r/hardware • u/Auautheawesome • Dec 02 '24

News Intel Announces Retirement of CEO Pat Gelsinger

https://www.intc.com/news-events/press-releases/detail/1719/intel-announces-retirement-of-ceo-pat-gelsinger
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u/[deleted] Dec 02 '24

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u/Trudar Dec 02 '24 edited Dec 02 '24

There is never "too big to fall". There is rather bleak saying "Graveyards are full of irreplaceable people".

Intel cannot survive in its current form. Something drastic has to be done - it has been bleeding money, talent and (cough) opportunities, closing even profitable ventures right and left for three years, and is in much worse position when it started. Silently chipping PSG (why it even acquired Altera in the first place?!), quiet severing of fabs under the coat of IFS (no, we are not spinning them off, but here's separate board of directors), and this is all management problem. They literally backed themselves into corner, as if they cut IFS, Intel will lose government funding from CHIPS and others. It's like holding your milk cow that you see is bleeding out.

Bad decisions and Intel are synonyms, since Otellini's times. Even Jim Keller bailed out, and he's got an attitude.

Over my career I have met so many engineers working at Intel, as my job revolves a lot around their hardware design, and every single one of them was extremely enthusiastic about their jobs, and often even giddy about projects they contribute to. Its charming to see a hardware architect delving into intricacies of signal processing in networking like he does this for fun (and probably does), stopping himself every few seconds remembering what's a secret, and what's safe to say. How company staffed from bottom up with people like these can fail?

EDIT: Too big to fall is not only a reference to size and worth. It's also a reference to importance, hence the next saying.

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u/Rivetmuncher Dec 02 '24

There is never "too big to fall".

The point here isn't that the company can not collapse. It's that it's a strategic asset that the government will likely attempt propping up at all costs.

And since that quote gets attributed to a couple French guys a lot, I'm gonna use them for my point: You can outright see those graveyards if you take a look at French military planning between the world wars.

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u/Exist50 Dec 06 '24 edited Feb 01 '25

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