I am amazed -- stunned -- how many people here seem to think that Gelsinger was the right person for the job, but wronged by the people who pre-dated him (BK?!) or the CHIPS act (?!) or other conditions somehow out of his control.
Gelsinger was -- emphatically -- the wrong person for the job: someone who had been at Intel during its glory days and who obviously believed in his heart that he -- and he alone! -- could return the company to its past. That people fed into this messianic complex by viewing him as "the return of the engineer" was further problematic. To be clear: when Gelsinger arrived in 2021, the company was in deep crisis. It needed a leader who could restore it to technical leadership, but could do so by making some tough changes (namely, the immediate elimination of the dividend and a very significant reduction in head count). In contrast, what Gelsinger did was the worst of all paths: allowed for a dividend to be paid out for far (FAR!) too long and never got into into really cutting the middle management undergrowth. Worst of all, things that WERE innovative at Intel (e.g., Tofino) were sloppily killed, destroying the trust that Intel desperately needs if it is to survive.
No one should count Intel out (AMD's resurrection shows what's possible here!), but Intel under Gelsinger was an unmitigated disaster -- and a predictable one.
I don't think you're wrong but the overarching structure of the chip business is very different from times gone by. It's not even clear what "technical leadership" should mean. When Intel was the leading edge volume leader just on their own processor line, that gave them a scale advantage they no longer have and that won't come back. They built a culture and organization around thick margins and manufacturing leadership, what we're seeing now looks like everyone from investors to employees searching for anyone who will tell them a happy story of a return to at least the margins part. Without a cohesive version of what the next iteration of a healthy Intel should look like all the cost cutting in the world won't save them.
Interestingly, people were bullish about Gelsinger at VMware too. Many still talk about the glory days with him at the helm despite decisions that IMO significantly harmed the company
I find stories about the opposite. How it was very good for the VMware company, so good that nobody ousted him, but he left for a bigger company instead.
I agree. I don't see him having achieved anything particularly noteworthy over his tenure.
I'm not sure where Intel needs to go from here - ultimately lots of problems are solved if they can just design a solid CPU (or GPU) and make enough of them to meet demand. Their problems recently are just down to them being incapable of doing so. If their fab node pans out that's another critical factor.
Intel still has tons of potential. They're by no means uncompetitive with AMD, really. The fabs are a millstone right now, the entire reason they as cheap as they are until they can start printing money with them. It does feel like they don't have any magic, though, no big moonshots or cool projects left since they basically killed all of them :(.
"On May 2, 2013, Executive Vice President and COO Brian Krzanich was elected as Intel's sixth CEO [...]"
The next paragraph is ominous ...
'As of May 2013, Intel's board of directors consists of Andy Bryant, John Donahoe, Frank Yeary, Ambassador Charlene Barshefsky, Susan Decker, Reed Hundt, Paul Otellini, James Plummer, David Pottruck, and David Yoffie and Creative director will.i.am. The board was described by former Financial Times journalist Tom Foremski as "an exemplary example of corporate governance of the highest order" and received a rating of ten from GovernanceMetrics International, a form of recognition that has only been awarded to twenty-one other corporate boards worldwide.'
I definitely have some issues with BK, but it's more that there is another entire CEO between BK and Gelsinger (Bob Swan!) -- and I think it's strange to blame BK more than Swan?
Yeah but it was the return to the wrong engineer. While Pat allegedly architecting i486 is major respect, it was ultimately an iteration of i386 which is where the alpha is at. Guy who architected i386 (John Crawford) is too old. So that leaves Intel Core which was architected by Uri Frank. Now get this. Two weeks after Pat Gelsinger is appointed CEO of Intel in February 2021, Uri Frank announces he's going to be joining Google to lead the development of their cloud chips. That guy is probably Intel's natural leader. So it'd be interesting to know if there's more to this story.
Gelsinger was -- emphatically -- the wrong person for the job: someone who had been at Intel during its glory days and who obviously believed in his heart that he -- and he alone! -- could return the company to its past. That people fed into this messianic complex by viewing him as "the return of the engineer" was further problematic. To be clear: when Gelsinger arrived in 2021, the company was in deep crisis. It needed a leader who could restore it to technical leadership, but could do so by making some tough changes (namely, the immediate elimination of the dividend and a very significant reduction in head count). In contrast, what Gelsinger did was the worst of all paths: allowed for a dividend to be paid out for far (FAR!) too long and never got into into really cutting the middle management undergrowth. Worst of all, things that WERE innovative at Intel (e.g., Tofino) were sloppily killed, destroying the trust that Intel desperately needs if it is to survive.
No one should count Intel out (AMD's resurrection shows what's possible here!), but Intel under Gelsinger was an unmitigated disaster -- and a predictable one.