Live data from Hacker News

Intel announces retirement of Pat Gelsinger

intel.com

631–640 of 777 posts

Re: Intel announces retirement of Pat Gelsinger

#631
post #600

I worked for 3 months for Intel. I can genuinely say that there is no saving that company. Recently, they are hiring many PhDs from various US universities (particularly Indians) to try to compensate (they offer generous stocks and are hiring like crazy right now). There are two major problems I saw: lack of genuine interest in fabs (most people are there for the Intel name and then leave or in the case of Indians, t…

> lack of genuine interest in fabs - most people are there for the Intel name I can actually believe this. Of most of the rest of the arguments, that tend to be rather vague, and wave at implementation, or some stock related motivation (like we need TSMCs business), a lack of genuine interest in the employees that was not sold to them or the market especially effectively seems fairly believable. Most people are there…

The senior engineers I saw there are talented. And Intel has benefits and stock packages that rival those of big tech. I think I can expand on your point by saying the more senior engineers were risk averse and on the verge of retirement, and the young engineers were just there for the Intel name or some other reason. There is surprisingly very few middle-aged long-term people down there. This would be expected in software (Facebook/Google), but it is a recipe for disaster in hardware where long term thinking is critical to advance lithography (changed don't happen overnight). I also was surprised by how few of Intel's engineers believed in Intel. The most stark observation I made was senior engineers would max their stock purchase plan, but many young engineers would abstain. If the engineers don't believe in the product they are working on, I don't accept that the gov. must bail it out. I hope some investigative journalist writes a book on Intel and Boeing someday, as I would be curious as to how things unfolded and got to this point. There are many similarities (I never worked for Boeing, but have friends in Seattle that describe the culture in similar terms to what I saw at Intel). Also, to your last point, the Intel name does not hold as much weight as it did in the Grove days.

Re: Intel announces retirement of Pat Gelsinger

#634

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is all very true and why I think a merger between AMD and Intel is even possible. Nvidia and Intel is also a possible merger, but I actually think there is more regulatory concern with NVIDIA and how big and dominant they are becoming.

Intel and Samsung could be interesting, especially if it would get Samsung to open up more. Samsung would get better GPUs and x86, Intel gets access to the phone market and then you end up with things like x86 Samsung tablets that can run both Windows or Android. Could also be Intel and Micron. Then you end up with full stack devices with Intel CPUs and Micron RAM and storage, and the companies have partnered in the…

What part of a Samsung merger do you think would help them enter the phone market? My layman's understanding of history is that Intel tried and failed several times to build x86 chips for phones and they failed for power consumption reasons, not for lack of access to a phone maker willing to try their chips or anything like that.

Re: Intel announces retirement of Pat Gelsinger

#635
post #7

> Intel Corporation (NASDAQ: INTC) today announced that CEO Pat Gelsinger retired from the company after a distinguished 40-plus-year career and has stepped down from the board of directors, effective Dec. 1, 2024 Is it a "he retired" or a "we retired him"?

[deleted]

Re: Intel announces retirement of Pat Gelsinger

#636
post #600

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> lack of genuine interest in fabs - most people are there for the Intel name I can actually believe this. Of most of the rest of the arguments, that tend to be rather vague, and wave at implementation, or some stock related motivation (like we need TSMCs business), a lack of genuine interest in the employees that was not sold to them or the market especially effectively seems fairly believable. Most people are there…

The senior engineers I saw there are talented. And Intel has benefits and stock packages that rival those of big tech. I think I can expand on your point by saying the more senior engineers were risk averse and on the verge of retirement, and the young engineers were just there for the Intel name or some other reason. There is surprisingly very few middle-aged long-term people down there. This would be expected in so…

> And Intel has benefits and stock packages that rival those of big tech.

Given Intel’s stock returns over the past 15 years, Intel would have to offer insane cash compensation to rival big tech.

Levels.fyi indicates Intel heavily underpays, which is what I would expect.

https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Intel,Apple,Google&track=Sof...

Re: Intel announces retirement of Pat Gelsinger

#637
post #599

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GNOME 3 had a hardware accelerated compositor on release in 2011.

macOS had one in 2000. Windows shortly thereafter.

What?

MacOS in 2000 was still old MacOS, with no compositing at all. The NeXT derived version of MacOS was still in beta, and I tried it back then, it was very rough. Even once OSX shipped in 2001, it was still software composited. Quartz Extreme implemented GPU compositing in 10.2, which shipped in 2002.

Windows finally got a composited desktop in Vista, released in 2007. It was GPU accelerated from day one.

Re: Intel announces retirement of Pat Gelsinger

#638
post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I feel like this is a mistake. Pat's strategy is aggressive but what the company needs. He's also 63. Has plenty of money to survive the rest of his life. Has eight grandchildren. There's so much more to life than business. What's to say he doesn't want to simply enjoy life with more connection and community to loved ones around him?

That would be a healthy, balanced and long-term-oriented approach. But those who get to the level of CEO are subjected to intense forces that select against those traits. I don’t know much about this guy but it’s reasonable to assume that any C-level exec will hold on to the position for dear life until they are forced out.

That’s not at all who Pat is

Re: Intel announces retirement of Pat Gelsinger

#639

I feel like this is a mistake. Pat's strategy is aggressive but what the company needs. Intel's stock is jumping at this announcement, but I look at it as a bad signal for Intel 18a. If 18a was looking to be a smash hit then I don't think Pat gets retired. If 18a is a success then it is an even more short-sighted decision by the board. What this likely means is two-fold: 1. Intel 18a is being delayed further and/or t…

Merging AMD and Intel sounds like Penn Central all over again

Re: Intel announces retirement of Pat Gelsinger

#640

I worked for 3 months for Intel. I can genuinely say that there is no saving that company. Recently, they are hiring many PhDs from various US universities (particularly Indians) to try to compensate (they offer generous stocks and are hiring like crazy right now). There are two major problems I saw: lack of genuine interest in fabs (most people are there for the Intel name and then leave or in the case of Indians, t…

> Most of the talent I know is either at Apple or Facebook/Google That's a damn shame. Big tech monopolies are screwing up the talent market. Nobody can match their comp and it's bullshit

The companies that are big tech today took the risks and are now reaping the rewards. Intel decided not to take the risks, so now it doesn’t reap the rewards.

No one stopped Intel from paying for talent. Intel’s shareholders decided to pay themselves instead of investing in the business by hiring great employees. That’s how you go from being a leader to a laggard.

Post reply on HN