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Who wants to be Intel’s new CEO?

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Re: Who wants to be Intel’s new CEO?

#81
post #13
post #5

WTF does "toxic culture" even mean, other than clickbait? Some people seems to use this as meaning "anti-social" or "excessively aggressive" but the word only appears in the article as "toxic fixation on margins" where it's equivalent to "harmful". The gist of the article seems to be that Intel lost in the mobile space because it refused to chase opportunities with lower margins. But decisions regarding such deals ar…

"Toxic" is one of those terms like "problematic" that rely on in-group knowledge to understand. I've often heard it in reference to masculinity; often used by feminists who have a more concrete definition in mind. And, sure you can look at any violent crime stats to see masculinity has its problems, but instead of the more reasonable claim they're making a very nasty one that's indefensible. Allusions to people being…

To clarify: when I said "you can look at any violent crime stats to see masculinity has its problems" I'm acknowledging that the issue the feminists are trying to address is a real one. And that's an olive branch to avoid derailing the discussion into politics.

Re: Who wants to be Intel’s new CEO?

#82

I worked at Intel for two years. They don't have a "toxic" culture. They are just like any other big company. Believe it or not, Google and Facebook will end up like that in 25 years too. Big organizations get like that. There's a generation that's raised on the company Kool-Aid and they live and breathe the company slogans and they forget that reality is a different place. That's not TOXIC ... that's just the nature…

"Around" is relative. The last thing IBM innovated was Watson and they're downsizing that division because they can't figure out how to market it. IBM is mostly just a body shop for cheap overseas code monkeys now, isn't it?

Re: Who wants to be Intel’s new CEO?

#83
post #44
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At a big corporation, like Intel, we cannot really talk about just one culture. I would say that your experience can vary quite a lot based on the team you’re in and to a certain degree the org you’re in. Various people assign the ‘toxic’ label to various things. What may be ‘meh’ for one person could be ‘toxic’ to another. Also: Mandatory HR is not your friend reminder. HR is there and it’s trained to protect the co…

> At a big corporation, like Intel, we cannot really talk about just one culture. I would say that your experience can vary quite a lot based on the team you’re in and to a certain degree the org you’re in. Slightly. Ultimately, the high-level culture is set by the execs. > Various people assign the ‘toxic’ label to various things. What may be ‘meh’ for one person could be ‘toxic’ to another. No, definitions are impo…

And yes, the high level execs do have to shape the culture, but it’s far from the formal “we want things to happen like X” and it’s usually a live/evolving process that happens over years, and it’s usually tailored at org and team level.

Sometimes the high level directives are great but the culture sucks, sometimes (less offen) the culture is great in spite of high-level.

Re: Who wants to be Intel’s new CEO?

#84
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly the logic that led Intel down this path. They thought they were avoiding a field with low margins and could deepen their manufacturing advantage by remaining focused on the high-margin data center business. Meanwhile, the growth in mobile/GPU/SOC chips was so massive that it enabled Intel's competitors to actually catch up on manufacturing. Those competitors are going to eventually compete in the high…

Which of intel's competitors that make mobile chips are doing as well as intel? Please give me an example. I gave you numbers for QCT which makes mobile chips. TMSC and Samsung are going to spend money on R+D on chips irrespective of what intel does. Intel has a moat in the x86 market it has none in the ARM world. Read porters 5 forces and you will see why going into the mobile world made no sense for them. In my opi…

Before I left Intel in 2013, they had recognized that the money was really in the value added chain of the mobile segment (i.e. iTunes).

But the same stagnant culture that prevented them from seeing and embracing the mobile revolution also prevented them from making things like the Intel AppStore work.

At this point, Intel really is just a vertical implementation of a company like TSMC.

Re: Who wants to be Intel’s new CEO?

#85
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never worked for Intel but they were clients for a number of years and I wrote an in-depth strategic analysis of them at one point. "Toxic" seems a poor choice of phrase based on everything I've seen. Boring--which is to say very heavily into process in all things--is perhaps apropos. Their biggest issue was projecting x86 into everything. Either by assuming they had the ability to push ecosystems into existence by…

Was it obvious back then that Flash would be dead by now, Microsoft gives up on phones, x86 fails at gaining any foothold in the phone business and intel fails at performing the next structure shrink?

It wasn't obvious that Flash would be dead. But it still seemed an odd hook (at least to me at the time) on which to hang mobile needing to be on the same architecture as desktop.

I get why Intel was pushing x86. OTOH, they also pushed on other architectures for networking which also didn't pan out for other reasons.

Re: Who wants to be Intel’s new CEO?

#86
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Various people assign the ‘toxic’ label to various things. What may be ‘meh’ for one person could be ‘toxic’ to another. So in your view, does toxic culture have shared meaning or not?

For me ‘toxic culture’ means high stress, agressive unwarranted behaviour and dehumanizing the people to justify things.

"Far more serious than just a lack of professional competence was the utmost contempt for human dignity…"

https://projectfailures.wordpress.com/2008/06/24/project-fro...

Re: Who wants to be Intel’s new CEO?

#87

I worked at Intel for two years. They don't have a "toxic" culture. They are just like any other big company. Believe it or not, Google and Facebook will end up like that in 25 years too. Big organizations get like that. There's a generation that's raised on the company Kool-Aid and they live and breathe the company slogans and they forget that reality is a different place. That's not TOXIC ... that's just the nature…

"Around" is relative. The last thing IBM innovated was Watson and they're downsizing that division because they can't figure out how to market it. IBM is mostly just a body shop for cheap overseas code monkeys now, isn't it?

Bit of an ignorant statement even if it is IBM. What’s wrong with developers “overseas” (a completely relative term but forgivable in the YC context) why call them monkeys (not an sjw so not even going to go down that words rabbit hole). Having worked with many a yank their quality is just as variable and I’ve seen better output standard maintained by some European teams even if scale is limited.

Re: Who wants to be Intel’s new CEO?

#88
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me ‘toxic culture’ means high stress, agressive unwarranted behaviour and dehumanizing the people to justify things.

"Far more serious than just a lack of professional competence was the utmost contempt for human dignity…" https://projectfailures.wordpress.com/2008/06/24/project-fro...

:O speechless

Re: Who wants to be Intel’s new CEO?

#89
post #44
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At a big corporation, like Intel, we cannot really talk about just one culture. I would say that your experience can vary quite a lot based on the team you’re in and to a certain degree the org you’re in. Various people assign the ‘toxic’ label to various things. What may be ‘meh’ for one person could be ‘toxic’ to another. Also: Mandatory HR is not your friend reminder. HR is there and it’s trained to protect the co…

> At a big corporation, like Intel, we cannot really talk about just one culture. I would say that your experience can vary quite a lot based on the team you’re in and to a certain degree the org you’re in. Slightly. Ultimately, the high-level culture is set by the execs. > Various people assign the ‘toxic’ label to various things. What may be ‘meh’ for one person could be ‘toxic’ to another. No, definitions are impo…

>Slightly. Ultimately, the high-level culture is set by the execs.

Depends on the size and the structure under which the institution operates. If there's autonomy within an institution execs might attempt to set a culture, but they can obviously not control it and the result will be a mix of organic bottom-up developments that diverge from section to section, and top-down guidelines.

At a company the size of Intel, with over 100k employees, it is almost impossible to have an iron grip on the entire workforce.

Re: Who wants to be Intel’s new CEO?

#90
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Around" is relative. The last thing IBM innovated was Watson and they're downsizing that division because they can't figure out how to market it. IBM is mostly just a body shop for cheap overseas code monkeys now, isn't it?

Bit of an ignorant statement even if it is IBM. What’s wrong with developers “overseas” (a completely relative term but forgivable in the YC context) why call them monkeys (not an sjw so not even going to go down that words rabbit hole). Having worked with many a yank their quality is just as variable and I’ve seen better output standard maintained by some European teams even if scale is limited.

Ask an IBM employee with 20 years experience who's been replaced by someone in a country with cheap labor with 2 years experience.

No, scratch that. Ask an IBM customer if the quality of IBM's workforce is as good today as it was 10 years ago.

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