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Intel's Interim CEO Bob Swan Gets the Job Permanently (venturebeat.com)
Intel has named interim CEO Robert Swan to the role on a permanent basis on Thursday while also naming a new interim chief financial officer. From a report: [Former CEO] Krzanich resigned last June under somewhat peculiar circumstances, after he was found to have engaged in a "consensual relationship" with an employee a while back. The relationship, which only came to light much later, violated an internal "non-fraternization policy" that applies to all senior managers. Swan began his career at General Electric and spent nine years as chief financial officer (CFO) of eBay. He later joined investment firm General Atlantic, before leaving to become Intel's CFO in 2016 -- a role he has continued to hold while serving as interim CEO.
Intel Inside
Often the Best CEO for the companies are not actively involved in product design. (The Steve Jobs model is more the exception then the reality).
The finance guys as CEO is often a better choice, because decisions will be based on numbers and less from Ego, or personal interest of the product at hand.
Too often the CEO of tech companies gets too involved in the technology, pushing bad decisions, because with the power granted to CEO, there will not be too many people who will say that is a dumb idea.
However as Chief Executive Officer, their role is to make sure the other Executives are doing their jobs, and a numbers guy can push a more quantifiable approach to show what is happening with each Executives branch of control.
So if the CFO says they should cancel a popular product that the COO doesn't. If he would look at the numbers, from a financial side, and also on a sales side he may be able to make a better decision. Then some other CEO's who just use their gut. This product while more expensive to make, allows for up sales to more profitable item. Or this item is only profitable because it is cheap to the customer, and they will make more money if they cancel that product, and put the resources into making something more profitable.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Buy High and sell low. Sounds good when you know the outcome. However when do you know if it is a just a fad, or a trend. sometimes a fad looks like a trend, and people buy too late.
R&D if done correctly will also run into dead ends. Science and Research doesn't always give you the outcome you want.
Putting capital in orthogonal market trends, we are back trying to figure if it is just a fad or a real trend.
Selling profitable divisions. This is a complex issue, if you want to grow your company, by selling off units who have lower margins of profit may allow you to put the rest of your resources into areas that can allow faster growth.
Getting Rid of key talent. Sometime key talent is that guy who is really good at the one thing. You are not planning on doing that one thing.
We can read case studies on how a company fails, then you can read a case study on how a company succeeds, and you find they did the same things.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
The finance guys as CEO is often a better choice, because decisions will be based on numbers and less from Ego, or personal interest of the product at hand.
No. The finance guy as CEO will make boring decisions that will result in stagnation. You need an idea guy who is smart enough to listen to his CFO.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
When you are the market leader, sometime the boring decisions are the better one. There were a lot of companies that went out of business, because they stuck with the high growth CEO, where they rush to the top, and when they get there the CEO freaks out and tosses the baby out with the bathwater. Because things seem stagnate, because there isn't someone else ahead of them to beat. So they go into a new market to fight to the top. This often prevents putting resources into the companies core services, which causes them to die out.
I am not saying your post has no merit, because too careful management could prevent taking necessary risks and too much of the same old same old could cause them to go behind their competition.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
When you are the market leader, sometime the boring decisions are the better one.
Like I said, he has to be smart enough to listen to the CFO. He also has to be smart enough to know when to take a risk. And finally, he has to actually care about the company's future. Most CEOs seem to have none of these qualifications :p
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Specifically Intel is a now high profit company that is losing out in all the new very high growth markets while there is danger of commoditization of their cash cows. For now, explosive growth in the cloud is pumping sales for server CPUs, but as the software industry learns to build complex software to take advantage of distributed computing, the highly profitable new Intel CPUs are offering less value to the customer. Intel is not even the best chipmaker in the world anymore -- they cannot compete for sales of lower power commodity CPUs.
The key here is there is nothing a CEO can do that will show traction and give positive financial over the next 8 quarters. So why would a "numbers guy" do anything but cut costs and avoid risks, so that the executive bonuses are maximized for the next two years? Maybe the shareholders will be happy. For now. But the danger is 3 years from now, everyone will point to the missed opportunities over the last ~8 years that led to stagnating profits with no hope of improvement.
Right. Specifically Intel is a now high profit company that is losing out in all the new very high growth markets while there is danger of commoditization of their cash cows. For now, explosive growth in the cloud is pumping sales for server CPUs, but as the software industry learns to build complex software to take advantage of distributed computing, the highly profitable new Intel CPUs are offering less value to the customer.
The key here is there is nothing a CEO can do that will show traction and give positive financial over the next 8 quarters. So why would a "numbers guy" do anything but cut costs and avoid risks, so that the executive bonuses are maximized for the next two years?
If you have a leader who comes from a financial background, they will tend to lead in that direction. If you have a engineering background you will tend to lead that direction. It's what each knows and you shouldn't blame them. They are who they are, but is this the direction for your technology company?
Intel used to be lead by former engineers or minds of that leaning. They would be wise to get back there.
Get your temp spikes/max TDP down (and start accurately reporting max TDP)
If your K series of CPUs are meant for OCing, dont release a CPU that cant OC due to heat (e.g., 7700K)
Stop moving on to new chipsets so often and misleading the consumer about why (8700K really needs a z370 chipset? really??)
Stay committed to single thread performance
Dont use a goddamn 1000w industrial water cooler in product demonstrations
Solder your heatspreaders, or at least use decent thermal paste
Dont screw up your discrete GPU (tons of opportunity and kudos if you do well here)
When I was at Intel, they were chasing what ever was getting press.
Wii? Let's do video gaming with motion controllers. Until we can't and wander off in another direction.
Set-top boxes, we can dominate! The sales guys were obsessed with "a dollar and a dollar"; getting a cut from both ad revenue -and- silicon.
Car Infotainment? Yeah, we can do that! Except the OEM demo hardware they sent out was crashing inexplicably for months.
The best part with the hardware was that, of all things, the radio section didn't work.
Again, the sales people loved getting sent over to Germany on long all expenses paid visits.
Digital Signage! That's hot! The main goal was to dump old core-duo chips on the market by saying they were made specifically for signage.
Intel has its own jet fleet that runs from OR, to CA, to AZ, several times a day.
They signage guys set up a meeting with the guys up in OR for talk about signage and 3 of them flew to AZ.
Although I warned my boss, an embarrassing meeting took place where the OR guys started talking about digital signing certs, not signage.
That is Intel.
They made -so- much money off of chips that they struggled to burn it up.
There's the Intel Orange County Chopper that sat behind glass in Chandler AZ for years.
Too big to be ridden, with electronics that were hollow props. Nice paint job tho...
My favorite is making will.i.am "Director of Creative Innovation". Made him an "employee" with a badge and everything.
It was insulting to everyone that actually did work there. I've heard nothing about him after the one press conference where he said he used computers once.
The chip guys were top-notch. I shared a lab with the guy bringing up BIOS for the first Atom chip prototype.
The first real thing to run as a standard test, was DOOM.
When you are the market leader, sometime the boring decisions are the better one.
Right, and it's a great way to ensure the the company declines in the long run to make way for better companies with better leaders.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
For now, explosive growth in the cloud is pumping sales for server CPUs
And especially pumping the sales of AMD's Epyc, doubling its share last quarter.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Is this dude any relation to Robert Swan Mueller III, the present special prosecutor and former FBI director?