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An Interview with Pat Gelsinger

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Re: An Interview with Pat Gelsinger

#51

Post by jorvi »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #47
zozbot234 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Issuing a dividend is a terrible sign for the market. It's telling investors "we have so much money that we have no idea what to do with, please take some of it yourself and invest it somewhere other than Intel."

For a blue chip that's reliably issued one for years, it's also a major part of the reason to own the stock. Throwing that away will not have a good impact on the value even if it's justified.

But value is meaningless. The ultimate purpose for a producer in a market is to provide infinite value for no cost.

Of course that is a pipe dream, so it should provide the highest value for the lowest cost.

For those who want to argue it should be a balance: consider the opposite position. A producer should provide no value at infinite cost. In this case, everything withers. If party A and party B need each other's products to survive, they can do that when the value is infinite and the cost is zero, but not when the value is zero and the cost is infinite.

The last few decades have shown that giving the finger to the customer and going all in on shareholdermaxxing has nothing but terrible effects and is like sticking a spanner into the wheel of capitalism.

Re: An Interview with Pat Gelsinger

#52

Post by melling »

mort96 wrote: post #35
melling wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“The stock price has tripled since last August” That’s just a statement of fact. I offered no other analysis.

This seems like analysis? "Pat killed Intel’s share price."

I suppose if you just look at a chart…

Re: An Interview with Pat Gelsinger

#53

Post by polkapie »

voxadam wrote: post #5

I'm surprised that his fascination with "Christian AI" and the end of the world didn't come up. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45740664

Gelsinger is a weird dude. Back in the late 1990's (early 2000s?) he had the pope bless a wafer which he then claimed was extended to the a fab. We were all a little uncomfortable about it when he announced it during a BUM (internal Business Update Meeting) like why does god care if our fabs will be successful because he met the pope? He always would bring his religion to work and it made everyone uncomfortable. (And the dude only has a honarary PHD, like Mike Tyson.)

Re: An Interview with Pat Gelsinger

#54

Post by WoodenChair »

Zigurd wrote: post #50
natbennett wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tim Cook is openly Christian and he has neither written a book about how “Jesus is his CEO” (and should be yours too) nor has he ever (to my knowledge) led his company in singing a hymn.

I didn't know about the book, but I'm finding nothing at all to indicate that he's ever lead employees in singing hymns. At Intel his boss was a secular Jewish man, and so was his CFO. That leads me to doubt that it ever happened especially not at Intel. Based on my brief interactions with him, and my overall experience with Intel as a project partner at the time, I'd say he has exceptionally high integrity. I'd bet…

He definitely didn't have the book ghostwritten. It does have advice on issues that go beyond faith. But I think it's much more useful as a guide to the faithful than the non-faithful. We interviewed him last year about the book:

https://pnc.st/s/business-books/9720205c/the-juggling-act-wi...

He gets into many of the issues discussed in this thread: having faith while being a CEO and how to handle that.

Re: An Interview with Pat Gelsinger

#56

Post by phonon »

aurareturn wrote: post #33
cubefox wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Intel in 2019 had $72 billion in revenue and 110k employees. When he was fired in 2024, Intel had $54 billion in revenue and 124k employees. He also didn't cut dividend until 2024. He nearly put Intel into the grave in 3 years. That's nonsense. Intel's problems were caused by falling behind TSMC, which was not the fault of Pat Gelsinger. Quite the contrary, he did a lot to turn things around, but this takes time, a…

They had far more problems than just falling behind TSMC. See my post here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47706423#47738977 Under Pat, Intel overestimated the covid boom, which nearly put them into bankruptcy. They hired many more employees while their revenue tanked. He went on an IFS spending spree while he lacked execution on actually winning external customers. He didn't stop dividends until 2024 which tel…

Pat has been on record many times that he was against dividends but the board declared them anyway.

Re: An Interview with Pat Gelsinger

#57

Post by sifar »

huijzer wrote: post #41
fooker wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should read Asimov ;)

I’ve seen the TV show but don’t know what you mean. If you want to say something then say it

Thou shall not make a machine in the likeness of man. Oh wait that is Dune :).

I think what OP meant is Asimov's stories revolve around issues arising from loopholes or some interpretation of the three laws of robotics.

Re: An Interview with Pat Gelsinger

#58

Post by x3n0ph3n3 »

aurareturn wrote: post #27
scrlk wrote: post #12

Sadly nothing about why Pat was forced out of Intel. Panther Lake is quite a good CPU and 14A looks like it'll be a competitive process. IMO, it vindicates the decisions that Pat made a few years ago and wasn't able to see through to completion. "Designing microprocessors is like playing Russian roulette. You put a gun to your head, pull the trigger, and find out four years later if you blew your brains out." (Robert…

Sadly nothing about why Pat was forced out of Intel. My speculation: * Intel in 2019 had $72 billion in revenue and 110k employees. When he was fired in 2024, Intel had $54 billion in revenue and 124k employees. He also didn't cut dividend until 2024. He nearly put Intel into the grave in 3 years. * Under Pat, Intel's roadmap was a mess. When you look at AMD's roadmap, it made a ton of sense, predictable, and there a…

He similarly killed VMware during his tenure there. Now it's a subsidiary of Broadcom and a shell of its former self.

Re: An Interview with Pat Gelsinger

#59

Post by applied_heat »

BobbyTables2 wrote: post #48
zozbot234 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Issuing a dividend is a terrible sign for the market. It's telling investors "we have so much money that we have no idea what to do with, please take some of it yourself and invest it somewhere other than Intel."

Have always felt stock buy-backs are equally terrible. “We have all this money but we have no long term vision for how to grow the company. We’ll just keep doing what we’ve been doing prop up our share price instead”.

It is a tax efficient way to return profits to share holders

Re: An Interview with Pat Gelsinger

#60

Post by ksec »

aurareturn wrote: post #27
scrlk wrote: post #12

Sadly nothing about why Pat was forced out of Intel. Panther Lake is quite a good CPU and 14A looks like it'll be a competitive process. IMO, it vindicates the decisions that Pat made a few years ago and wasn't able to see through to completion. "Designing microprocessors is like playing Russian roulette. You put a gun to your head, pull the trigger, and find out four years later if you blew your brains out." (Robert…

Sadly nothing about why Pat was forced out of Intel. My speculation: * Intel in 2019 had $72 billion in revenue and 110k employees. When he was fired in 2024, Intel had $54 billion in revenue and 124k employees. He also didn't cut dividend until 2024. He nearly put Intel into the grave in 3 years. * Under Pat, Intel's roadmap was a mess. When you look at AMD's roadmap, it made a ton of sense, predictable, and there a…

>He also didn't cut dividend until 2024.

He was not allowed to cut dividend until 2024. Cutting dividend was the first thing he wanted before he even became CEO. The board said no.

Edit: Would have had ~$20B savings, $10B from early sell off, started the work 3 years earlier. In hindsight the best was probably hire someone to do the dirty work before Pat took over. But again, the board had no idea what they were doing. Or they have their hands tied as well ( Which I dont buy into it much. )

>Intel in 2019 had $72 billion in revenue and 110k employees. >Under Pat, Intel's roadmap was a mess. When you look at AMD's roadmap, it made a ton of sense, predictable, and there are rarely any delays or cancellations. When you looked at an Intel roadmap, expect 30% of them cancelled, 50% delayed by 1-2 quarters, and 30% switched to a different node tech.

He become CEO in 2021 Feb. He was also the one who sorted out Intel's roadmap from a mess to something comprehensible.

>IFS strategy under Pat amounted to nothing

No person on planet earth could have executed IFS in under 3 years. Especially with little to no cashflow. It was always a long term goal. That is why he has to play the government subsidy card, when he was, again not allow to cut dividend. Edit: And I might just add, getting Intel's IFS to have a separate balance sheet took longer than expected precisely because it would expose certain numbers that could affect stock price. cough Guess who were against it.

>He missed on AI boom, crypto boom

Considering how long the cycle of chip works. I am not sure how he missed any of it.

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