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Intel CEO Tells Employees: 'We Are Going To Take More Risks' (cnbc.com)
Intel CEO Brian Krzanich told employees on Tuesday that the company will take more risks going forward and he said change will be the "new normal." From a report: In an internal memo that was sent to CNBC, Krzanich acknowledged "innovation" inside Intel's client computing business -- its biggest segment -- but said the biggest opportunities are in the company's growth areas like connected devices, artificial intelligence and autonomous driving. "It's almost impossible to perfectly predict the future, but if there's one thing about the future I am 100 percent sure of, it is the role of data," Krzanich wrote. "Anything that produces data, anything that requires a lot of computing, the vision is, we're there." The memo also underscores the dramatic change in the nature of Intel's business as it approaches its 50th anniversary in July 2018. "We're just inches away from being a 50/50 company, meaning that half our revenue comes from the PC and half from new growth markets," Krzanich wrote.
Intel is a de facto monopoly. Yes, there's AMD and ARM is starting to gain a foothold, but x86 basically rules the industry for now. It sounds like the CEO is trying to figure out what to do about it. And when CEOs figure things out, the reality is that management consultants tell them what to do.
I've seen it happen a bunch of times. Management consulting firms are basically charging millions for a "digital transformation starter pack" for any company whose deployment processes aren't sufficiently DevOps-y. In Intel's case, I'm sure they're basically telling them to start acting like a startup, move fast and break things, etc. The MO is the same everywhere -- the uber-shark sales team sells the CEO the starter pack, a 25 year old with a fresh Ivy League MBA is put on a plane to deliver some PowerPoints, and a team in India is sent all the "work."
I'm sure Intel has its share of bloat, and there probably are a lot of people hiding out in nice safe positions. I know a bunch of people who work for HP (now HPE) who say that the ratio of useless to useful employees is still like 3:1, even after all the mass-firings. But one thing I worry about is that in the rush to be more agile, break things, etc. they're going to fire everyone who knows the fundamentals. After all, to look like a startup, your employees need to be under 30, wearing T-shirts and board shorts, and have product stickers all over their MacBook Pro lids. Any of those stuffy old electrical engineers who make things actually happen are overpaid and should be fired, amirite? :-)