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Intel missed GPUs, missed ARM, missed ASICs, missed everything right under their nose for the last 15 years. This from Andy Grove's "Only the Paranoid Survive"

Intel missed GPUs, missed ARM, missed ASICs, missed everything right under their nose for the last 15 years. This from Andy Grove's "Only the Paranoid Survive" company, a company that in it's own past pivoted from commoditized RAM production to become the one that won the CPU race, a company perfectly positioned to win the next big cycle as the dominant leader in the industry. This is what happens when the MBAs and the bean counters take over. They cut the fat, then they slice right through the muscle and bone.

ethbr1 1y ago
> They cut the fat, then they slice right through the muscle and bone. The issues with MBAs and bean counters are that they rarely have intuition about which is which, and only investing in areas a company is already successful in is rarely a winning long term strategy.
- xadhominemx 1y ago
  The issue with Intel is certainly not the MBAs, although they are numerous. The issue is that engineering leadership failed to execute on the process technology roadmap.
  - pointyfence 1y ago
    I'm with you. For some reason, the hardware / tech crowd insist that evil finance people or evil MBAs killed Intel. It's such lazy thinking. But if you look at the past CEOs, Intel had Krzanich (fab guy), Swan (CFO guy who didn't even want the job but they couldn't find anyone else), and Gelsinger (design guy and Grove disciple) in 11 years. I'll even throw in Jim Keller, not a CEO but still The Chip God, who left in frustration after two years. What's the one common problem that all of them had despite all their different backgrounds? Getting relevant nodes to market and scaling them up. Their foundry efforts (v1 and v2) have been disastrous. The CEOs or MBAs perhaps were a friction, but they aren't the root cause. Technology Development has been the center of power that the fabs and products revolved around for decades.
    - xadhominemx 1y ago
      I blame Bill and Sohail, principally. I think they essentially orchestrated a coverup of TD’s growing problems in the era of PSO and BK should have known better but was out to lunch.
- wpm 1y ago
  It was put best by Steve Jobs: “John [Sculley] came from PepsiCo, and they, at most, would change their product once every 10 years. To them, a new product was, like, a new-size bottle, right? So if you were a product person, you couldn’t change the course of that company very much. So who influenced the success of PepsiCo? The sales and marketing people. Therefore, they were the ones that got promoted, and therefore, they were the ones that ran the company. Well, for PepsiCo, that might have been okay. But it turns out, the same thing can happen in technology companies that get monopolies. Like, oh, IBM and Xerox. If you were a product person at IBM or Xerox…So you make a better copier or a better computer. So what? When you have a monopoly market share, the company is not any more successful. So the people that can make the company more successful are sales and marketing people, and they end up running the companies. And the product people get driven out of the decision-making forums. And the companies forget what it means to make great products. The product sensibility and the product genius that brought them to that monopolistic position gets rotted out by people running these companies who have no conception of a good product versus a bad product. They have no conception of the craftsmanship that’s required to take a good idea and turn it into a good product. And they really have no feeling in their hearts usually about wanting to really help the customers.” I’m watching this happen at my current company. It’s tragic, and so obvious.
  - pzo 1y ago
    It's probably happening to ape right now as well. They haven't released interesting new hardware product like in more than 5 years. Apple vision is interesting but market validated not worth the money they asking. Worth to compare xiaomi extensive product offering and apple. Even Amazon and Google trying to be more inventive.
    - ivanbozic 1y ago
      Putting aside its success, wouldn't you consider the Apple Vision Pro as something pretty interesting from a hardware perspective?
      - dagmx 1y ago
- dreamcompiler 1y ago
  But it won't cost you your job. Investing in a new strategy that fails might do so.
mentos 1y ago
Heavily paraphrasing but I believe I remember Ed Catmul saying in his Pixar book having slogans like this are dangerous because you just say the thing and don’t actually do it.
hn_throwaway_99 1y ago
> This is what happens when the MBAs and the bean counters take over. They cut the fat, then they slice right through the muscle and bone. Agree with the first sentence, strongly disagree with the second. Intel's problems over the past 15 or so years certainly wasn't that they had cut away all the "fat" and then into the "muscle and bone". It was they had gotten too fat and directionless. Indeed, one of the quotes from the letter regarding their foundry business is that they invested in the wrong things: "Over the past several years, the company invested too much, too soon – without adequate demand. In the process, our factory footprint became needlessly fragmented and underutilized. We must correct our course." If they had ruthlessly prioritized before (which may have included getting rid of ill-fated initiatives earlier) they would most likely be in a better position today.
BeetleB 1y ago
> This is what happens when the MBAs and the bean counters take over. This is a very tiring narrative. People keep complaining about Paul Ottelini missing the iPhone, but his performance at Intel was better than the next 3 CEOs, 2 of which were engineers with roots at Intel.
- terminalbraid 1y ago
  It is tiring. It is also the correct description of reality and horrifically pervasive, which is why it is tiring.
  - BeetleB 1y ago
    When Intel's decline can be clearly linked to engineer CEOs, it's not correct.
alecco 1y ago
> This is what happens when the MBAs and the bean counters take over. Google CEO is a McKinsey guy.
- ddddang 1y ago
  [dead]

ethbr1 1y ago

> They cut the fat, then they slice right through the muscle and bone. The issues with MBAs and bean counters are that they rarely have intuition about which is which, and only investing in areas a company is already successful in is rarely a winning long term strategy.

xadhominemx 1y ago
The issue with Intel is certainly not the MBAs, although they are numerous. The issue is that engineering leadership failed to execute on the process technology roadmap.
- pointyfence 1y ago
  I'm with you. For some reason, the hardware / tech crowd insist that evil finance people or evil MBAs killed Intel. It's such lazy thinking. But if you look at the past CEOs, Intel had Krzanich (fab guy), Swan (CFO guy who didn't even want the job but they couldn't find anyone else), and Gelsinger (design guy and Grove disciple) in 11 years. I'll even throw in Jim Keller, not a CEO but still The Chip God, who left in frustration after two years. What's the one common problem that all of them had despite all their different backgrounds? Getting relevant nodes to market and scaling them up. Their foundry efforts (v1 and v2) have been disastrous. The CEOs or MBAs perhaps were a friction, but they aren't the root cause. Technology Development has been the center of power that the fabs and products revolved around for decades.
  - xadhominemx 1y ago
    I blame Bill and Sohail, principally. I think they essentially orchestrated a coverup of TD’s growing problems in the era of PSO and BK should have known better but was out to lunch.
wpm 1y ago
It was put best by Steve Jobs: “John [Sculley] came from PepsiCo, and they, at most, would change their product once every 10 years. To them, a new product was, like, a new-size bottle, right? So if you were a product person, you couldn’t change the course of that company very much. So who influenced the success of PepsiCo? The sales and marketing people. Therefore, they were the ones that got promoted, and therefore, they were the ones that ran the company. Well, for PepsiCo, that might have been okay. But it turns out, the same thing can happen in technology companies that get monopolies. Like, oh, IBM and Xerox. If you were a product person at IBM or Xerox…So you make a better copier or a better computer. So what? When you have a monopoly market share, the company is not any more successful. So the people that can make the company more successful are sales and marketing people, and they end up running the companies. And the product people get driven out of the decision-making forums. And the companies forget what it means to make great products. The product sensibility and the product genius that brought them to that monopolistic position gets rotted out by people running these companies who have no conception of a good product versus a bad product. They have no conception of the craftsmanship that’s required to take a good idea and turn it into a good product. And they really have no feeling in their hearts usually about wanting to really help the customers.” I’m watching this happen at my current company. It’s tragic, and so obvious.
- pzo 1y ago
  It's probably happening to ape right now as well. They haven't released interesting new hardware product like in more than 5 years. Apple vision is interesting but market validated not worth the money they asking. Worth to compare xiaomi extensive product offering and apple. Even Amazon and Google trying to be more inventive.
  - ivanbozic 1y ago
    Putting aside its success, wouldn't you consider the Apple Vision Pro as something pretty interesting from a hardware perspective?
    - dagmx 1y ago
dreamcompiler 1y ago
But it won't cost you your job. Investing in a new strategy that fails might do so.

mentos 1y ago

Heavily paraphrasing but I believe I remember Ed Catmul saying in his Pixar book having slogans like this are dangerous because you just say the thing and don’t actually do it.

hn_throwaway_99 1y ago

> This is what happens when the MBAs and the bean counters take over. They cut the fat, then they slice right through the muscle and bone. Agree with the first sentence, strongly disagree with the second. Intel's problems over the past 15 or so years certainly wasn't that they had cut away all the "fat" and then into the "muscle and bone". It was they had gotten too fat and directionless. Indeed, one of the quotes from the letter regarding their foundry business is that they invested in the wrong things: "Over the past several years, the company invested too much, too soon – without adequate demand. In the process, our factory footprint became needlessly fragmented and underutilized. We must correct our course." If they had ruthlessly prioritized before (which may have included getting rid of ill-fated initiatives earlier) they would most likely be in a better position today.

BeetleB 1y ago

> This is what happens when the MBAs and the bean counters take over. This is a very tiring narrative. People keep complaining about Paul Ottelini missing the iPhone, but his performance at Intel was better than the next 3 CEOs, 2 of which were engineers with roots at Intel.

terminalbraid 1y ago
It is tiring. It is also the correct description of reality and horrifically pervasive, which is why it is tiring.
- BeetleB 1y ago
  When Intel's decline can be clearly linked to engineer CEOs, it's not correct.

alecco 1y ago

> This is what happens when the MBAs and the bean counters take over. Google CEO is a McKinsey guy.

ddddang 1y ago
[dead]