When I was toward the end of my project and sure I wasn’t going to try to get a blue badge I laid into someone in a meeting. It wasn’t my best moment but I had absolutely had it with this person from a competing group blocking my progress. I was on my way out anyway. I wasn’t sure if I would be fired.
The manager from the competing group sought me out the next morning to offer me a L6/L7 position. He said he wasn’t sure I had what it took until that meeting.
My group manager did the same later that day.
I made the right decision leaving.
I wonder how it became a culture so afraid of itself. How did Amazon (possibly no less "toxic", Idk) embarrassed combative disagreement and sublimated that natural emergent expression/desire during stressful situations into something that worked for the company, whereas Intel sounds like it failed to do that?
Org psychology point of view.
All that worked (or seemed to work) for Intel for many years - 30+ years of profits and market dominance. I don't know the exact abuse level of Amazon, Microsoft, Apple or wherever but if they're equivalent, they'll keep going 'tell they stop.
The one thing toxic culture seems to do is prevent recovery when a company suffers a setback.
My view was Intel had a good culture until external pressures resulted in turning toxic.
If you're in doubt, I'd recommend David M. Gordon's Fat And Mean for a discussion of how toxic culture persists and intensifies in corporate America.
Edit: I think can credit the long period of success Intel had to shrewd leadership and leading in a massively expanding market. The thing about a chip company is that it is constantly gambling on extremely costly investments in machinery and people. Abusive tactics that get good people working really hard for average salaries are really useful and "only come due over time" and often when the company foundering anyway.
As far as I'm concerned there is no other way to get real progress; there are always a lot of pretenses on better ways to "manage" stuff but they never work because of group dynamics and basic human behavior...
"Diagnostic for immense failure. Does the organisation...
= enable a toxic working environment that is openly discussed,
= encourage internal conflict act every level, business unit and staff,
= cultivate top-heavy management, promote low-talent that makes poor choices and burns money on worthless projects that never deliver,
= maintain the threat of layoffs to destroy morale and engagement,
= send critical functions off-shore and/or to third-party contracts,
= fail to do strategic research, make poor choices in acquisitions and partnerships, and build unnecessary facilities?
If so, the patient manifests late-stage corporate morbidity."
The working environment was toxic (still is based on what I've heard from folks I know working there). It encouraged working against your peers instead of with them. Top heavy management meant lots of poor choices and money burned on worthless projects that never saw the light of day. Always had the looming threat of layoffs which ate into morale. TONS of off-shoring and third-party contracts, which everyone here knows is a mess in itself. Piss-poor research before buying up smaller companies or doing joint-ventures. Pouring money into the construction of more buildings when so many of their current ones sit unoccupied. It's all just a recipe for immense failure.