A relative of mine with a PhD sounds exactly like this. Worked for Intel on chip-production tech then was hired by Apple about 10 years ago, working on stuff that gets mentioned in Apple keynotes.
Reminds me of the Boeing managers saying that they didn't need senior engineers because its products were mature..
A few blown doors and deadly crashes later, that didn't age well..
And this is a problem! Most of Intel’s recent major architectural changes over the last decade or so have been flops. [1] Quite a few have been reverted, often even after they ship. I presume that Intel does not actually have many people who are really qualified to work on the architecture.
[0] I’m talking about how it interacts with an OS and how you put it together into a working system. Understand stuff like SIMD is a different thing.
[1] AVX and its successors are notable exceptions, but they still have issues, and Intel did not really rock the early implementations.
Genuine interest is not the only way to get great results. Excellent pay can do so as well.
And lack of talent, again, excellent pay.
I can actually believe this. Of most of the rest of the arguments, that tend to be rather vague, and wave at implementation, or some stock related motivation (like we need TSMCs business), a lack of genuine interest in the employees that was not sold to them or the market especially effectively seems fairly believable.
Most people are there for the chips, for making great designs in silicon, and being market leaders in CPU architecture. Not running the equivalent of an offshoring division making other people's stuff.
The entire implementation has seemed rather haphazard and not sold with much real motivation. Honestly, the entire situation feels a bit like Afghanistan (if that's a bit incendiary)
Nobody really knows why they're going. Nobody really knows what they're trying to accomplish. The objectives on the ground seem vague, ephemeral, and constantly changing. There's not much passion among the ground troops about the idea. The leaders always seem to be far away, and making strange proclamations, without actually putting boots in the dirt. The information released often feels multiple personalityish, like there's far too many cooks in the kitchen, or far too many puppeteers pulling strings in every direction. And afterward you find out it was mostly some dumpster fire driven by completely different motivations than what were publicly acknowledged.
Given Intel’s stock returns over the past 15 years, Intel would have to offer insane cash compensation to rival big tech.
Levels.fyi indicates Intel heavily underpays, which is what I would expect.
https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Intel,Apple,Google&track=Sof...
- WFH means you do not even have to move.
- Competitors have set up satellite offices in Hillsborough/Portland to poach talent.
- Intel does not feel like the stable employer anymore, with the almost yearly layoff waves since the BK era.
Has it's downsides though. Having visited NASA Ames over in Mountain View because of space agency work, it has a lot of the same issues as Aspen. Lot of sameness, lot of architecture that's McWealthy pseduo-Pueblo, lot of expensive blast plain suburbia, lot of people that start with "you're leaving money on the table" mentality, San Jose and San Fran traffic nearby can be nightmarish, and the crime of Oakland doesn't have that far to walk.
With many family in the Portland, Hillsboro, Beaverton area, that area also has it's positives: relatively low crime in Hillsboro / Beaverton (Portland's not great on the East side)[1], wealthy neighbors, huge amounts of hiking / outdoors / mountain climbing / biking / botanical gardens / parks, much less of blast plain suburbia, somewhat private feeling / hidden housing developments, ocean nearby, Columbia River nearby, significant art culture, lots of breweries / restaurants / food trucks / foodies, decent public transit, if you want dry desert wealth like Cali then Bend is not that far away.
Comparing the shows Portlandia vs Silicon Valley and Weeds is not a bad approximation.
[1] https://www.thetrace.org/2023/02/gun-violence-map-america-sh...
The equity compensation figures on levels.fyi are very rough estimates on what one might sees, but it is possible that Meta has to offer more equity due to more perceived volatility in its business rather than, say, Apple or Microsoft. Or maybe more expected work hours/days.
But also, Meta has long been known to pay more, famously being the business that eschewed the collusion that resulted in the famous high-tech employee antitrust litigation:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...
The meetings with them felt that way too. Watch the same slides for months and wonder how nobody was moving anywhere with anything actually involving choices. "So, we've got these three alternatives for SLS, and like 10 other nice-to-have engineer pipe dreams." "Right, you'll choose the obvious low cost choice A. Why are we having this meeting again?" Many months later, after endless dithering, surprise, obvious choice using almost no hardware changes is chosen. All engineer nice-to-have pipe dreams are thrown away. There was much rejoicing at the money successfully squandered.
That's a damn shame. Big tech monopolies are screwing up the talent market. Nobody can match their comp and it's bullshit
But alas, Intel is a mega bureaucratic company with a few tiny siloed teams responsible for innovating and everyone else being test and process jockeys. I think Gelsinger wasn't given enough time, personally, and agree with the OP that even someone like Elon would struggle to keep this sinking ship afloat at this point.
BK wanted wearables and Bob Swan wanted to cut costs; neither of them were visionaries nor did they really understand that Intel was a hard tech company. Intel had achieved such dominance in such a in-demand, growing market, that all they had to do was make the technology better (smaller, faster, lower power) and the money would continue to flow. The mandate was straightforward and they failed.
No one stopped Intel from paying for talent. Intel’s shareholders decided to pay themselves instead of investing in the business by hiring great employees. That’s how you go from being a leader to a laggard.