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

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.

Comments

Damn.

[Penguinisto]

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...