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Intel CEO resigns after relationship with employee

nytimes.com

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Re: Intel CEO resigns after relationship with employee

#131

Post by stinos »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #18
sbinthree wrote: post #5

There is no way you would fire a CEO you actually wanted in place because they had a consensual relationship with a subordinate in the past . Why are US companies always so aggressive about moralising these issues? No one would take issue if he carried a gun at work. Why is it that corporate morals rule?

A relationship between a manager and someone they manage compromises the effectiveness of both the manager and the team. As CEO, he is everyone's boss, so having a consensual relationship with anyone involved in the organisation is a bad thing. If she got promoted, would it be because of her work, or her relationship with the boss? If she didn't get promoted, would it be because of her attitude, or her relationship w…

so having a consensual relationship with anyone involved in the organisation is a bad thing ... If she got promoted, would it be because of her work, or her relationship with the boss?

I'm not sure if I buy this completely. You see, a manager is human after all which means he/she is going to like some people more than others. There is always some kind of relationship with all the others, no way around it. Now obviously if the manager is only going to look at this relationship, his/her personal affection for others and not their work, and give some advantages over others based on that relationship, yes that is bad. Seeing that, and seeing an actual romatic relationship is just a more involved type of relationship, 'simply don't sleep with the people you manage' is obviously not enough. You should be able to put all or most personal things aside. As such I think these rules of no romantic relationships are a bit strange. Even if you follow that rule, but for the rest still manage people based on your personal relationship with them, it's still bad.

Re: Intel CEO resigns after relationship with employee

#132

Post by jerf »

fastball wrote: post #84
fareesh wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I have understood of this topic: If the relationship continues, the power could be used to favour the subordinate over other subordinates (give them good reviews, etc). If the relationship ends poorly, the power could be used to spite the subordinate over other subordinates (give them poor reviews, etc).

Right, so the it's an issue only if the power dynamic is abused. The power imbalance itself is not intrinsically going to cause problems.

I suspect you're imagining a single relationship in your head, and imagining that it could go well. Yes, indeed it could. But you have to think at scale. If you have ten of these sorts of relationships in your company, the odds of one of them going kerflooey in an expensive or damaging way is effectively 100%. Heck, the odds of five of them going kerflooey in an expensive or dangerous way has to be at least 90%.

You can't write policy based on imagining single incidents. At scale, power dynamics will be abused, full stop.

Re: Intel CEO resigns after relationship with employee

#133

Post by fuscy »

Intel had a pretty rough year with discovered exploits, poor PR and serious production issues for their tech.

How to discreetly solve the above issues? Have the CEO resign due to a reason that is not related in any way to his capacity of being a CEO. Put new CEO in the driver's position and have the board tell him where to go.

Usually CEOs have a nice package, even with a resignation, with some stocks and goodies so most likely everyone won in this case.

Re: Intel CEO resigns after relationship with employee

#135

Post by michaelt »

kanox wrote: post #107
michaelt wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the CEO's $19.1 million salary is adequate compensation for the fact his seniority stops him pursuing romantic relationships at work. If it's not, maybe he should have chosen a different job.

This doesn't only apply to the CEO. Middle-managers are people too.

Middle managers who want to find love at work can do it outside their departments - unlike the CEO who is everyone’s superior.

Re: Intel CEO resigns after relationship with employee

#137

Post by kanox »

fareesh wrote: post #73
YorkshireSeason wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So obviously relationships are bad when there's a power dynamic, In what sense is this obvious? And according to which substantial notion of power?

From what I have understood of this topic: If the relationship continues, the power could be used to favour the subordinate over other subordinates (give them good reviews, etc). If the relationship ends poorly, the power could be used to spite the subordinate over other subordinates (give them poor reviews, etc).

It's also common for employees at the same level to give performance reviews to each other. This is better dealt with by having a higher-level manager adjust for relationships.

Re: Intel CEO resigns after relationship with employee

#138

Post by ansible »

InTheArena wrote: post #93

Intel is in serious trouble right now.They accidentally gaffed recently and stated that their goal was "to keep AMD from getting more then 10-20% of the server market" while they deal with a whole bunch of engineering and fab problems with their current generation of chips. They are also looking down the barrel of Apple abandoning Intel, and for the first time in two decades, unleashing a true X86 competitor to the m…

> Intel is in serious trouble right now.

The whole semiconductor industry is in trouble right now, though few seem to feel the weight of the issue.

We are looking at just a couple process nodes at best before we reach the end of the road for silicon lithography. Sure, there will be further tweaks on existing techniques which will squeeze out small improvements in power, performance and density.

But long gone are the days when we saw steady improvements in circuit density and simultaneously speed and simultaneously cost.

When this knowledge finally sinks in with the investment community, it will call into question the valuation of the entire computer industry. We're already seeing that in the desktop space. I could replace my 6-year old Intel i7-3770 desktop with 32GB of RAM, but what's out there that's significantly better at a reasonable cost? Well, a used Xeon workstation maybe, but that's about it.

That should be a big red flag to the investment community, but for reasons I don't understand, people don't seem to care yet.

Re: Intel CEO resigns after relationship with employee

#139

Post by forgottenpass »

bitL wrote: post #106

So so so stupid... I hope the next gen of managers would completely abstain from any kind of romantic relationships with fellow employees given what is happening now. Their inability to think clearly and exert self-control damages companies way too much, even if they are seduced by persons seeking their own profit or being set-up by their frenemies knowing their weaknesses.

Telling people not to form personal relationships among the group that they spend most of their waking life with has a long history of failure.

That doesn't mean not to say it, but don't be surprised when it happens anyway. Sometimes people don't make the "rational" decision, or don't value their job enough to put the workplace's priorities above their own.

Re: Intel CEO resigns after relationship with employee

#140

Post by Symmetry »

arcanus wrote: post #116
ckastner wrote: post #22

Relationships among employees are very hard to keep concealed -- especially so when you're in a very exposed position, as a CEO is. At some point, somebody is going to notice something. If this is the case, then I'm pretty sure that this knowledge had reached the board long before. Rumors spread fast, after all. That leaves me to wonder as to the timing of this action. Krzanich received a lot of flak over the past mo…

> That leaves me to wonder as to the timing of this action. Krzanich received a lot of flak over the past months... it's not entirely unthinkable that the board was sitting on this information and only now used it to get rid of Krzanich without making it look like it's one of the other major issues he could technically be blamed with. Agreed. AMD is breathing down INTC's neck, particularly in servers. Board wants a d…

It's not just that. There's also the problems with 10nm. The prevaricating about the problems with 10nm. Meltdown. The 28 core 5 GHz demonstration where they misled people about overclocking. A whole bunch of stuff makes me feel like Intel just hasn't been a company I can trust while Krzanich has been at the helm.
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