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Pre-Retirement Interview With Intel CEO Barrett
kevcol writes "The San Francisco Chronicle has an excellent interview with Intel's CEO Craig Barrett who retires next year. In it, he is asked about topics ranging from labor distribution (oh I'm sorry- outsourcing), the Chinese market, the perils and promise of expanding operations in the Middle East, the state of K-12 schools in the U.S. and declining numbers of home-grown engineers, and more. Notably absent are any questions of AMD. Notice how he likes to pick on sensationalist press by prepending some comments with 'you in the media...'. Anyway, good interview."
For the uninformed, I note that Intel grades its employees on a bell curve each quarter. Any employee who falls in the bottom 25% for two consecutive quarters "qualifies" to be fired. During an economic recession, the employee is automatically fired. When there is a labor shortage, the employee is given a stern warning.
My information comes from a managing director at Intel.
I encountered this jaw-dropper from the interview:
"How much does the United States invest annually in basic R&D in physical sciences? About $5 billion."
Huh? Anyone know any different? Or is this A-1 confirmable fact? I call shenanigans, so I will go look...
google found me this reference back to 2002, where the figure is stated to be 100 billion.
Is this dude talking out his nether regions, using his "exalted" CEO royal intellectual poohbah position going up against a lowly journalist, just to buffalo him? Or d'ya think he believes his 5 billion figure?
Maybe it's a good idea he's being forced to retire..... Or maybe something terrible happened between 2002 and now, just don't know, but 5 billion just seemed incredibly low ball. I mean, that seems the buidget for maybe just one firm, like IBM perhaps. Or is this apples/oranges? What is considered "hard" science research?
And his views on outsourcing and what it means job wise for US middle class folks... popuh leeze, here's a guy talking about his multiple homes, his 12,000 acre + sized "ranch", his private corporate airline, etc, and he's qualified to *relate* to joe worker, even if joe worker is an engineer?
Sounds like these millionaire politicians who "feel your pain" when they are talking it up at some diner for the TV cameras. Just "regular guys", aw shucks and stuff...
Joe sixpack white collar with a calculator and a PC loses his job to some guy who has to come up with 35$ (whatever, low ball for example) a month rent. Uh huh, he's supposed to "compete" wage wise with that inside the US. uh huh. Yep, that's gonna be just *spiffy* for the economy.
We got rid of buggywhip jobs when most folks switched from carriages and horses. What we are getting rid of now are *not* buggywhip jobs. That's the big difference between what happened with the industrial revolution and this scam they push called "globalization". I certainly didn't see Mr. Barret outsourcing HIS job for 1/2 price or less so his corporation could save money and make profits for the investors. And funny, I don't see any news reports of any other CEOs doing that either. Why is that? Oh ya, THEY like THEIR jobs, don't they?
Big famous rich dudes talking up globalization is an example of "do as we say, not as we do".
Hypocrites
this is a myth, promoted by the faceintel site (run by a disgruntled former employee).
There is no requirement to fit a bell curve. There is a guideline that says how many should fit into the upper and lower reaches of expectations, given a large enough sample. But I know of many instances of exactly what you describe (a small group of excellent people) where the guideline is ignored for the obvious reasons.
Ken Hamidi is a crank. He got fired years ago by Intel, and has been on a tirade against them ever since. I've heard that even his attorney has told him that he needs serious help. There are many things wrong with Intel, but Hamidi doesn't really hit them on the head.