Intel is in a bad situation because Intel didn't hire intelligent people. I had interviewed with Intel around 20 years ago and they didn't test my intelligence, they only tested my knowledge. I failed the interview because I couldn't answer one question. The common perception in the world is that knowledgeable people are intelligent too. But actually, it is not guaranteed that knowledgeable people are intelligent too. However, intelligent people can quickly learn things and perform much better. I got a job in Google 20 years ago as a SDET (Software Development Engineer in Test) because they tested my intelligence and not my knowledge. And Google is still going strong. So, if any company wants to do well in the software domain/computer hardware domain then it should choose intelligence over knowledge. But unfortunately, most of the world go for knowledge. Google, Microsoft, etc. go for intelligence and they are doing quite well.
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Ok, I agree that I am wrong and Intel hired all the intelligent people.
Then how come AMD outsmarted Intel?
Why can't intelligent people at Intel produce better CPUs than AMD?
People here have said that Intel CEOs changed the path of the company but no CEO stopped making the CPUs which was the home turf of Intel.
I will agree that I am wrong if someone can explain why Intel is not making better CPUs than AMD?
I didn't generalize my interview at Intel. I am of the firm opinion that if a company is going down then that company is not hiring intelligent people.
Let's forget about my interview at Intel. Even then I would have said the same thing - if a company is going down then that company is not hiring intelligent people.
But now the question is that if Intel hired all the intelligent people then why can't they make better CPUs than AMD?
I would really like to know the answer of this question.
There is indeed only one reason for Intel’s failure and it stems from interviewing for the smartest person
It’s hubris. Pride goes before a fall. Look at out CEO missteps. The iphone — we don’t need it; EUV steppers — we don’t need them; sufficient funds for a turn around — we have enough; better products — ours are good enough; sufficient headcount — lay em off we don’t need them!
We’re Intel we’re indestructible!
This is what happens when you hire the smartest person in the room, who never listens to anyone
OP I love your failed logic. You are exhibiting fact memorization in your claim. Also your sample coding questions test knowledge. And you’re too pig headed to listen.
I believe companies that don’t hire intelligence fail
Intel is failing
Therefore Intel doesn’t hire intelligence
But one little fact destroys your whole thesis:
Intel hiring managers hire intelligence!
Turns out you’re begging the consequent.
Turns out intelligence alone isn’t enough for success
OP didn’t work at Intel because of one question. Based on his one interview experience 20 years ago, concluded “(Only) one reason”. Where is the “intelligence” in the statement?
@OP
This is hilarious, GOOGLE has been around for roughly 28yrs, That is middle of 90's for Intel. Let's wait for at least 20 more years before we can make this comparison, also neither MS nor Google are really in the HW business, they sell services and collect rent. 🍎 🍊. Don't even say MS shows any real innovation.
@e4 why do any more than the minimum when the company will never recognize or reward you for it - and in some cases punish you with more work, equal pay?
I am not here to prove that I am intelligent.
I came here just to convey that the companies that hire intelligent people (even if they don't have the required knowledge) do much better than the companies that hire people solely based on knowledge.
Get off your soap box, and shut off that little neon sign above your head "Hey Mom! Look at Me!!! I'm Intelligent!!!"
The whole logic is that intelligent people can acquire knowledge quickly but knowledgeable people who are not intelligent cannot acquire intelligence.
Knowledge can be acquired but intelligence can't be acquired.
You don't need intelligence to acquire knowledge. You can simply learn all the theory. Knowledge is a function of memory, not intelligence.
You can read all the theory from a book and become knowledgeable but for this you need memory and you should be able to remember things. You don't need lot of intelligence for gaining knowledge.
I didn't join Google also. I probably wouldn't have joined Intel also. Around the same time I got a job at Microsoft also as SDE (Software Development Engineer) but I didn't join Microsoft also. I actually joined another company that was paying me handsomely, more than these companies.
@dk There are flaws in your logic too. People need to have knowledge of the job they are being hired to do. It takes intelligence to accumulate knowledge. Companies could simply test people for intelligence/aptitude and then train them for the jobs needed but this would take years before people would be productive. Every intelligent person isn't a great innovator. Complex jobs require intelligent people but it doesn't mean that each of those intelligent people are going to invent the next great thing. What great life altering innovations have you produced at Google?
Sounds more like you are still sour grapes about not getting a job at Intel over 20 years ago.
The computer was preordained. The Kabal simply tapped a few folks on the shoulder, provided the specs, behold, computers started rolling out of garages across Silicon Valley and billionaires minted!
I am the OP.
When I wrote about intelligent people, I meant all positions (from CEO to engineer level). And I just gave my example. By the way, I am happy that Intel didn't recruit me.
Back then Google asked me tough coding questions for SDET position. I don't know what they ask now.
I remember two questions that I will mention here:
- Write code to figure out whether a binary tree is a mirror of another binary tree.
- Write code to reverse all two successive nodes of a linked list. For example, if a linked list has 'n' nodes, then reverse first and second node and then reverse third and fourth node and so on.
I have few questions to all the people who didn't agree with me:
- Did Charles Babble have knowledge about the difference engine before he invented the difference engine?
- Did the person who invented the first computer have the knowledge about computers before he invented the computer?
This list of questions will go on.
No inventor had prior knowledge of the invention he/she made.
So, obviously, intelligence should be more preferred than knowledge.
All those people who called me names, I would only say one thing - you all are in denial mode.
How come AMD is selling more than Intel? This is because they hire intelligent people.
Another main point in replies is that Intel's failure was due to bad CEOs/managers.
This means that CEOs/managers of Intel were not intelligent. So, Intel didn't hire intelligent CEOs/managers.
AMD made better CPUs for desktops/laptops, etc. than Intel. Why? Because engineers at AMD were more intelligent than engineers at Intel.
If Intel had hired intelligent engineers, then Intel would still be number 1 in desktop/laptop CPUs.
Forget about mobile CPUs, etc. Intel has lost ground in its traditional market of desktop CPUs to AMD because Intel didn't hire intelligent engineers.
Also, many of my college friends work at Intel (even now). And I know that they are not more intelligent than me.
If anyone doesn't want to agree with me, it is fine.
The truth will not change irrespective of whether people accept it or not.
The earth is not flat and now even if 1 billion people say that the earth is flat, even then the truth won't change that earth is round and not flat.
GM was once the biggest company in the world. Now it isn't. Why? It made bad cars badly for decades.
Intel was once top dog. Now it isn't. Why? It doesn't make the best x86 chips and it doesn't have process leadership so it can make leading edge nodes for cheap.
BK took the eye off the ball.
Intel has failed for any number of reasons- but it hiring you probably wouldn’t make the top 100.
For the top 7, look at the seven deadly sins. Rot in he-l, Otellini.
OP, sdet positions are sh#t
Buddy started a sentence with "But actually" while telling us he failed an interview for being too smart ............ what a deluded re--rd.
OP made up a story to pat himself on the back
After 20 years, the OP is still bitter about getting rejected from Intel. Dude, if the interviewers really thought you were intelligent, they would have hired you. If your skills were too far mismatched, you would not have gotten the interview. Either that or you smelled like farts or had really bad breath.
But Def met is the smartest of all!
PSO was not smart sorry
I don't believe Intel is failing more than OP.
I'm not reading this. It has nothing to do with Intel or realty
While interviews for engineers need to test on intelligence and knowledge... for Intel, the interview on managers are full of cheating, none is being questioned.
Intel's failure is caused by CHEATING managers. Too much cheating in Intel without any penalty.
For example, a yield engineer with only a few years of experience in GlobalFoundry (and likely got laid off there), cheated and became senior director in TD Automation. This guy is continuing high-talks to make Ann to LTD management happy, and fooling around without delivering anything.
For the same manage above, when evaluating a 3rd party vendor software which failed after 6 month trial by Intel integration, this TD Automation manager secretly told the 3rd party company to claim "it can do everything" when meeting with Intel LTD managements. This is a bold cheating, and insider directed cheating. The manager got personal credit by cheating, but nothing is done for the company.
There is more to success than intelligence, such as humility and the ability to listen, which a good behavioral interview will ask “pointless questions” to gauge. PSO was pretty smart. But the other interpersonal cultural factors kept us out of the iphone; “moar IQ” wouldn’t have solved that.
@ac Otlllini also missed low-cost laptops. Then came BK and the “we’re a data company” BS. Intel lost its identity under BK. Intel had a lot of smart people until 2016 layoffs. It has never recovered in loyalty or morale since then. Now they seem to layoff the one’s they should keep. Also, there are levels of management so deep that Intel works like a slug. There is no efficiency. I have literally forgotten the issue I raised waiting for an answer to come back.
I can’t remember the year they lost Microsoft. From my lowly level, there was no way they were going to have a chip ready by the school year. Intel promised it would be done. What happened in those layers of “always say yes” management. Then it would be ready for Christmas. I think there was almost an 10% yield by then. Microsoft spend $100,000,00s on promotion of the latest tablet that would change the world. Intel failed, Microsoft started making their own chips. Apple followed suit. Intensive tried to manufacture chips for Apple. They could not do it fast enough.
Then came the worst decision of them all, Pat and his cronies who were stuck in the 90s. He spent all of Intel’s reserves. Let’s build before we solve the problems. Now they need to sell off and layoff to raise money. Such a sad position, but what it MIGHT have going for it now is showing signs of realistic humility to what it has become.
If they layoff the right people this time; the deadweight and layers of bureaucratic management, they just might pull off a comeback. They are going to have to work hard at efficiency.
Boy genius? What question couldn’t you answer? Oh I get it, you ran out of fingers and toes….
Out of the way everyone, OP IS SMART. his momma said so
I have been involved in the interview process. We can not ask questions to test their knowledge. We ask these worthless questions.
Intel’s failure was to not see how mobile phones would enable foundry players to operate at a scale far exceeding Intel.
By selling high margin processors, Otellini was blind to this threat as mobile SOCs sold by merchant vendors like Qualcomm were way way way below Intel’s gross margins for x86 CPUs. He did not foresee that billions of these cheap chips would fund TSMC and enable the fabless ecosystem to surpass Intel.
Intel tried half heartedly to apply the IDM model to mobile processors but failed due to not understanding that the value was in the fabs and not the low margin merchant chip market.
At this point it’s too late to catch TSMC as the exponential costs of fabs are financially out of reach for Intel.
Another failure was to miss AI, but to be fair nobody was going to beat Nvidia due to software lock-in with CUDA and shrewd acquisitions like Mellanox to enable data center scale GPU compute.
Your Microsoft example is also laughable for the same reasons. Microsoft would have been rendered irrelevant if Balmer did not retire and hand the reigns to Satya. High IQ employees or not.
High IQ cannot compensate for bad business decisions at the top.
Google is successful because of search.
That’s 99% of their profits.
They leveraged economy of scale to remain on top as their algorithm is easy to copy but expensive to implement at scale. Very much like Intel rode the success of x86 processors and leveraged scale via reinvesting profits into maintaining a fab scale advantage.
High IQ is a sideshow. Just look at their many product failures. You could eliminate 60% of employees and literally nothing would change.
if you’re going for a singular reason for Intel’s failure full stop it’s BK bought stock back and created a culture of fear of layoffs instead of investing in EUV. Anything else even Pat wasting all that money is reason #2
Tell us you’re a troll who has never worked for Intel without telling us you’re a troll who has never worked for Intel
Anyone other than OP remember when people were talking a few years about efficiency vs effectiveness? Lots of people on these boards still advocating doing an excellent job at the wrong thing
To be fair to OP that is how we got five bad CEO’s in a row. But that culture didn’t permeate every last low level interview.
@OP What makes you think you are intelligent? Generalizing your personal interview experience to a big company like Intel shows that you are not that intelligent !
Also, MSFT which according to your opinion goes for intelligence has hired a lot of people from Intel. You think they were only "knowledgeable" at Intel and became "Intelligent" at MSFT ? You say intelligent people can gain knowledge rapidly, but doesn't that mean "knowledgeable" people had intelligence to begin with to gain that knowledge?
You really don't know if the true reason for that rejection was that one question you didn't answer. May be they found a truly intelligent person who outperformed you. You didn't get hired as a developer at Google, you were hired as a test engineer ! Remembering a job rejection twenty years back and coming to post about it on a layoff board doesn't reflect well on you (definitely low emotional intelligence). Somebody may very well made the right call twenty years back.
OP is correct
@OP I'm sorry you had that experience, but I disagree that this is the reason for Intel's failure. When I interviewed with Intel they were interested in one thing: could I do the work, and do it well. I was tested & quizzed multiple times on practical situations and solutions. They didn't care that I didn't have a degree, they only cared that I could solve the problems. They wanted someone with strong critical thinking and problem solving skills. I don't know when you interviewed, so it's possible that attitude has changed. As for the reason(s) Intel is failing, I'd put those down to poor leadership, nepotism, kingdom building, and resting on past success.