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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

#151
post #23

A board doesn’t fire its CEO because they went on a few dates with someone a while back—even if that’s against company policy. Getting the popcorn out to see how this unfolds...

They had so many reasons to push him out. I feel like the board has been aware of the relationship for a while, but they got together one day to figure out which public reason to give for the ousting of Krzanich. And they chose this, which is probably the reason with the least negative impact on whatever is left of Krzanich' career. He may even get high-fives for it at his next gig. At the end of the day, they had to…

I wonder if this reason was chosen due to various clauses in his contract. Perhaps it exempts him from a golden parachute, because it's misbehavior on his part? And even it he was also trading, this explanation doesn't put as much risk to the share price.

Re: Intel CEO resigns after relationship with employee

#152

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?

>No one would take issue if he carried a gun at work You really don't think so? I'm no CEO but I imagine carrying a gun around would at least warrant some public criticism, particularly for a tech CEO in the San Francisco Bay Area.

We had a CFO bring a handgun onto company property in his car. Some one spotted it (apparently, it was in plain view in the car) and notified the police. He was given a talking-to by the cops and then by company reps. He wasn't fired at that point but he was gone in a month or two. Related? I don't know but it wouldn't surprise me.

The company is in Sunnyvale, site of the Richard Farley murders at ESL in 1988. So, yeah, I think the police would be interested in knowing his intentions.

Re: Intel CEO resigns after relationship with employee

#153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Krzanich also presided during the Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities for which Intel's messaging left much to be desired. Krzanich is also suspected by some to have engaged in insider trading. [0]

https://news.alphastreet.com/chipmaker-giant-intels-ceo-bria...

Re: Intel CEO resigns after relationship with employee

#154
post #76
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem wasn't that she was a coworker. It was that she was a subordinate. Nobody cares if two engineers hook up, but it's a Very Bad Thing if your boss starts putting the moves on you. Relationships where one person holds real-world power over another are prone to exploitation and violation of consent.

All relationships at work are a bad idea. They're dangerous to the firm and bad for the people's involved careers. Best rule for everyone is no relationships between co-workers and if one happens both people are fired.

That is mind-boggingly ridiculous: the concept that a company would have any sort of opinion on who I have sex with.

US work culture sometimes feels so incredibly alien when seen from the outside.

Re: Intel CEO resigns after relationship with employee

#156
post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why are US companies always so aggressive about moralising these issues? Or consider Mozilla's week-long CEO who years earlier donated $1000 to a popular ballot initiative supported by most California voters. Be careful how you vote, citizen. Your livelihood depends on it.

I really liked that you skipped over what that ballot initiative was. He donated in support of Prop 8, an attempt to ban same-sex marriage in California. As a former Mozilla employee, I'm pretty glad that he was ousted for his homophobia. Good riddance.

It was an opinion on marriage, a millenia-old quasi-political-religious traditional institution. The world is full of such opinions. Polygamy is illegal in 50 of 50 United states, even California.

Don't slip on that edge of political wrongthink.

Communism is certainly the most damaging political movement of the 20th century. Should we oust Communist sympathizers from their positions of power?

Re: Intel CEO resigns after relationship with employee

#157
post #65

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?

Yeah I never understood this either. Does that mean a bachelor US president can't date a US citizen? Yes, power can be abused. But anyone with a knife at home can abuse that knife by stabbing someone. That doesn't make it wrong to own a knife.

The president is not the boss of citizens the way a CEO is employees at her firm. If that's your view of american civics, time to update your civics lessons.

Re: Intel CEO resigns after relationship with employee

#158

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…

I don't disagree with the wider point but

> 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?

AMD Ryzen 7 1700 for $200. ~10% faster single core and you get 8C/16T. DDR4 RAM is quite expensive, though.

(closest available benchmarks, 1700 is about 3% slower than 2700) [0]: https://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/2111 [1]: https://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/551

Re: Intel CEO resigns after relationship with employee

#159
post #76
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem wasn't that she was a coworker. It was that she was a subordinate. Nobody cares if two engineers hook up, but it's a Very Bad Thing if your boss starts putting the moves on you. Relationships where one person holds real-world power over another are prone to exploitation and violation of consent.

All relationships at work are a bad idea. They're dangerous to the firm and bad for the people's involved careers. Best rule for everyone is no relationships between co-workers and if one happens both people are fired.

We had a married couple working at the company, both engineers and neither reporting to the other. The husband was promoted to a managerial position where his wife would now become a report, not direct, but still in his chain-of-command. That is against company policy so they were given some options to resolve this. The wife ended up with a lateral transfer into another division.

Re: Intel CEO resigns after relationship with employee

#160
post #71
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just not people you have a supervisory role over, because obviously that could be coercive.

Any relationship could be coercive. But just because it's possible for a relationship to be coercive doesn't mean that it is going to be. I don't see what's wrong with a supervisor dating a suboridinate if both parties are consenting and the supervisor is not abusing their power. This taboo has never made much sense to me. The supervisor can already be abusive towards their subordinates. You don't need to introduce a…

Because it's not just impropriety, it's the appearance of impropriety. It erodes trust in the organization to treat employees fairly by their competence/skillset/behavior/etc.
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