The Fall of Intel

[Cmaier]

Humans are humans, even engineers . Humans tend to care about symbolism, perhaps much more than we should, but we do. A huge amount of leadership isn’t just the practical decisions you make, but motivating people to carry them out.

In all my years at Intel’s competitors, I never saw any kind of petty concerns like that. We cared about the value of our options, the ineptitude of management, etc. When Jerry Sanders wore a pinstriped suit with the words “Jerry Sanders” as the pinstripes, we were bemused, but not upset about it. On the other hand, when our $42/share stock was worth $4 and, in a dressing that, he complained that he, too, was suffering because his wife couldn’t afford to furnish his second mansion, that pissed us off.

 

[dada_dave]

In all my years at Intel’s competitors, I never saw any kind of petty concerns like that. We cared about the value of our options, the ineptitude of management, etc. When Jerry Sanders wore a pinstriped suit with the words “Jerry Sanders” as the pinstripes, we were bemused, but not upset about it. On the other hand, when our $42/share stock was worth $4 and, in a dressing that, he complained that he, too, was suffering because his wife couldn’t afford to furnish his second mansion, that pissed us off.

The way I read it is:

The more important consideration is that he lacked charisma and, in the speech, a clear vision while intimating that more people would be losing their jobs. Merely the cherry on top is that his clothing choice reinforces that he is doing this as an outsider. Had he been delivering a great address that resonated with his audience, or at least had the address been delivered under better circumstances for Intel, probably that would’ve been dismissed.

It’s nowhere near as egregious as pleading poverty because his wife can’t furnish their second mansion, but it’s still a leadership faux pas under the circumstances. In your example, Jerry Sanders’ mistake was trying to be relatable, trying to say “we’re all in this together”, in a way that reinforced just how out of touch he was. In this case, Lip-Bu Tan either carelessly, or deliberately, signaled “we’re not in this together” in a small way. That’s a little different from the pin striped suit example (depending on the circumstances in the suit which I do not know) even if it doesn’t rise to the former’s height of face planting.

 

[exoticspice1]

@Cmaier , what makes Intel different from AMD?

Do you like the performance of Lisa Su and culture at AMD and how does that compare to Intel? Sorry about the long questions, its just you strong opinions regarding Intel

 

[Cmaier]

@Cmaier , what makes Intel different from AMD?

Do you like the performance of Lisa Su and culture at AMD and how does that compare to Intel? Sorry about the long questions, its just you strong opinions regarding Intel

I don’t know anything about current AMD culture. About two years ago I heard from an old colleague who told me it’s had its ups and downs since I left.

Primary, though, it was always smaller, feistier, and more entrepreneurial than Intel. Much smaller teams consisting of much more talented engineers who are more flexible in terms of understanding multiple aspects of design. I worked on the circuit design, EDA, methodology, logic design, and physical design teams at various points, sometimes more than one simultaneously. And that wasn’t too uncommon. For opteron many of us did instruction set design, logic design, and physical design of our blocks. Some also did circuit design. Others also designed the power grid or the clock network or the standard cell architecture. I worked on all that. That would never happen at Intel. And we moved from block to block depending on the chip. I did an instruction scheduler, integer ALUs, floating point unit, etc. We all had to understand the entire chip, not just keep designing an adder over and over again for our entire careers.