New Intel CEO rehiring retired CPU architects • Hacker News Board

Re: New Intel CEO rehiring retired CPU architects

#341

Post by astrange » Fri, Jan 22, 2021, 1:40 AM UTC

JacobSuperslav wrote: post #297

Goosee wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was young, my family made me put all of my christmas/birthday money into the stock market. Intel was suggested by an adult family member who did not have a tech background. That made up a majority of my portfolio. The rest of my portfolio was allocated to a stock I chose, Apple. Reason for Apple: At my elementary school, everyone loved using the Power Mac G5's during computer lab. Every kid had/wanted an iPod…

it's very risky to not diversify your stock portfolio.

This is a common misconception. If the amount you invested is small enough that it doesn't matter, or that you can easily replace it, then the downside risk doesn't matter anyway.

If you wait long enough (and you should be investing for 10+ years from now) doing things that hurt growth doesn't risk you losing money, it guarantees it. And diversification hurts growth because of transaction costs.

Still, probably better to buy SPY.

Re: New Intel CEO rehiring retired CPU architects

#342

Post by ivalm » Fri, Jan 22, 2021, 1:41 AM UTC

varjag wrote: post #275

SXX wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, $45/hr is just laughtable. I know many freelance web developers from ex-USSR countries who charge more and their effective tax rate is below 10%. Or did you mean this is $45/hr post-tax rate?

$45 is well beyond a median ex-USSR freelancer, although there have to be outliers.

$50/hr for Ukrainian/Russian dev on upwork is reasonable. Ofc they make less since upwork takes a cut.

Re: New Intel CEO rehiring retired CPU architects

#343

Post by ctdonath » Fri, Jan 22, 2021, 1:41 AM UTC

Swizec wrote: post #263

munk-a wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their labour can absolutely be that valuable due to how many customers you are effecting with a single hour of work - it's sort of the same principle as athletic stars - paying outrageous salaries to athletes is probably the least bad way to do things (it's certainly better than the companies just pocketing lots of cash). That said, I think this is only achievable because of how relatively young and greenfield softwa…

It’s not about skills, it’s about the value those skills provide. If you write a webapp to solve a $5000/day problem, that’s worth $X. If your company sells that to 10 companies, your work is worth 10X. But if it’s sold to 10000, wow. Think of your work in terms of value provided to the buyer, not in terms of cost to yourself. Thus you unlock career potential

Question then becomes: can YOU sell that work to 10,000? and how many can make what is sold?

I worked at a startup, became amazed at the sales crew’s ability to find buyers. I could make the app (and Co. could find few willing & capable to), but in no way could find anyone to fork over that much for it.

Re: New Intel CEO rehiring retired CPU architects

#344

Post by ivalm » Fri, Jan 22, 2021, 1:45 AM UTC

phendrenad2 wrote: post #318

lmilcin wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I left Intel years ago to get almost 3x the salary as a software developer at... a bank. At Intel engineers are paid supposedly similar rates at similar levels and similar locations. And given my level (two levels above Senior Developer) I estimate I was paid better than at least 90% engineers. Where I worked in R&D the doors were constantly revolving and many people admitted they wait to register enough of prestigio…

Somehow the salaries for PhDs in electrical engineering capable of making chips from scratch became normalized with software developers churning out CRUD apps.

SWE often make more

Re: New Intel CEO rehiring retired CPU architects

#345

Post by lmilcin » Fri, Jan 22, 2021, 1:51 AM UTC

konjin wrote: post #257

spicybright wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I genuinely feel bad for talented people that get suckered into deals like this. Obviously some do if recruiters try and do this.

People agree, talented people do not.

A lot of people do not understand their worth and let get hired/exploited for peanuts.

When I was hired for my absolute first job, over two decades ago, I was asked how much I want. I did not know how much I can ask so I asked some minimum that I thought would pay for my expenses. The guy who interviewed me, who was to be my manager, said he shouldn't be telling this but I can ask twice as much.

Re: New Intel CEO rehiring retired CPU architects

#346

Post by obstacle1 » Fri, Jan 22, 2021, 1:54 AM UTC

phendrenad2 wrote: post #318

lmilcin wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I left Intel years ago to get almost 3x the salary as a software developer at... a bank. At Intel engineers are paid supposedly similar rates at similar levels and similar locations. And given my level (two levels above Senior Developer) I estimate I was paid better than at least 90% engineers. Where I worked in R&D the doors were constantly revolving and many people admitted they wait to register enough of prestigio…

Somehow the salaries for PhDs in electrical engineering capable of making chips from scratch became normalized with software developers churning out CRUD apps.

That's because CRUD people can do work that is far more leveraged than a hardware engineer, from the business' perspective. So the CRUD people produce more economic value.

One dev can spend 2 weeks automating some process or building a prototype web app that goes on to generate tens of millions for the company with no overhead.

Your hypothetical EE can spend 2 years designing a chip. The chip will then require 100s of millions of dollars to be spent on testing, manufacturing, and sales in order to be economically useful to the company (note that none of those functions involve the EE who designed the chip).

Sad? I dunno, maybe. True, yep. Nonsensical? Definitely not, there's clear logic to why certain kinds of work pay what they do.

Re: New Intel CEO rehiring retired CPU architects

#347

Post by konjin » Fri, Jan 22, 2021, 1:57 AM UTC

lmilcin wrote: post #345

konjin wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People agree, talented people do not.

A lot of people do not understand their worth and let get hired/exploited for peanuts. When I was hired for my absolute first job, over two decades ago, I was asked how much I want. I did not know how much I can ask so I asked some minimum that I thought would pay for my expenses. The guy who interviewed me, who was to be my manager, said he shouldn't be telling this but I can ask twice as much.

Yes, your first job. Not your second. You need to be deeply unpleasant to work with for no one to tell you you've been exploited when you leave.

Re: New Intel CEO rehiring retired CPU architects

#348

Post by scottlamb » Fri, Jan 22, 2021, 2:04 AM UTC

sradman wrote: post #78

In my estimation, Intel has four categories in which it is being outperformed by key competitors: 1. TSMC/Samsung - fabrication 2. AMD/Amazon-Graviton - Cloud Server 3. Apple-M1/AMD - Laptop 4. Nvidia/Amazon - Cloud ML/DL Accelerator Intel has made giant blunders in the past (e.g. Itanium [1], Atom [2], WiMAX [3]) but I'm not sure that any of these past challenges were equivalent to the current four-front war. I woul…

5. Phones/tablets, back in 2016 and before. https://www.extremetech.com/computing/227816-how-intel-lost-... If they were competitive there, maybe the M1 wouldn't have happened either...

Re: New Intel CEO rehiring retired CPU architects

#349

Post by sradman » Fri, Jan 22, 2021, 2:09 AM UTC

hnuser123456 wrote: post #319

dan-robertson wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that their main market? It’s surely what they’re known for to the general public but I’d have guessed they care more about the Xeon line. But I’d be interested to hear that I’m wrong.

https://www.intc.com/news-events/press-releases/detail/1439/... pc-centric "client computing group" made 40b revenue last year, over half their 78b total. probably something like 250 million cpus at an average price of $160

> driven by record PC-centric revenue with PC unit volumes up 33 percent YoY led by record notebook sales.

I think we need more details on the CCG split between notebooks and desktops. When I chose "Laptop" as the description of my 3rd category I was trying to choose a label that included the Apple M1 but didn't imply PC-Centric which I associate with Windows. I'm fine with Laptop+Desktop or some other permutation; I wasn't trying to be overly fine grained with the categories.

> The company also announced that its board of directors approved a cash dividend increase of five percent...

A 5% increase in dividend for a technology company is expected for a massive cash-cow with limited future growth. The Financial Report is an interesting read.

Re: New Intel CEO rehiring retired CPU architects

#350

Post by jariel » Fri, Jan 22, 2021, 2:10 AM UTC

oceanghost wrote: post #92

mediaman wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's weird for me to hear all these stories about MBAs. While I'm not an MBA myself, I was in investment banking and planned to get an MBA before I left finance and did something else instead. I regularly pay engineers more than I pay myself as a CEO (granted: I am not really interested in draining the company's coffers for my own benefit, since I have equity). It just seems obvious that, at the end of the day, so mu…

I can assure you you're an outlier (but delightfully so). I worked once for a company where I was doing a product for the iPad. I literally, could not get the company to buy the newest iPad for us to test on. The only iPad we had for development had a bad sensor and would throw errors constantly. One day, marketing brings me 12 new iPads because-- they want me to install a beta of the app on them, because they're goi…

This has many shades of potential pettiness.

First, it has nothing to do with MBAs.

And of course we don't really know how budgets are allocated? That they might have just bought their iPads as part of the purchase cycle whereas 'Eng guy' already had one, and 'the sensor' wasn't enough to justify a new one? And that everything customer-facing has to be relatively new? And that 'the trip' they were on has nothing to do with anything?