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.

Comments

And the employers responded:

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Who is the "we" you are talking about Kemo Sabe?

Re: And the employers responded:

[Type44Q]

Pretty sure he's not talking about Kemo Sabe...

Re:And the employers responded:

[MerlynEmrys67]

Exactly. Back in the way back days... They created a New Business Initiative to create businesses inside the company. Well, any employee that had any sense of entrepreneurship joined an NBI organization... One slow quarter later, NBI was shutdown and all those employees were let go.

Even if you didn't join an NBI organization, any employee with any brains could see what happens...

Re:And the employers responded:

[wyHunter]

Perhaps if employees were not treated like disposable commodities they'd be willing to be less risk averse.

Re:And the employers responded:

[currently_awake]

Take the old Chineese curse "May you live in interesting times", and ask for volunteers. Intel essentially owns the market, they don't need to take risks. If Intel wanted to take risks they wouldn't have killed their home hobyist product line.

Re:And the employers responded:

[davester666]

We are going to risk the future of the company by giving huge bonus to executives, cutting half or more of all employees and demanding that the remaining employees make up the difference.

It is still undecided if the remaining employees get a 10 or 20% pay cut.

Translated and annotated corportate speak.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Intel CEO Tells Employees: 'We Are Going To Take More Risks'

Means:

Employees and the shareholders are going to take more risks. If the bet pays off all the stock options and the incentive pay will trigger and champagne corks will fly in the executive suites. If the bet blows up, they will shrug their shoulders and say, "Well, at least we tried. OK then, let us find some other company".

Re:Translated and annotated corportate speak.

[K. S. Kyosuke]

If the bet pays off all the stock options and the incentive pay will trigger and champagne corks will fly in the executive suites.

Didn't he just preemptively sell his stock yesterday?

Re:Translated and annotated corportate speak.

[ranton]

If the bet pays off all the stock options and the incentive pay will trigger and champagne corks will fly in the executive suites.

Didn't he just preemptively sell his stock yesterday?

Yes, Krzanich sold off the maximum amount of stock he could while still following Intel's corporate bylaws, which was about half of his stock. Essentially he now has the minimum skin in the game possible for an Intel CEO. It is the most prominent vote of no confidence that an executive can show towards his company.

Re:Translated and annotated corportate speak.

[Anonymous Coward]

That, and/or he just wants to get paid before the market falls. We're due for a bad bear market pretty soon.

Re:Translated and annotated corportate speak.

[JaredOfEuropa]

No surprise. Smart execs take more risks going backwards.

Re:Translated and annotated corportate speak.

[Anonymous Coward]

You know that there is a growing amount of evidence that suggests that performance-based compensation for executives leads to *worse* outcomes for companies over the long term, not better, right?

Jensen's agency theory of business was stupid when he spouted it from the lofty halls of Harvard in the mid-70's and it's still wrong today.

Re:Translated and annotated corportate speak.

[bluegutang]

The other side of the argument is that the best way to diversify your investments is to not own your employer's stock. Because when that stock goes down, you are likely to get fired, so you have lost both paycheck and job.

Re:Translated and annotated corportate speak.

[edtice1559]

This is true for ordinary people. For C-level, they get golden parachutes worth more than most people's lifetime earnings so they don't need this diversification. For non C-level, yeah, you can be in a real bind if too much of your wealth is in company stock.

Re:Translated and annotated corportate speak.

[ranton]

The other side of the argument is that the best way to diversify your investments is to not own your employer's stock. Because when that stock goes down, you are likely to get fired, so you have lost both paycheck and job.

That is very true advice for nearly any employee, but a CEO is expected to increase a company's value. If the CEO isn't confident enough to risk his own money, how can he expect others to trust his leadership?

Krzanich has sold a significant amount of his stock on regular intervals, but he has been increasing his total shares held by about 100,000 per year for the last two years. This shows an increasing willingness to risk his own money because of his faith in the company he is leading. Now he is reducing his shares held by half. He either became far less risk adverse overnight or he has far less confidence in the stock's ability to climb.

Re:Translated and annotated corportate speak.

[ranton]

Pretty sure his compensation plan includes lots of stock options which will be only worth something if their stock price goes up. So there will still be tons of incentive to drive Intel's business, no worries about that.

Him selling his stock doesn't mean he doesn't have incentive, it just means he doesn't have faith in the company's success. This behavior doesn't indicate he will stop trying, just that he doesn't believe he will be successful (or at least less sure than he was earlier this year).

Re:Translated and annotated corportate speak.

[ranton]

You know that there is a growing amount of evidence that suggests that performance-based compensation for executives leads to *worse* outcomes for companies over the long term, not better, right?

Jensen's agency theory of business was stupid when he spouted it from the lofty halls of Harvard in the mid-70's and it's still wrong today.

The CEO selling his stock is not a good indicator that he will be less motivated, because he still has $11 million in stock and he has stock options worth even more. It is only an indicator of his trust in the company's future success.

Re:Translated and annotated corportate speak.

[Locutus]

let's see, x86 is bloated and inefficient but Intel was always the manufacturing process leader so they could always go better, faster, cheaper by going to the next smaller chip manufacturing process. But now physics is getting in the way and slowing down the big leaps in process improvements and that x86 bloat has made the chips ineffective in battery powered devices which happen to be the majority of sales for the last many years. We also have tablets and phones and even chromebooks outpacing sales of Windows, the platform requiring x86.

Tough times for Intel to try and keep riding that ship towards the bottom and time to see what they can build out of their massive brainpower and spark a new industry or two. Crazy to think that about 20 years ago they owned the dominant ARM chip manufacturer/design, StrongARM, and screwed it up with bad cache designs and then sold off the business. Intel CPUs are even poorly useful in NN and most are using NVidia GPUs to crunch NNs.

So the CEO could believe there is a future if they find and do the right things but hey, he's not a dummy and knowns it's a risk which we doesn't want to place all his wealth into that basket. Others would be smart to do the same.

LoB

Re: Translated and annotated corportate speak.

[Reverend Green]

Of course it's legal. Workers have no rights, don't you know? It's DUH LAW!

Re: Translated and annotated corportate speak.

[ranton]

Intel stock price was only this high back in early Nov and has not reached $47 for a long time before that. This week was a good time to sell.

Thinking it is a good time to sell a stock is the same thing as thinking the stock won't keep up with the market for the foreseeable future. If you think the stock will beat the market, then it wouldn't be a good time to sell. If the CEO thinks the stock is at a good time to sell, it is because he doesn't foresee the stock doing much better in the future.

I just finally upgraded my CPU

[rsilvergun]

This year. To a i5-7500. And that's plenty. They're gonna have to do something if they want to get me spending $300 on a CPU like I did back in the day.

Re:I just finally upgraded my CPU

[Anonymous Coward]

Congratulations! You now on a PC, and an additional Minix control PC to make sure that your data is safely monitored!

Re:OT: Have you noticed Slashdot deleting comments

[lucasnate1]

I think I saw the number of comments in the bitcoin article going down from 50 to 40. Wtf?

Then this ISN'T

[p4nther2004]

Then this ISN'T we're going to take more risks.

This is....we're screwed...and I"m going to claim we "took risks" when it hits the fan.

Re:Then this ISN'T

[networkBoy]

yup.
Also: "Change will be the new normal" Bwahahahahaha
The running tagline inside Intel is: "The only constant is change"

As to how this happened?
"We want to remember in this time to treat our fellow employees who are leaving with dignity and respect". Followed by the most disrespectful treatment of mass layoff employees ever.
We were (most, I had a mole in HR warn me a week ahead) told nothing about who was up for termination, and were tagged by surprise meetings with our manager and HR, scheduled a couple hours before the meeting time (Intel standard is 24 hr advance scheduling of meetings). In that meeting you had your manager and an HR drone. There was paperwork to sign, all the basic shit. After the meeting was done you were *NOT* allowed to go back to your desk to gather anything personal, you were *NOT* allowed to say by to your co-workers, some of whom were more family than your biological family, you were *NOT* allowed to send the traditional "It's been a pleasure" email. You *WERE* frog marched out of the building under the eye of security.
Hey BK you asshole: that is *NOT* dignity and respect.
Because I understand security, I understand not wanting the employee to have unfettered access after being informed they're terminated, but for fucks sake, let them get their personal effects and say goodbye to their team.

From what I understand morale has not recovered and it's been over 18 months now. Normally morale recovers after 6 months or so. The company lost something in the last layoffs and the heartwood of the tree is dying.

Re:Then this ISN'T

[Anonymous Coward]

As a green badge last time I didn't even get any notice other than a phone call at 9:30 at night frantically trying to get a hold of me to tell me not to come in the next day. I had to call my now ex-coworkers and arrange for one of them to drop my stuff off after work.

Re:Then this ISN'T

[sconeu]

I never understood the "You can't pick up your personal effects" thing.

Sounds like a lawsuit to me. For example, I have several thousand dollars worth of books on my work bookshelf (yes, I use them, too), not to mention pictures, minor trinkets, etc...

Re:Then this ISN'T

[networkBoy]

Your manager/security would go to your cube and collect your items.
Again the logic is:
Ex Employee may steal company confidential documents.

But here's the thing, we're all professionals, and by treating us like dogs executive management undermined the "Dignity and respect" schick so badly that morale was effectively taken out behind the chemical shed and shot.

An *EASY* way to have handled it:
Okay networkboy, is there anything you have at your desk you need, did you want to say bye to anyone? Manager will walk back with you and make sure you get your stuff.

The most insulting part? If you tried leaving with a *SINGLE GOD DAMNED BOX* security informed you that you could not take the box.
"Okay, let me just dump this in my trunk"
-"I'm sorry we can't let you leave the building with the box"

W. T. F. over?!?

Re:Then this ISN'T

[sconeu]

Sorry, I thought I had said, "clean out desk with security there".

Re:Then this ISN'T

[sconeu]

Again, if they don't let me take my books, they'll find themselves on the end of a suit (small claims, so they can't send a lawyer) for several thousand dollars.

Re:Then this ISN'T

[networkBoy]

I had that issue w/ Intel. My Applied Crypto 2nd ed book is still there somewhere. Has my name on it, so I have (very little after 18 months) hope that someone who knows me will see it and get it back to me someday.
The value of that one book is vastly lower than the time cost to file a claim, so... ah well.

Re:Then this ISN'T

[sconeu]

As I said, I have an entire bookshelf, all with my name on them (the books that the company provided, or that I bought with company money do NOT have my name on them).

Given the quantity of books there's about $3000 to $4000 worth there. That's worth launching a small claims suit over.

Re:Then this ISN'T

[networkBoy]

absolutely!

My mistake was loaning mine out to a co-worker, forgetting which one, then getting terminated. :P

Re:Then this ISN'T

[sconeu]

That'll do it. :(

Re:What a wonderful idea!

[DontBeAMoran]

Maybe he's talking about the risk of integrating AMD GPUs inside their Intel CPUs.

Out of necessity.

[Gravis Zero]

AMD has out classed Intel performance and IME is about to blow up in their faces so they need to find a way to embed themselves in a market that is unable to reject them. When the past decade of Intel processors suddenly become an unacceptable risk to businesses they are going to need a life raft.

Unfortunately (for them), Intel overprices all their parts, is very closed off (NDAs out the ass) and refuses to abandon x86 which why they will never be able to compete with ARM for embedded devices. The day they start popping out $2 chips without a power hungry ISA and provide datasheets will be the day that hell freezes over.

ideas!!

[Joe_Dragon]

All LGA 2066 class cpus have full PCI-E lanes like AMD
No raid keys like AMD
More pci-e on desktop CPU's Like AMD
  high-end desktop cpus can use ECC like AMD

Sounds like someone got a visit from consultants

[ErichTheRed]

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? :-)

Oh oh...

[Waffle Iron]

When Intel takes "risks", it tends to come up with things like the iAPX 432, i860, Itanium, and the 80286 incarnation of protected mode. This probably won't end well.

I don't want you there

[Anonymous Coward]

Keep your spying "management engines" to yourself.
I don't want them in the devices I use and many people share that opinion.
People that will ultimately decide where you will be -- not your "vision".

Re:I don't want you there

[currently_awake]

I expect the NSA paid well for it. If they planned on it being useful to corporations they would fully document it and make it open so others could build upon it.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:We are going to take more risks

[MerlynEmrys67]

No, you are required to submit bags for inspection on LEAVING the office.
They are looking for things leaving the secured office that aren't supposed to (both physical and digital). I was stopped once taking a bunch of my CDs out (think the 90s) and had to show that they weren't CD-R but actual music CDs

CEOs Talk Rubbish

[youngone]

It's the time of year when CEO's (and other PHB's) are expected to give some sort of "inspirational" message to the serfs, so the result is often this sort of unbelievable nonsense.
Intel is probably staffed by a lot of very clever people who won't be taken in by this at all.
I work for a huge multinational too, and our CEO told us how much he values our contribution, which we all thought was hilarious.

Risks

[JThundley]

Will they be taking business risks or just more risks with my security?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Huh?

[rsilvergun]

AMD currently owns the video game console market and Arm owns phones & tablets. That leaves Intel with a monopoly over the shrinking PC market. Today at work I had to use an intranet Web App that didn't work in IE, only Chrome. Apple is moving to get away from Intel too. If they don't do something they're going to be about as relevant as Motorola & MOS Technologies are: Still around in some industrial apps but largely the domain of a few hard core hobbyists.

Intel still beats AMD

[rsilvergun]

on single threaded performance, which for workstations is still what matters. And they're competitive on multi-thread performance. They overpriced their parts because AMD has only been competitive since Ryzen launched. Before that the 8350 couldn't touch a mid range i5 let alone an i7 and had twice the power draw.

I just upgraded and went with Intel. Yes, the Intel CPU cost a little more (got an i5-7500 for $150 shipped) but I also paired it with a solid mobo for $70. I can't do that on AMD. Buy a cheap AMD board and you'll regret it for a variety of reasons. Right now the cost savings on AMD gets eaten up buying a nicer mobo...