Thread regarding Intel Corp. layoffs

Quoting OP: "SET: Bain or someone advised PSO to separate people management & functional ownership. This decision looked innocuous at that time but has had the most devastating effect on Intel."
Hear Hear.
When people used to ask me how it is to work in Intel, I used to respond that Intel was going on like a car with the best engine in the world, driven by a drunk driver. (I recently stopped responding that way because of all the good talent we lost to others)
The fact that a role called "TA" (Technical Assistant) for managers even exists, is a verbal admission that managers don't have the required technical knowledge. It's right there in the name!!! And all the TAs that I met, didn't have the required technical knowledge either.

@bp OP might be saying that he was a fab tech and never moved beyond the Gr54 at which he was hired.

That would explain a lot about his apparent delusionary state and general lack of grip on reality.

Stupid Fake Troll Post.

There is no such thing as a L0 employee and everyone responding is either really gullible or the OP.

Totally right about the DEI hiring, even at the green badge module tech level. The temp service had an in person meeting with all the S4 green badges, and each person was asked to introduce him/herself and tell the group a little about themselves...a big group of pink and blue haired nose ringed, inappropriately dressed kids who would state their name and then run on in detail about their particular s-xuality. As if this was the first thing to know about them in a professional work environment. Out of a large group there were only about 8 actual adults who looked professional and didn't prattle on about what kind of people they like to engage in in--------e with. That's what DEI hiring gets you. You end up with the island of misfit toys.

@av I had a similar experience with hiring under BK.

My daughter in college is studying the demise of Intel in her business management class. Intel failed because of hubris, questionable DEI hiring practices, poor technical judgment and failed execution over multiple CEO’s. I gave her my two cents on 10nm failure. Sohail and his “yes men” like Charvat convinced BK that SAQP would save the day and the Co/Ru for lower interconnects was production ready. It was not and had inherent reliability issues.

WTF is "L0 employee"

I don't believe OP works at Intel.

Good post. To add to it I really feel during BK’s reign of te---r we really lost site of attracting and retaining great engineers. I worked with HR during that time and we were solely focused on hitting the diversity goals no matter what. We literally turned away great non diverse engineers in huge numbers to hire a diverse candidate. We used to make offers to diverse candidates at the universities without even interviewing them, just so we could hit the outlandish numbers of diverse hires. Then we spent a good part of the focal budget to reward them. It was a good cause and we needed to make sure we had a diverse pool, however we went way to far and it impacted the good engineering talent we lost. The other piece
Of this was finance. They had too much influence and they cut future money making businesses because it was not making the margins right off. Finance is what will be tagged as the demise of Intel. you

What’s L0 employee?

@aq I thought OP was making a long-winded, mendacious point about something, but then I fell asleep so not really sure what he was droning on about.

@ap I don't mind the trolling, as pointless as it may be, but am bothered by the fact that so much coal had to be burned in a power plant for the internet to carry the load of OPs 10,000 word treatise on blahdeblah.

Think about the children.

@OP Great, another mind-numbingly long Cut & Paste post from the AI Troll.

The stickiness of the x86 SW ecosystem was predicated in decision making at "modern Intel" and reinforced by partners (cough cough MSFT). The implosion of Itanium (or really any non-x86 effort) resulted in a "you don't fck with the recipe" mindset that involved a 5% IPC CAGR and lots of new ISA features on x86 line (Ts).

That strategy worked well enough during an era with no competition (~2007 to ~2017) but the world was shifting. During that era

• mobile became a thing and created a SW ecosystem around ARM
• web became the platform of choice for anything outside gaming
• AMD delivered a competent design with Zen (patent sharing agreement from anticompetitive business was a godsend to AMD)
• CPU competition was able to offer at least 50% better tcomp and had growth opportunities
• Companies Intel supplied were able to build more aggressive microarchitectures than Intel (Apple)

Once that happened, 5% IPC (maybe) + the *T dejour (yippee DRM in secure enclaves or whatever) started to look pretty unappealing. Add in technology delays and the wheels really fell off. Add in quality issues for more even more pain.

Great post OP. Let me simplify. Intel doesn't give a rats azz about you unless you're part of the "click".

@a9 , understanding past mistakes is key to learn from them. OP has done a good job with that. It is up to the management to accept and learn from the mistakes.

Here is how Intel learns from past:

• When 13nm got delayed, we were told there were learnings which will be beneficial to for the subsequent processes.
• Come 10nm, they again made aggressive and risky choices, leading to endless delays again.
• It went on, e.g 5N4Y

OP, I hope your post made you feel better. You put a lot of effort into it.

I think this post and a lot of others like it on this site exemplify Intel's real problem. Intel and its employees are fixated on the past but ironically they never learn from the past. How Intel got here doesn't really matter now, especially if they aren't going to learn from past mistakes. What is important is where it goes from here. Instead of focusing on the past, focus on the present and plan for the future.

I really think the attitude that "everything must be IA" really hurt Intel. The fact that we were so stubborn to think Atom could compete with ARM in mobile phone space was a multi-decade mistake. Imagine if Intel had kept StrongARM/XScale and built out that platform and competed with the likes of Qualcomm, Samsung, MediaTek, etc. The current miss on AI wouldn't seem as dire if Intel had a healthy share of the smartphone business.

@OP beautifully said

after considering the acquisitions, i have to wonder if intel was used as a slush fund with kickbacks going on

This is summed up really well, Altera is the latest in a long line of acquisitions that they buy expensive and sell cheap. Other companies can do this cough AMD and ATI why can't Intel?

I remember in one Q&A years ago someone said that Intel is opposed to risk taking. But that is not true. The exec said that every time they push for a new process node it is risking the whole company.

The real problem is execution. AMD can execute, Nvidia can Execute, TSMC can execute. Why can't Intel? If execs are not able to figure out this problem and fix it then Intel has no future.