote: post #99

"Notable absent from that list is he fired Pat Gelsinger. Please just bring him back as CEO." - [1] 2012 on HN, when Paul Otellini Retired. "The only one who may have a slim chance to completely transform Intel is Pat Gelsinger, if Andy Grove saved Intel last time, it will be his apprentice to save Intel again. Unfortunately given what Intel has done to Pat during his last tenure, I am not sure if he is willing to pi…

Intel's downfall in recent times has been "Only the paranoid survive". They strayed far too away from customers and focused on competition (and their customer feedback was a redirect from what competition was up to). I doubt there will be cultural changes.

Re: Intel CEO Bob Swan to step down, VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger to replace him

#169

Post by atniomn »

totalZero wrote: post #68
gvb wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TFA doesn't say it came due to a search for "strategic alternatives." It says "Dan Loeb's Third Point hedge fund in December urged Intel's board to explore "strategic alternatives." That is typical hedge fund pressure attempting to squeeze (short term) money out of their investment. The article has two more paragraphs consisting of the hedge fund's cheap shot quotes. It isn't clear Intel's board succumbed to the hedg…

As far as Third Point's public commentary goes, you're right. [0] (Who knows what they said in private.) "Strategic alternatives" often means "split up the businesses." Silver Lake proposed something similar to AMD in 2015. In the end, the Silver Lake deal didn't happen [1] and AMD stock is up 45x since then. [0] https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/third-point-full-letter-... [1] https://www.extremetech.com/computing…

Splitting up Intel's fabrication and design businesses would it make similar to AMD, the stock which is up 45x since 2015.

Intel's fabrication business needs more volume, so it can increase R&D spending and capital expenditure, it can get this volume as a merchant fab.

Intel's design business doesn't need to be held back by Intel's fabrication delays. I imagine designers at Intel would prefer to compete with AMD on the same playing field--TSMC's latest node.

Re: Intel CEO Bob Swan to step down, VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger to replace him

#170

Post by gonehome »

ksec wrote: post #99

"Notable absent from that list is he fired Pat Gelsinger. Please just bring him back as CEO." - [1] 2012 on HN, when Paul Otellini Retired. "The only one who may have a slim chance to completely transform Intel is Pat Gelsinger, if Andy Grove saved Intel last time, it will be his apprentice to save Intel again. Unfortunately given what Intel has done to Pat during his last tenure, I am not sure if he is willing to pi…

Interesting - you think he can pull this off?

It'll be interesting to see what happens, I had written them off as on the path of inevitable decline and irrelevance.

If they have someone as CEO who understand the existential threat they're facing from everywhere maybe they'll survive.

The irony of the other top comment is that the AMD threat wasn't the competitive threat that mattered. AMD is also screwed.

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