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Former Intel CEO Paul Otellini Dies At 66 (engadget.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the rest-in-peace dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Engadget: Paul Otellini, Intel's previous CEO, died in his sleep on Monday, the company announced this morning. He was 66. Otellini served as Intel's fifth chief executive from 2005 through 2013, and leaves behind a legacy of the company's dominance in x86 processors. Notably, he also worked with Apple as it moved away from PowerPC chips and adopted Intel's wares. After retiring in 2013, Otellini revealed one major regret during his tenure: not working hard enough to get Intel's chips in the iPhone. Consequently, Intel mostly missed on the smartphone revolution.

Otellini joined Intel in 1974 and served various roles throughout his career, including chief operating officer from 2003 to 2005. He would go on to spend almost 40 years at the company. He was an intriguing choice as CEO, since he was the company's first non-engineer to hold that role.

4 of 48 comments (clear)

  1. Damn. by Penguinisto · · Score: 5, Interesting

    No shit... that blows.

    Dude was CEO when I worked there. He was a pretty decent guy (at least to the employees. To AMD, not so much.) I will say that I didn't like the idea of having R&D projects competing not only for resources, but manpower. If your project died (like Digital Home Group, which I was in), you had to go into the 'pool' until you could find another project to work for (and if you didn't by the third month, you were unemployed.) There were some groups that were guaranteed to live forever (Server Group, anyone?), but most had to fight like hell to remain relevant, remain visible to management, and survive. While I understand how it creates better products (in a way) and culls dead-end ones, it led to more than a bit of instability among the R&D half of the company...

    --
    Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
    1. Re:Damn. by networkBoy · · Score: 4, Interesting

      ^^THIS

      I was with a chipset firmware team that was duplicated in the states and in Israel. Unfortunately the culture clash and competition clash led to some very abusive practices. I stood up against management about this, and was railroaded out the door with my chin up high, and like Milton's red stapler I took my lab chair with me! (Makes a kick-ass guitar stool; had direct mgr blessing and HR droid's approval).

      Later the same year my entire former team was sent into the redeployment pool and all operations moved to the JER site.
      After 17 years I met my end there, never to be employed by them again.
      Barret was a vastly better CEO than Otellini, but BK makes both of the other two look like saints.

      --
      whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
  2. Re:He will be missed. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The best CEO since I have been with the company. He deserved so much more time to enjoy his retirement...

    Less of a fan since I was there and saw first hand how he screwed up the wireless business with a string of inept decisions and poor management appointments. The view from the CPU side may have been different.

  3. Re:He will be missed. by zaft · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Agreed. I always liked him, though not pushing into mobile was a grievous mistake. Still, he was the CEO for most of my time at Intel (he left about a year before I did) and it looked like things were going to get nastier under BK (and indeed they have).