[HN Gopher] New Intel CEO Making Waves: Rehiring Retired CPU Arc...
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New Intel CEO Making Waves: Rehiring Retired CPU Architects
Author : rbanffy
Score : 444 points
Date : 2021-01-21 13:53 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.anandtech.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.anandtech.com)
| hehehaha wrote:
| It appears INTC is serious about correcting the wrongs and doing
| it right. I'd be worried if I am Lisa Su at AMD.
| RocketSyntax wrote:
| Err. shouldn't the real competitors be viewed as ARM and M1?
| metalliqaz wrote:
| Both. Intel has really found itself in a pickle. After years
| of stagnation, it has serious competition from
|
| * AMD
|
| * NVIDIA+ARM
|
| * and now Apple
|
| Intel will have to hustle for 5 years at least to catch up.
| RocketSyntax wrote:
| Unless the go all in on something like neuromorphic or
| quantum
| xorx wrote:
| Exactly. It would be a bit of a gamble, as it may undercut
| their x86 lines, but as a hedge against the success of
| ARM/M[1,2,...], they may do themselves a favor to attempt a
| project to implement RISC-V.
|
| They don't have much to lose, as AMD is already killing their
| x86 lines anyway.
| phkahler wrote:
| I've been hoping Intel or AMD would try RISC-V. If the ISA
| is inherently more efficient (not saying it is) they should
| be able to prove it by having already optimized so much
| core and cache hardware.
| unanswered wrote:
| And do what, shoot both x86 feet they're standing on? If
| they wanted to optimize technical/engineering success,
| it's absolutely the best move. But to optimize
| shareholder value or anything like it, it's impossible.
| Daho0n wrote:
| They already broke one foot and got shot in the other by
| AMD. Shareholders doesn't like bleeding feet either.
| guicho271828 wrote:
| Note that AMD has an abandoned K12 plan. They still have an
| ARM license AFAIU. And like what Fujitsu did to their SPARC
| to produce A64FX, swapping the frontend may make it possible
| to support an ARM instruction set without much modifications
| to the backend. So if they will, AMD would make an ARM chip
| hehehaha wrote:
| Well AMD should be worried about both Intel and Apple.
| Competition with deep pockets.
| Daho0n wrote:
| If money was the way forward AMD wouldn't be kicking
| Intel's behind. It is more about the right people and the
| right culture. IMO Intel doesn't have either and haven't in
| quote a bit of years. Sure they have very good people but
| that is not worth much if they can't work in the culture
| they are in (which they clearly can't).
| dehrmann wrote:
| ARM: maybe. Intel would be smart to make an ARM CPU. M1:
| probably not. Apple never really knew how to sell servers,
| and having a premium brand means they can't sell low-end
| laptops, so the market for something between a Chromebook,
| iPad mini, and low-end Macbook Air will still be x86 (maybe
| Intel, maybe AMD, whichever's cheapest) until ARM Windows is
| a thing.
|
| ARM in the datacenter should be Intel's main fear.
| makapuf wrote:
| Or opportunity? Maybe they could be good at selling those.
| lallysingh wrote:
| .. not until they get some process people.
| aniskand wrote:
| Makes sense, it's clear brain drain has been a big part of their
| downfall.
| AcerbicZero wrote:
| VMware seemed to make a lot of progress refocusing their business
| under Pat, perhaps he can do something similar for Intel.
| boboche wrote:
| Intel's last tick before joining DEC, MIPS, PowerPC and other
| amazing architectures that sat on their successes and ultimatel
| woke up too late.
|
| I've been through 2 architecture deaths in my life, at least this
| one wont be as painful as I stopped viewing this as a religion
| and more like tools.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| Now if he can convince Jim Keller to come back.
| sradman wrote:
| In my estimation, Intel has four categories in which it is being
| outperformed by key competitors:
|
| 1. TSMC/Samsung - fabrication
|
| 2. AMD/Amazon-Graviton - Cloud Server
|
| 3. Apple-M1/AMD - Laptop
|
| 4. Nvidia/Amazon - Cloud ML/DL Accelerator
|
| Intel has made giant blunders in the past (e.g. Itanium [1], Atom
| [2], WiMAX [3]) but I'm not sure that any of these past
| challenges were equivalent to the current four-front war. I would
| not count Intel out at this point but it will be several years
| before we know if they were able to right the ship.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itanium
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atom_(system_on_a_chip)
|
| [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WiMAX
| nolok wrote:
| You forgot their main market, AMD - desktop x86/windows
|
| But the first point on your list is where their real loss is,
| it's historically the source of their strenght and they've
| never been losing at this one.
| klelatti wrote:
| 5. AMD/TSMC - desktop x86
| tachyonbeam wrote:
| I'm kind of questioning whether it even makes sense for Intel
| to try to compete with Nvidia and AMD when it comes to GPUs or
| deep learning accelerators. They just need to really win in one
| area in a sense, or at least to have a product with a really
| compelling price/performance ratio. Though you could argue
| there's a certain synergy between laptops, desktops and servers
| (people will generally favor running the same architecture they
| develop on).
| sradman wrote:
| I think Intel SIMD (AVX-512) is still best-of-class for
| vector math. Run Length Encoded algorithms in column stores
| like SAP HANA are currently the key use-case (revenue/market
| wise). What I've learned since the release of Apple M1 is
| that ISA extensions for Matrix math, as incorporated in
| Apple's AMX, complement the Vector-centric SIMD ISA and are
| probably a key battle front for ML/DL. A good Vector/Matrix
| SIMD-like ISA should cover many ML/DL use cases currently
| addressed using a discreet accelerator like Apple's Neural
| Engine and Nvidia GPUs.
|
| Amazon's Graviton ARM Neoverse CPUs only implement ARM NEON
| SIMD rather than the newer SVE2. I don't know if ARM SVE2 has
| Matrix math instructions like AMX does. Intel AVX++ might be
| an important alternative to discreet ML/DL accelerators. DL
| Training accelerators appear to be focused on RDMA Over
| Converged Ethernet [1] (RoCE) and I'm assuming that this
| technology is new enough for Intel to gain a foothold.
|
| I don't know if I understand this space well enough but I
| think there are enough truths in this explanations to keep me
| from ruling out Intel.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RDMA_over_Converged_Ethernet
| tachyonbeam wrote:
| I wouldn't rule them out either. AMD survived some very bad
| years. It's not impossible for a company to shrink, trim
| the fat and grow again. However, having known people who
| worked at Intel, it's not just a question of lack of
| innovation, they had some very smart engineers, but it
| seemed like the culture there was very toxic. Lots of
| unhealthy internal competition, bureaucracy, infighting,
| etc. I think that they need to improve their internal
| culture first, in order for the company to make a real
| comeback. If anything, I think their recent losses are a
| serious wake up call. I hope they make the right decisions,
| because the hardware industry needs competition.
| 1-6 wrote:
| Your list is skewing toward Amazon, but point well taken. If
| you include Google and Microsoft, they're all chip-designers as
| well because they can simply license ARM's designs. Imagine if
| Netflix decided to hire chip designers. All that's left is
| fabrication and Intel is exiting that.
| tachyonbeam wrote:
| Netflix runs on AWS, and even if they didn't, I would
| seriously question their management if they decided to hire
| chip designers. There's something to be said about being
| focused and not trying to do everything in-house, or
| specializing where it makes sense to do so.
| mywittyname wrote:
| Yes. Netflix sells content. Any savings they make on the
| tech-stack side is going to need to be shared with the
| companies that they are buying content from.
|
| It makes much more sense for them to focus on making
| content than making ARM chips.
| cbozeman wrote:
| There is no way Intel is going to exit fabrication.
|
| They're using TSMC out of necessity, not desire. Intel's fabs
| are integral not only to their success and profits, but to
| the infrastructure of the United States itself. We simply
| cannot allow all CPU fabrication to be offshored, especially
| when most of it is close to China (Taiwan / TSMC). Samsung is
| too busy pumping out smartphone / tablet CPUs and NVIDIA's
| GPUs, so even _if_ Intel wanted to use them, there 's not
| enough capacity.
|
| Intel is going to have to get their shit together, not just
| for their own sake, but for strategic manufacturing security
| interests of the United States as well.
| mywittyname wrote:
| I think it's important to point out that the US has plenty
| of silicon fabrication plants. They just don't produce the
| cutting edge 3nm chips, instead they focus on the older
| chips that make up the bulk of the market. Silicon chips
| are still the fourth largest American manufacturing export.
|
| Given the expensive involved in bleeding edge manufacturing
| and the comparatively low volumes of sales, the
| consolidation of manufacturing capacity is not really
| surprising.
| volta87 wrote:
| In which category is Intel not being outperformed by
| competitors?
| mhh__ wrote:
| Money. Intel's operating income is about 66 times bigger than
| AMD's for example.
|
| Intel will probably never get a run like the last decade, but
| they have enough market share and money to get themselves
| back on track.
| klelatti wrote:
| But AMD isn't the right comparator:
|
| Q1 2021 Revenue Guidance
|
| Intel $17.5bn - 12% YOY
|
| TSMC $13bn + 20% YOY
| ItsTotallyOn wrote:
| Except he didn't re-hire him. As noted in the article itself, the
| architect was already in negotiations since November. Also, new
| CEO doesn't step in until next month. Clickbait title.
| IanCutress wrote:
| The effect of Gelsinger taking the CEO role pushed a hire that
| was on the fence into accepting the role. It means he's having
| an affect already. That's what the title is meant to convey.
| ar_lan wrote:
| The title does a bad job of this, though, as it's extremely
| ambiguous who is doing the "rehiring." The way it's worded,
| the best assumption is the "New Intel CEO" is doing the
| "rehiring" - but Pat did not do this.
| totalZero wrote:
| Perhaps the headline should state exactly what it was
| attempting to convey, rather than stating something more
| interesting and then requiring the author to attempt a
| clarification of the headline's true meaning in HN comments.
|
| IMO the headline is sensationalist and factually inaccurate.
| Gelsinger hasn't re-hired anyone. He doesn't even take on the
| new role at Intel until approximately three weeks from now.
| alisonkisk wrote:
| That's not what the title says. A title like they would say
| "New CEO attracting retired CPU architects"
| cma wrote:
| > The effect of Gelsinger taking the CEO role pushed a hire
| that was on the fence into accepting the role.
|
| That's what he says and it is probably true. But it could
| also be true that saying so would put him in good graces with
| the new CEO and he would basically be expected by everyone to
| say that's what pushed him over the edge even if it wasn't,
| so him saying so adds little new information.
| ksec wrote:
| I seriously doubt that. He could have just stayed retired.
|
| If the negotiation was all smooth he would have been
| working with Intel by now. Remember he was retired, he
| doesn't need 30 / 60 days notice to anyone apart from
| family.
|
| Intel needed help, but sometimes even money cant move some
| people. They fail to attract any talent, especially those
| who have already worked in Intel and knows their culture.
|
| Having Pat meant finally _shit_ will get done. And for most
| engineers, that is far more important because we all hate
| politics.
| cma wrote:
| The timing of his acceptance adds information and makes
| me lean towards the explanation being true. The statement
| of the explanation adds very little information though.
| klelatti wrote:
| Making waves = 1 individual rejoining (who may have done so
| anyway)
|
| Gelsinger not doing the rehiring
|
| Architects = 1 architect
|
| Three ways in which the headline is misleading.
|
| How about 'New CEO helps recruit retired architect'
| liquidify wrote:
| Wondering if this will really create meaningful change. It would
| be nice to see a refocus on simplification and speed while
| eliminating things that involve taking shortcuts or adding
| backdoors for NSA.
|
| Also, it would be interesting to see significant changes with the
| instruction set.
|
| But I personally doubt Intel will get back on the path to
| greatness any time soon. However, any steps in the right
| direction will bring more competition in the market, which will
| ultimately benefit consumers. So this has to be a win, even if it
| only shows us that Intel is going to keep fighting.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| This is an encouraging move.
|
| My secondhand understanding was that Intel was losing top talent
| due to pressure to pay closer to median industry compensation.
| Top engineers recognized they were underpaid and left the
| company.
|
| I've been part of a similar downhill slide at a smaller company
| in the billion dollar revenue range. To be blunt, once the
| [mediocre] MBAs start realizing that the engineers are getting
| paid more than they are, the pressure to reduce engineering
| compensation is strong. Frankly, there are plenty of engineering
| candidates on the market who are happy with median compensation.
| Many of them are even great engineers and great employees.
|
| However, being a top company in a winner-take-all market requires
| the top engineers. The only way to attract and retain them at
| scale is to offer high compensation. I'm hoping that's part of
| what's happening here.
| trhway wrote:
| >to offer high compensation. I'm hoping that's part of what's
| happening here.
|
| so, the new old guys are brought in at market and higher -
| otherwise how you'd bring them in? - ie. it sounds like at the
| scale of at least 3x+ of the current engineering comp at Intel.
| Lets see how that would sit the the current engineers at Intel.
| I don't think it would result in high collaboration and team
| cohesion.
|
| Also Intel issue seems to be process node, not the
| "architecture" per.se., and one can wonder how several years
| gap may affect one's utility at solving intricate issues of
| current node.
|
| Anyway, fab to fabless is a classic paradigm shift , and Intel
| just fails to grasp it and to adapt.
| avs733 wrote:
| I worked in an Intel Fab for a couple years. I walked out the
| door of Intel one day in 2011 (longer and irrelevant story).
| Within a week I had a job offer in hand from a competitor for
| over 2x the money.
| theflyinghorse wrote:
| > longer and irrelevant story I beg to differ! In the light
| of these news I would be very interested to get a glimps at
| Intel's inner workings
| cbozeman wrote:
| >> I walked out the door of Intel one day in 2011 (longer and
| irrelevant story).
|
| I am extremely interested in this long and irrelevant story.
| avs733 wrote:
| The things I say when I open my mouth...
|
| Graduated with my MS and three internships with Intel into
| what I thought would be my 'rest of life' job. I wanted
| Brian's job, which at that point was the head of the fabs.
| Got less than one month of training and then told 'all
| yours now'. Worked my ass off for like 18 months, made a
| name for myself in the factory, was literally on call 24x7
| by myself for 11 months. Got an annual review were I was
| told 'we had limited budget for bonuses and raise budget,
| and we gave it to XX because he has kids'. Sucked it up,
| told myself I was playing the long game and to just put my
| head down and work. Hacked together software that made
| stuff which never worked work. Worked and worked and
| worked. Lost a marriage over it...who would want to be 25
| and married to someone who works over 100 hours a week and
| gets woken up by a phone call almost every night?
|
| I had been working an issue for months, got no buy in, got
| told it was no big deal/no budget/ignored. The fourth time
| the same thing broke, suddenly it was an emergency. I was
| supposed to leave on vacation that day...a vacation I had
| given 10 months notice on because I had no coverage. Got
| asked to cancel the vacation. I walked out.
|
| I've learned, I'm smarter than that now, I respect myself
| in new ways I wasn't ready to understand. Now when I mentor
| undergraduates I am laser focused on quality of life
| mattering and learning to respect yourself beyond how
| someone else evaluates your work. I still know what my ring
| tone on my on call cell phone there was...and I know that
| it still cause anxiety when I hear it (but not panic
| attacks anymore). The ring tone is in a James Bond movie, I
| don't watch that movie.
| langitbiru wrote:
| Reading all comments grilling MBAs in HN is one of my guilty
| pleasures. I think I need to collect them all and put them in
| one place.
| harha wrote:
| To be honest I don't think they're (MBAs) completely useless,
| I just think they often end up in the wrong position for the
| wrong reasons.
|
| I've had some great market research done by providing
| assignments to MBA students (though when I did my engineering
| MS and we had joint classes I stayed as far away from group
| work with them as I could - different grading gives different
| incentives), I just feel they sometimes might have
| difficulties understanding concepts like opportunity cost,
| probability or non-linear developments.
| jack_riminton wrote:
| Me too. I'm thinking of knocking up a quick site just to dunk
| on MBAs...
| ryandrake wrote:
| Unashamed MBA checking in here! MBAs are the classic punching
| bags for HN. It seems we're willing to bend the "civility"
| rules a bit here in order to have a nice hearty MBA-bash.
| I've seen all sorts of awful generalizations posted here
| about MBAs that would get you flagkilled if made about other
| professions or degrees. Some of us actually have tech/coding
| backgrounds and aren't the stereotypical pointy-headed-
| bosses, and it sucks to get lumped in with them but it's ok--
| we don't take it personally. Try to keep in mind though that
| we aren't all bad!
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| Fully agree. I was referring to a specific case where the
| payscale for people with MBA degrees was lower than the
| payscale for people with undergraduate engineering degrees.
|
| In my experience, there are many great leaders with MBA
| degrees. However, you never hear about their MBA degree
| because they have so many other accomplishments to lead
| with. They are managers who happen to have completed an MBA
| program in the past.
|
| The troublesome people are those who lean on credentialism
| in the hopes that merely having the MBA degree will allow
| them to skip to the head of the compensation structure.
| Anyone who builds their identity around the university they
| attended or the degree they received will raise a lot of
| red flags.
| hellohello1 wrote:
| MBAs are the equivalent of butter bars in the military. You
| get a lot of fresh faced BCOM -> MBA grads who know
| absolutely nothing but doctrine and are put in a position
| of power.
|
| CompSci -> Work in industry -> MBA usually produces the
| best managers.
| anticensor wrote:
| CompSci -> EngMan path also exists.
| xedrac wrote:
| While not fair to make sweeping generalizations, many of us
| engineers have had so many bad experiences with MBAs that
| it's hard to not lump them all together. Their need for
| control and culture shaping seem to directly harm
| engineering efforts in almost every case I've seen. I
| suppose in some ways they will always be at odds with one
| another.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| I would buy that. Speaking of generalizations, can we
| just all agree that all HR people are bad people and a
| pox upon this land?
| ignoramous wrote:
| If it helps, all those MBA-bashing cool tech startups busy
| giving away a percentage of their revenue to Amazon, don't
| realise that AWS was the brain-child of a Harvard MBA.
| reducesuffering wrote:
| Jassy didn't propose, code, or solely invent AWS in any
| way.
| ignoramous wrote:
| You're right but Andy, for lack of a better word,
| _willed_ AWS into existence:
| https://techcrunch.com/2016/07/02/andy-jassys-brief-
| history-...
|
| That's gotta count for something.
| lordnacho wrote:
| Yes precisely. The MBA skill was to get credit for an
| obvious strategic possibility that required a huge team
| to pull off.
|
| Happens on many levels though, it's not as if engineers
| don't get credit for team efforts.
| johncena33 wrote:
| Yes, the "idea man" deserves all the credit and everyone
| else is just a drone there to execute their vision.
| Sounds like classic MBA culture to me.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > we aren't all bad!
|
| 99% of MBAs give the rest a bad name.
| avs733 wrote:
| kind of like software developers! (according to HN as
| well)
| yaboy wrote:
| I worked at a startup that was acquired by an unsexy
| behemoth. It was not covered in TechCrunch. We had a sales
| guy who easily cleared over $1MM in salary and bonuses,
| several times the CEO and founders, because he went above and
| beyond, closing $15MM of new business a year.
|
| When the MBA consultants and salespeople from the acquirer
| found out, they couldn't believe he made that much -- all
| while they personally managed $2MM-$3MM books of business.
|
| What do you think happened? He was slowly stripped of
| responsibilities and eventually forced out, for the crime of
| standing out as an exceptional performer.
| SCHiM wrote:
| I know how that goes I guess. Slowly "rules" and
| "procedures" from the behemoth come into play. Before he
| knows it, his successful methods are "against the rules",
| and doors slowly close.
|
| I love that dynamic /s
| ryukafalz wrote:
| To play devil's advocate here: are any of those rules and
| procedures in place to prevent sales tactics that, while
| they might be successful, are also predatory?
| whatshisface wrote:
| We can write whatever story we want in between the
| details we were told... Maybe the salesman was secretly
| an FSB agent. Maybe he was an alien. Maybe he was
| Superman's alter-ego.
|
| It's not really conducive to communication to fill in the
| blanks like that, even though any person in someone
| else's work story could be one of Them walking among
| us... ;)
| yaboy wrote:
| I don't think it's really relevant to the story, he was
| ethical but did schmooze prospects at dinners. Which is
| standard operating procedure for multi-million dollar
| database sales. The acquirer did the same.
|
| He was incentivized to hustle harder, until incentives
| were stripped, out of spite.
| ryukafalz wrote:
| No aliens required, just sales tactics that seem to be
| endemic in this industry.
|
| Just about every week I comb through my inbox
| unsubscribing from all the companies' mailing lists that
| I most certainly did not subscribe to.
| MajorBee wrote:
| Or maybe he employed more run-of-the-mill unsavoury
| techniques like low-level bribery (gifts, expensive wine-
| and-dine), plenty of shmoozing and the like. These
| techniques are not exactly useless in getting new
| business; however, most modern workplace rulebooks will
| consider them illegal/unethical.
| smabie wrote:
| Not sure where you work, but they definitely don't. It's
| all part of the game. Just make the sale, that's what
| matters.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| You are joking right? It in the rulebook of most sales
| folks... everywhere. Companies have special budgets for
| this.
|
| I don't mean some trading-only companies like Cargill who
| have extra prostitues budgets (at least 5 years ago that
| was true, and with expensive alcohol parties was the only
| way to do any business in places like Russia or most 3rd
| world countries). I mean any kind of bigger corporation.
| Banks have it. Any kind of finance business does. You
| won't get far without it.
|
| There are obviously rules, but often they go the other
| way - employees shouldn't accept bribes in forms of these
| gifts. But getting clients, that's a free for all, the
| winner takes all (and biggest bonus).
| cbozeman wrote:
| "I have a master's degree and I went to <insert supposedly
| prestigious school here>, therefore no one's supposed to
| make more money than me!"
|
| We need to get people out of this kind of thinking, and the
| sooner the better.
| dandanua wrote:
| Aha, good luck with that. Entire human history is full of
| such social differentiation, where a particular group,
| caste, nation, etc. think that they are better and
| deserve more than the others.
|
| MBAs, in my experience, is the worst example of it. They
| treat themselves as some higher order creatures, without
| actual skills or understanding of things.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| I hesitated to post that because it would be interpreted that
| way.
|
| In the case I described, the issue was _literally_ that
| having an MBA put you on a lower payscale than being a mid-
| tier engineer.
|
| The problem was that we had several people who invested years
| of their lives and six figures into post-graduate MBA
| education with the expectation that it was a cheat code for
| moving them up to the top of the payscale. It was a shock to
| land in a company where that was not true at all, and
| furthermore that it was codified into the payscale.
|
| Having an MBA is certainly not a negative signal like HN
| tends to suggest. The bigger issue is resistance to the
| modern dual-track career ladders. Many people still want the
| management title (or an MBA credential) to guarantee them
| higher compensation, and they're resistant to any system
| which doesn't match those expectations.
| prox wrote:
| Look up some talks from Guy Kawasaki, art of the start for
| example, it's quite good and harmless humor.
| arwhatever wrote:
| Put all the MBAs in one place, or put all the HN comments in
| one place? :-)
| ignoramous wrote:
| "Calling me a moron is one thing, but accusing me of having
| an MBA is really too much."
|
| -pg, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10670
| hobofan wrote:
| Damn, that whole comment section is an amazing time capsule
| of sentiment regarding Microsoft and other tech companies!
| Well worth a read.
| [deleted]
| kevinskii wrote:
| It's definitely a reminder of what the "good old days"
| were often really like. The worst Reddit thread I've come
| across has less vitriol and sanctimony than this HN
| thread from 2007.
| cbozeman wrote:
| This comment is amazing...
|
| "Microsoft recently came to my graduate school to recruit
| for user experience design and user experience research
| positions. 10 folks out of my program (about 25% of us)
| scored and interview. Every single one of us had no
| intention of working for Microsoft and joked about it
| intensely. Microsoft had be relegated to the realm of
| other boring places to do our type of work but that you
| interview at for practice (and, you know, just in case
| that job at google doesn't pan out).
|
| In my interview, the topic of digg.com came up and
| neither interviewer had heard of them. I said they were
| like a type of slahsdot, or maybe magnolia. Never heard
| of those either I quipped "oh, maybe you're not involve
| much in the web / web development world".
|
| "Actually, I'm one of the project managers for Internet
| Explorer."
|
| The interview went downhill, from Microsoft, from that
| point forward. My heart wasn't even in it "just in case"
| anymore."
|
| Hard to believe Microsoft was so utterly reviled by
| competent people in 2007. Nowadays I look at some of the
| things they're doing (mostly Surface line) and I would
| love to be involved with that. I feel like, even though
| they're not always hitting the bullseye, Microsoft is
| really aiming for the target with Surface devices. I know
| the Surface Duo got a lot of hate, and I really wanted to
| get one, but I feel like it just isn't "there" yet.
| Microsoft has been on that sort of track record for the
| past 5 years or so... the first version of a new product
| is a little questionable, the second is decent enough,
| but the third iteration, they're really nailing it.
|
| My Surface Book 3 is the best laptop I have ever owned,
| and I've had _many_.
| corpMaverick wrote:
| :) Why is it that MBA types always end up on top ?
|
| My pet theory is that they just have more time to spent
| scheming, and influencing others. While engineers are busy
| trying to get shit done.
| atmosx wrote:
| I don't think they do. Not in small-to-medium size tech
| companies. Usually, one way or another it is the
| engineering department running the show. I am not sure
| about large orgs/behemoths.
| als0 wrote:
| > While engineers are busy trying to get shit done.
|
| and/or too busy arguing with product/engineering managers
| (for better or worse)
| devmunchies wrote:
| I would include lawyers and accountants in the same bucket.
| Those three groups tend to put innovation and
| design/engineering excellence low on priorities.
| 1996 wrote:
| You are funny maybe without intending to be.
|
| They all share the same "pointless" features:
|
| - lawyers: reason for hiring: the company doesn't get sued
| for breaking laws (boils down to reducing costs even if you
| only consider the statutory damages)
|
| - accountants: reason for hiring: the company doesn't hide
| deficits / key employees can't divert money (boils down to
| reducing costs)
|
| - MBAs: reason for hiring: so that existing processed are
| optimized, and employees don't slack off too much (boils
| down to reducing costs)
|
| To which I'd add HR:
|
| - HR: reason for hiring: so that the company doesn't get
| sued for discrimination or gets bad PR that will reduce
| sales/good hires (boils down to reducing costs) --
| connected to lawyers, except HR may also care about stuff
| that doesn't directly break laws.
|
| So I think all of them are important! Then again, I'm now a
| capitalist pig, so feel free to dismiss my concerns.
|
| But even if you only care about the visible features of a
| product, understand you can't innovate or even excel on a
| budget - which means reducing costs and trimming expenses
| whenever possible.
| devmunchies wrote:
| I forgot about HR!!! :)
|
| > reducing costs
|
| yeah, or risk mitigation. Haven't decided which is truer.
|
| > Then again, I'm now a capitalist pig, so feel free to
| dismiss my concerns
|
| Yeah I own a company with ~50-60 employees (call me Mr.
| Pig). Business owners need to take input from these
| _risk-mitigation_ roles into consideration but,
| ultimately, they shouldn 't be decision makers. Taking
| risk is important.
|
| Decision makers should be creators (eng, design) and the
| sellers (sales, marketing).
|
| Businesses aren't built on reducing costs, they are built
| on making money. But, then again, you can use money you
| save by reducing costs and feed it into the
| creation->sales machine. It's a balance.
| flatline wrote:
| Engineering capability and financial savvy are somewhat
| orthogonal. You will keep some top performers and lose others
| by paying median wages. Some people also simply value stability
| or find other aspects of the job worthwhile over seeking higher
| compensation. It's also really easy not to take into account
| all avenues of compensation: salary, healthcare, bonuses,
| retirement, tax-advantaged vehicles such as HSAs, stock options
| - I'd say at least half of the employees in any field are
| mostly clueless about finances at this level, take a glance at
| base salary and make a rough decision whether it's good enough.
| mediaman wrote:
| It's weird for me to hear all these stories about MBAs. While
| I'm not an MBA myself, I was in investment banking and planned
| to get an MBA before I left finance and did something else
| instead.
|
| I regularly pay engineers more than I pay myself as a CEO
| (granted: I am not really interested in draining the company's
| coffers for my own benefit, since I have equity). It just seems
| obvious that, at the end of the day, so much of the business's
| success turns on the engineering quality of the product, of the
| production lines, of the efficiencies, of the final delivered
| product quality.
|
| While I take time to try to understand engineering issues, I am
| not an engineer by training and recognize that these people are
| much, much better at it than I am. So it's strange to see all
| these MBAs -- the types of people I used to work more closely
| with -- simply not get it. In most industries, you simply can't
| paper over operational and engineering incompetence with a
| slick marketing plan. So you need great engineering and
| operational chops. For many industries, more than a slick
| marketing plan.
| oceanghost wrote:
| I can assure you you're an outlier (but delightfully so).
|
| I worked once for a company where I was doing a product for
| the iPad. I literally, could not get the company to buy the
| newest iPad for us to test on. The only iPad we had for
| development had a bad sensor and would throw errors
| constantly.
|
| One day, marketing brings me 12 new iPads because-- they want
| me to install a beta of the app on them, because they're
| going to Fiji for a company-paid vacation (with their
| families!).
| LambdaComplex wrote:
| And you quit on the spot, right?
| oceanghost wrote:
| I filed a complaint with the appropriate authorities
| (about the trips to Fiji, not the iPads).
| _benj wrote:
| :-D
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| In the case I described, the resistance came from people who
| invested years and $100,000+ into an MBA degree with an
| expectation that companies would reciprocate by moving them
| to the top of the compensation scale.
|
| When they joined a company and realized that their graduate
| degree was not a guarantee that they'd be at the top of the
| payscale, they interpreted that as an error in the
| compensation structure.
|
| The challenge is that many (though not all) MBA programs
| virtually promote this idea that an MBA is a key to unlocking
| the highest salaries. MBA program advertising material often
| implies that an MBA will have huge ROI and greatly increase
| their compensation. It can be a shock to land at dual-track
| companies and realize that compensation is a strict ordering
| according to credentials.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Intel was the top H1B sponsor a few years back. Presumably they
| hollowed out their talent base by hiring less experienced
| engineers for less pay. Some of whom have returned home or are
| now working for a competitor closer to home.
| hinkley wrote:
| When I heard how much Apple was offering versus Intel, I just
| had the picture in my head of a classroom where the teacher is
| demonstrating some showy physics or chemistry principle based
| on pressure.
|
| Maybe they reasoned that they're located in a lower cost of
| living market and so those big paychecks aren't necessary. Or
| maybe the policy people just get sticker shock because of that.
|
| Either way, making rational decisions 24 hours a day is very
| different than being able to consistently make them 8 hours a
| day 5 days a week. I've known plenty of trustworthy coworkers
| who make irrational personal decisions. You can't use 'econ
| brain' to price employee salaries and benefits.
|
| SV is so familiar with the cheaper, irrational solutions that
| they're a cliche that occasionally rises to the level of self
| parody.
| alisonkisk wrote:
| Steve Jobs, already legendary for avoiding paying engineers for
| their contributions, organized an industry-wide cartel to hold
| down wages, and he never had an MBA.
|
| It's a bad leadership thing, not an MBA thing.
| devmunchies wrote:
| MBA programs institutionalize that thought process.
| johncena33 wrote:
| The way I see MBA in business is like condiments in cooking.
| You need condiments to make delcious meals, but condiments
| are never the meals by themselves. The problem arises when
| you treat condiments as meals. In similar vein, when MBAs are
| seen as sole value creators and other professions are seen as
| some drones to execute their vision.
| johnmaguire2013 wrote:
| And yet Apple is the world's most valuable company.
| S_A_P wrote:
| Its not _not_ an MBA thing either. Sure its fun to dump on
| MBAs as being ruthless, careless and thinking of resources as
| replaceable widgets. To some degree you are right in that bad
| leadership will make these sorts of short sighted decisions,
| but Ive met enough MBAs to think that that masters degree is
| a shortcut to being a "good" manager.
| dv_dt wrote:
| I think MBA here is a label to fill in for a cost-first
| mindset vs maybe a value-first balance. By that I mean a
| more balanced view of the company making money not by
| prioritizing first order mechanics of profits, but more in
| depth view of how the profits are maximized by actual
| product workings - which tends to be represented at
| secondary, tertiary, or even deeper level in the accounting
| structure if at all.
| sokoloff wrote:
| It's not bad leadership to hold down the costs of your key
| inputs. It's bad leadership to do that if doing so undermines
| the position of your company in the market.
|
| The handful of Apple engineers I know are incredibly happy
| and devoted to their work at Apple and being paid 50% more to
| work for Google would feel like a step backward to them.
|
| That, in combination with their business results is, to me,
| evidence of _excellent leadership_ at Apple.
| DoofusOfDeath wrote:
| > It's not bad leadership to hold down the costs of your
| key inputs.
|
| I think your point misses a crucial distinction.
|
| The issue isn't whether or not "holding down the costs of
| your key inputs" is good or bad, _all other things being
| equal_. Rather, the issue was that Jobs formed an _illegal
| cartel_ to accomplish that goal.
| abecedarius wrote:
| Separate the wage-fixing cartel from the rewarding work.
| Both may reduce the wages they have to offer, yet neither
| action requires the other. One of them is good, the other
| unethical and illegal.
| lmilcin wrote:
| I left Intel years ago to get almost 3x the salary as a
| software developer at... a bank.
|
| At Intel engineers are paid supposedly similar rates at similar
| levels and similar locations. And given my level (two levels
| above Senior Developer) I estimate I was paid better than at
| least 90% engineers.
|
| Where I worked in R&D the doors were constantly revolving and
| many people admitted they wait to register enough of
| prestigious time at Intel on their CV to get hired at a much
| better rate for another company.
|
| --
|
| I don't see these moves as encouraging, more like signs of
| complete and utter panic. You go to these moves when whatever
| you do isn't working and you don't have strategy to do
| something new so you try to default on what has worked in the
| past (this both for the choice of CEO as well as bringing
| retired people).
|
| This doesn't necessarily mean it is a wrong move (see Steve
| Jobs coming back to save Apple as a proof it doesn't have to be
| bad) but I wouldn't call it encouraging.
|
| Rehiring retired people to me signals the new CEO has no trust
| in people that already are there. And that is usually bad news.
|
| Add to it outsourcing _CORE_ competency to competitor
| (https://www.eenewseurope.com/news/intel-TSMC-5nm) and it seems
| that if there is a plan it is to keep the ship afloat for a
| little while longer.
|
| Hopefully the ship is going to be afloat for as long is
| necessary to reshape the organization, but I think we haven't
| yet seen any concrete moves to see what is the strategy.
| hinkley wrote:
| I left NCSA (University of Illinois) to join the dot-com boom
| like everyone else. Curious thing about their pay scale: I
| made 15% more on day one than any of my friends who had been
| working 18 months at the same place, which was a giant relief
| because I did not have the spoons to work as much as they did
| and still keep up with classes. I got more per hour and
| working a full 40 hours a week was just assumed, instead of
| something I had to fight for.
|
| The reason I made more money than them was Marc Andreesen.
| Someone got wind of how much they had been compensating him
| not to leave and they put the kibosh on it, but they were
| smart about it. They sugar coated the change by compressing
| the pay scale toward the middle, instead of squashing it
| down. If you weren't Marc Andreesen (and he'd been gone for
| over a year and the people he had poached gone for ~8 months
| at this point), then your pay didn't change. If you were new,
| like me, you were better off with the change.
|
| You can keep top end people by giving them autonomy instead
| of more money, but I don't know if, in the long term, that's
| in Intel's best interests either. People generally trust that
| my heart is in the right place, but I'm human. Some of my
| decisions are wrong, and some are just so abstruse that they
| appear wrong, so I get push-back on both. I've worked at
| places that are 'top-heavy', where enough people have been
| Peter Principal-ed into MAX_RANK and there's no room in the
| org chart to dilute them with more promising people. In fact
| I work at one of these now. To a first order approximation,
| I'm just collecting the pay while I convince myself what I
| want to do next, which is proving to be more difficult than
| it ever has before, so I'm just here.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I recall hearing from friends that Intel paid more for higher
| levels of education; having a PhD was more conducive to a
| high salary than years of experience. Do you know if that was
| true?
| lmilcin wrote:
| It is likely your friend was paid better because they were
| assigned higher grade. Just for being PhD I think you are
| automatically bumped to something like senior engineer or
| higher.
|
| Intel has grading system which you can try to google. You
| are paid according to your grade (+ benefits based on
| performance, etc.) Also, you are evaluated against your
| grade and you can gain or loose a grade based on
| performance (but more likely than loosing a grade is that
| you will be let go).
|
| I have been given a grade that was over my head at the time
| and would require me to technically advise and coordinate
| multiple projects, have outside presence (ie present at
| tech conferences, take part in opensource projects, etc.)
| and basically work at a level that I have not been ready
| for. And yet I was not able to make ends meet.
|
| I guess when I was hired I got absolutely excited about
| what I am going to work on and plans for bright future,
| that I have completely ignored the possibility that I may
| be over my head and that I may not be able to advance so
| quickly.
| hinkley wrote:
| I've known people from towns with one or even two big
| industries, grew up in several, and the town always gets
| weird after a while. One in particular I'm thinking of
| that was almost healthy had a state and an art university
| pulling in money, and people who lived in the school
| districts but commuted to heavy industry in an exurb of
| the next big town. Someone tried building a factory on
| the edge of town to poach those people but it didn't
| stick. But that one company still overshadowed
| everything.
|
| Your one company gentrifies the hell out of some things,
| not everything, and ultimately all fates are tied to
| their fortunes. They do a layoff, hiring freeze or even a
| salary squeeze and eight months later a few restaurants
| and one of your favorite stores shut down. You find out
| they've been late on payments to people and vendors for
| the past 6 months.
|
| I recall the first time I heard someone interviewing at
| Intel and I asked why they were, 'in the middle of
| nowhere in Oregon' and nobody had a good answer to that.
|
| What I've learned about manufacturing since then makes me
| think, "lax environmental rules and watchdogs".
| marssaxman wrote:
| Intel's Hillsboro campus is located "in the middle of
| nowhere in Oregon" in almost exactly the same sense that
| Microsoft's Redmond campus sits "in the middle of nowhere
| in Washington"; each one is located at the edge of a
| suburb of the largest city in the state, right next to a
| highway which leads straight downtown, less than fifteen
| miles away.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Tektronix was there and Oregon State was a source of
| cheap engineers.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Intel in Oregon is probably like an hour from downtown
| Portland, and there are a ton of apartment complexes
| about halfway between the two (and there's nice public
| transit to Portland, so you don't have to deal with the
| drivers). Nike also has a big building nearby.
|
| Also, I imagine Intel would gain very little from being
| located in, for example, the Bay Area or NYC. It isn't
| like they are some little startup that needs to go out to
| bars to find new developers or whatever.
| vsef wrote:
| Intel employs 5,900 people in Santa Clara county and that
| is their corporate headquarters so obviously they think
| they gain something from a large Bay Area footprint. The
| idea that Bay Area hiring is primarily "little startups
| that need to go out to bars" is also very odd.
| oumua_don17 wrote:
| Probably you were hired at grade 9 or 10?
| cccc4all wrote:
| The best way to get a raise or a promotion is to find a new
| job at another company. Look for a company that actually
| values the tech stack skillset and are willing to pay actual
| competitive salary.
|
| It is much easier now with remote work being prevalent.
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| _> Where I worked in R&D the doors were constantly revolving
| and many people admitted they wait to register enough of
| prestigious time at Intel on their CV to get hired at a much
| better rate for another company._
|
| _> Rehiring retired people to me signals the new CEO has no
| trust in people that are already there._
|
| And why should he, given the conditions you just outlined? I
| certainly wouldn't. They've demonstrated they can't advance
| either the process tech or the chip architecture in any
| meaningful way.
|
| And I don't even fault the engineers, but rather a finance-
| oriented CEO who managed for the bottom line, to goose stock
| prices and executive comp, while cannibalizing the
| engineering corps of the high-output talent and experienced
| technical leadership and mentoring necessary to advance one
| of the most complex, difficult technologies.
|
| One possibility here is that Gelsinger is reversing that,
| rebuilding the original proven team from the top down,
| starting with the people who both know how that works, and
| have the connections to and respect from additional top
| technical talent to bring them on as well.
|
| If Gelsinger also restructures compensation for these folks
| to ensure they're appropriately compensated (way above
| "market rate") then that's confirmation that this isn't panic
| but the right strategy of rebuilding Intel's talent base.
|
| And that report you linked was discussed yesterday, unclear
| how reliable it is:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25844959
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| I've been approached by headhunters for contract work at
| Intel. They want all kinds of machine learning knowledge &
| experience and the pay is.... $45/hr. I kid you not. I just
| sort of laugh and tell them that that's about 1/3 of market
| rate for that kind of thing.
| omgwtfbyobbq wrote:
| Yikes. As part of my company's (F500) DS group, I'm at <
| $40/hour. Granted, I'm essentially doing software dev,
| which is a little out of my wheelhouse, and I was just a
| technical BSA before this, but still... To be fair, I also
| have a lot of latitude and was able to work remote prior to
| covid. Once the vaccines are rolled out and I can find
| someone for some of my caretaking role, looking elsewhere
| is a priority.
| stephencanon wrote:
| $45/hr is about what I was paid as a grad-student intern at
| Apple ... 15 years ago.
| akiselev wrote:
| It's also about what a Mozilla intern would get paid ten
| years ago.
| dharmab wrote:
| It's way less than I made working in the IT departments
| of medium-size non-tech companies.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I have a salary that would work our to less than $45/hr,
| with extra hours dragging it down further.
| [deleted]
| lnenad wrote:
| I mean that is a great salary all in all, be happy with
| what you have.
| munk-a wrote:
| Most people do - but don't hesitate to put more value in
| your labour and look for other career opportunities. The
| world is pretty unjust at a basic level and if you're
| waiting for someone to acknowledge your excellence and
| land a big payday in your lap you'll be waiting for a
| long time.
|
| A big piece of career advice I have for any folks that
| feel like they're in dead-ends or are just getting
| started is that, in modern society, you should be
| constantly expending time and energy to ensure you're in
| the most personally rewarding position - the world is a
| cruel place where the socially awkward and introverted
| have a constant uphill battle to not be exploited.
|
| Oh and we're all super lucky to be in tech because in a
| lot of other fields there is just no way to advance
| yourself.
| batty_alex wrote:
| > A big piece of career advice I have for any folks that
| feel like they're in dead-ends or are just getting
| started is that, in modern society, you should be
| constantly expending time and energy to ensure you're in
| the most personally rewarding position - the world is a
| cruel place where the socially awkward and introverted
| have a constant uphill battle to not be exploited.
|
| This was both uplifting and an apt commentary on how to
| survive in the modern age.
|
| Well said.
|
| > Oh and we're all super lucky to be in tech because in a
| lot of other fields there is just no way to advance
| yourself.
|
| I feel like this is a pretty cynical take. Really, what's
| happening is that more and more jobs are becoming tech
| jobs. It may not be as glamorous as going to stand-ups
| each morning, but there's plenty of opportunity out there
| and we're just in an awkward transition period where
| societies are trying to play catch-up with, historically-
| speaking, a lot of changes in a short amount of time.
|
| Whether that transition ends with peace or chaos is going
| to depend on how easy the transition is made for everyone
| SXX wrote:
| Wow, $45/hr is just laughtable. I know many freelance web
| developers from ex-USSR countries who charge more and their
| effective tax rate is below 10%.
|
| Or did you mean this is $45/hr post-tax rate?
| varjag wrote:
| $45 is well beyond a median ex-USSR freelancer, although
| there have to be an outliers.
| msie wrote:
| Ugh, I make less.
| ababaiem wrote:
| Ditto. This whole thread makes me feel out of touch.
| staticautomatic wrote:
| Headhunters for contract work at one FAANG company offer me
| $50 an hour for gigs utilizing the same skill set I've
| billed them $500 an hour for in the past.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "I've billed them $500 an hour for in the past"
|
| !!!...
| eganist wrote:
| For unsteady contracted project work, this doesn't sound
| off the mark for high-value niche skillsets at a senior
| or principal level. I wouldn't expect FAANGs to pay it
| for steady work, though.
|
| Well, Netflix might come close. I can count two
| principal-level architects pulling north of 700k/y, but I
| doubt they work just 40 hours a week.
| ghaff wrote:
| When I was an analyst we'd get paid $10K+ per day for
| speaking/consulting (not including travel time) and the
| one expert witness job I did was about $500/hour. But for
| the bulk of the 200ish workdays a year, we were earning
| much less or nothing at all.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I just have trouble wrapping my head around how someone
| can be that valuable. I'll never even hit $75/hr
| (excluding inflation).
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| It's not unheard of to give people who were party to the
| creation of some critical thing the company does pay that
| simply can't be matched elsewhere in order to make them
| stick around. Usually you pair it with a fancy title like
| "global architect" or some other mumbo jumbo like that.
| Pretty much any time you hear about someone making 500k+
| without being personally responsible for the success or
| failure of a heck of a lot of stuff it's a role like
| that.
|
| Think of it as a $200k salary with $500k of "just to
| ensure you won't find a better offer elsewhere" on top.
|
| These aren't the kind of roles you can work your way
| into. You have to be in the right place at the right time
| and be there for a long time.
| cosmodisk wrote:
| I'm nowhere near $75/h. A couple of years ago I built a
| solution for the company I work for that heavily
| contributed getting hundreds of thousands in revenue( and
| continues to do so). All it took was a few weeks. Didn't
| even get a bonus or something and this is a tiny company.
| Right work can be worth millions,so even $2000/h may not
| look high enough.
| munk-a wrote:
| Their labour can absolutely be that valuable due to how
| many customers you are effecting with a single hour of
| work - it's sort of the same principle as athletic stars
| - paying outrageous salaries to athletes is probably the
| least bad way to do things (it's certainly better than
| the companies just pocketing lots of cash).
|
| That said, I think this is only achievable because of how
| relatively young and greenfield software is - the
| industry hasn't existed for more than a eighty years in
| any real sense (and arguably didn't really begin until
| things moved from academic to commercial in the seventies
| or so) and thus a lot of software can add massive value
| to society while doing relatively simple things. I think
| in a few hundred years all the low hanging fruit will be
| gone and software development will be extremely different
| from these wild-west days but right now yea - the value
| you can produce for a business can absolutely justify
| pretty ridiculous salaries.
|
| I think the important counter point for humility here is
| that those folks aren't particularly special, maybe a
| 700k architect is a literal genius at the peak of their
| career, but there are other folks out there that are just
| as creative and making 80k. Maybe we just need to think
| of the strange wage imbalance in development as being as
| fickle and arbitrary as celebrity - could that actor at
| the local playhouse have been the next Jennifer Lawrence
| if only they'd gotten cast for the role? Quite possibly,
| but luck wasn't on their side and passed them over.
|
| I'd say that people that command such high salaries are
| certainly worth it (in the cases I've seen at least) but
| they have also benefited from some fantastic luck in
| their career progression - they could've been someone
| else and be earning far less for the same set of skills.
| Swizec wrote:
| It's not about skills, it's about the value those skills
| provide.
|
| If you write a webapp to solve a $5000/day problem,
| that's worth $X. If your company sells that to 10
| companies, your work is worth 10X. But if it's sold to
| 10000, wow.
|
| Think of your work in terms of value provided to the
| buyer, not in terms of cost to yourself. Thus you unlock
| career potential
| munk-a wrote:
| I absolutely agree and that's where the price
| differential is coming in, but it causes some perverse
| effects to the wage market. Is the work of the person
| solving that 5k/day problem that's then sold to ten
| clients worth ten times as much as the work of the person
| who's work is only sold to one client?
|
| I think it's important to recognize the semi-arbitrary
| source of where this value is coming from and understand
| that while employees impacting a lot of customers are
| indeed creating a lot of value the work they are doing
| isn't significantly different from the work made by folks
| with more modest salaries.
|
| Basically, at the core, I think there's a significant
| ethical question here and I would highlight the relative
| infancy of the industry. It's likely that in a few
| hundred years all this incredible value creation will be
| highly commoditized and that innovative development will
| be relegated to academic pursuits that companies only
| adopt and bring to market after a lot of investigation
| and research.
|
| Uh hrm - as another parallel you might compare this to
| speed running. Right now we can do relatively simple
| things to dramatically create value (time saved off the
| run) but as time goes on and the run gets more
| "perfected" then the ability to shave time off the run
| (or create value for the business) will require a lot
| more investment of effort. I'm not certain if this will
| happen since everything in how development works points
| to this being a really hard state of the industry to
| accomplish - but looking at economic trends it feels
| inevitable that eventually it will be more profitable to,
| for instance, produce a cheaper better whatsapp then
| being the first market entrent into the coveted Deciduous
| Tree Vlog Platform market.
| lmilcin wrote:
| It is a little bit more complicated than that.
|
| If the webapp can solve $5000/day problem but there is
| literally millions of people that can do this, you are
| certainly not getting a share of that. Somebody else is
| maybe going to be rewarded for spotting an opportunity
| but the most you get is a "market rate".
|
| The only way you can get paid proportionally is if you
| are literally the only one that can solve the problem and
| you know it and they know you know it.
| usmannk wrote:
| New grads in SFBA make well north of $75/hr. Sometimes
| it's all about geo.
| avereveard wrote:
| A solution expert usually brings a baggage of knowledge
| of previously working solutions in the problem space,
| knowledge that has been acquired over many months of hard
| work
|
| Short gigs where you being in a solution, point a
| team/company on the right direction and then jump off
| compensate for the accrued knowledge transfer more than
| for the hour worked
|
| Think of it like a top end athlete, they aren't paid for
| the few hours of play, but for the years of training that
| keep them competitive
| leesalminen wrote:
| Here in Boulder $100/hr is the cheapest you can find for
| a freelance developer worth their salt.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I'm just worthless
| munk-a wrote:
| You are not. You're just poorly compensated and that
| doesn't say a damn about your personal worth.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Eh, everything in life is about money, so I think it
| does.
| munk-a wrote:
| Well, honestly, if that's your opinion then change your
| circumstances - work on your resume and get a job with
| higher compensation, they certainly exist and the
| requirements for them and expectations on them are far
| lower than you think... And, most importantly, the price
| for failure is negligible. If you're a wiz with databases
| in your current position and are considering moving to a
| fancy silicon valley job with high compensation the worst
| that can happen is you'll fail your probationary period
| and still make a fair amount of money.
| giantg2 wrote:
| There really aren't many FileNet or Neoxam options out
| there. My wife refuses to relocate, so I'm stuck where I
| am.
| [deleted]
| munk-a wrote:
| Oh but right now we've got a pandemic on - assuming
| everybody is onboard with the risk of changing jobs a lot
| of folks are hiring remote employees.
| leesalminen wrote:
| I find that to be highly unlikely seeing that you've been
| a part of the HN community for under 2 years and have
| nearly the same karma as me after 7. You clearly have
| something interesting to say! My email is in my profile.
| Hit me up to chat if you'd like :). Maybe I can help you
| somehow.
| lnenad wrote:
| That's very kind of you.
| cccc4all wrote:
| For 1099 contract work, $200/Hour is the sweet spot for
| in demand fields, javascript, React, FE, etc.
| walshemj wrote:
| I know someone who (CTO) Billed several k for an hours
| consultation on 4G
| giantg2 wrote:
| Wow. I make less than $45/hr (salary with extra hours
| dragging it down further, but with benefits).
|
| Edit for background: I have 9 years experience, an MSIS
| working at a financial company.
| ptmcc wrote:
| If that's as a developer in a US city that's pretty
| underpaid
| giantg2 wrote:
| It's in the suburbs of an east coast city. I don't really
| see higher paying intermediate jobs (switched stacks a
| few times).
| djrogers wrote:
| Note he's salaried, that's not contract rates. Salaried
| employees also get health, 401k, ESPP, and other benefits
| that contract workers have to cover themselves - not to
| mention self employment taxes etc.
|
| He may still be underpaid, but it's not apples/apples.
| kube-system wrote:
| You can't really fairly compare 1099 to W2 hours without
| subtracting for holidays, vacation, self-employment
| taxes, benefits, capacity/downtime, etc. The math might
| easily work out to a 30%-40% difference.
| msie wrote:
| I'm in the same boat. The way some people here talk about
| making $200/hour makes me think how out of touch some
| HN'ers are with the average worker.
| cccc4all wrote:
| That may be median for your area and you may be happy
| with it.
|
| In west coast tech hubs, that's about half of median
| salary alone. If you factor in bonus, stock options, etc.
| That's about 1/3 or 1/4 of total comp.
|
| https://www.levels.fyi/
| giantg2 wrote:
| I hate my job for reasons other than the pay. I just have
| to except that I'm worthless.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| Financial companies, pharmaceutical companies, automotive
| companies, aircraft (component or manufacturing)
| companies. They all fail to understand the criticality of
| software and IT to their long term objectives, and
| greatly undervalue people in those fields.
|
| A recurring issue I've found is, "Jack the EE picked up
| programming in a week, why are you worth as much or more
| than him when you aren't even a 'real' engineer?"
| Substitute another field for EE based on industry.
| Software is simultaneously too easy for them to take
| seriously, and too hard for them to fathom its depths.
| munk-a wrote:
| I disagree - non-software companies feel entitled to
| price employees based in relation to their peers rather
| than in relation to the value they add to the business
| (and possibly misuse their tech labour because they never
| hired an architect that could actually steer it to be as
| valuable as it could be) but Jack the EE might be a
| perfectly servicable developer. There's a lot of theory
| we learn in school that Jack would need to pick up
| himself but don't assume you're imbued with a special
| skill that sets you apart from the rest of the employees.
|
| The company should definitely be paying more out of their
| pocket to employ good tech talent, but I'm not so certain
| whether it's good for society for all that created value
| to be given to the developer who happened to create it. I
| think there is a big value gap in how much developers can
| produce with relatively little labour compared to, say, a
| car mechanic - but I think that it might be best for
| everyone if a really big proportion of that value gap was
| sliced up and distributed more evenly across society in
| the form of social programs to benefit us all.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| I don't see how you're disagreeing with me. I didn't say
| that Jack the EE couldn't be a perfectly serviceable
| developer. I've worked with a number who are (and a few
| who excelled). My point is that the management teams
| (with no one with software experience) perceive one
| _specific_ person 's relative ease at picking up
| programming as the _general_ case for programming. This
| causes them to underestimate what it takes to actually
| build up the software portion of their business. This
| happens _especially_ for non-software companies in the
| same way that software companies might underestimate the
| difficulty of other fields (how many startups have we
| seen posted here on HN that are composed of primarily
| programmers and think they 'll revolutionize the fashion
| industry, the car audio industry, or the banking
| industry?).
|
| And since management teams in large companies tend to
| grow out of whichever departments are the primary
| domains, if software is always seen as tertiary then
| managers with software background are consistently absent
| or too few to clear up this confusion.
| giantg2 wrote:
| They value people based on 'visibility' at my place.
| Unfortunately, some people who get that visibility are
| just putting out their own fires. I had a tech lead that
| was not very good in my opinion, but the business and
| management loved him.
|
| Sometimes I think about becoming a mechanic. They make
| good money.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| I am 100% in the same boat. Had a recruiter reach out to me
| who wanted me to leave my more than comfortable six figure
| SV job to do cutting edge contract work in machine learning
| as a lead engineer for about $50/hour. I was so amused I
| actually spent the time listening to their pitch and
| eventually told them that anything less than $200/hour
| wouldn't even cover my current pay + benefits. Let me know
| if you can do better. They hung up. Lol
| spicybright wrote:
| I genuinely feel bad for talented people that get
| suckered into deals like this. Obviously some do if
| recruiters try and do this.
| 0xffff2 wrote:
| Some people don't care so much about the money. I'm
| barely over the six figure mark in the bay area. I could
| probably make a lot more money somewhere else, but I
| wouldn't get to do anything nearly as interesting as my
| current work.
| _benj wrote:
| I don't think is about not caring about the money... it
| seems to me that the salary is just the manifestation of
| the value the company places in the individual, and thus
| a company that pays 1/3 of the industry average shows
| very little care for their engineers, at least in my book
| flyinglizard wrote:
| What if I told you that, more often than not, you could
| do your current work _and_ get much more money? People,
| especially tech people, are quite awful at extracting
| their full value.
| konjin wrote:
| People agree, talented people do not.
| b3kart wrote:
| Underpaid people aren't talented? That's harsh.
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| I think talented people will not take it unless they're
| between a rock and a hard place. Sadly what this does is
| it attracts only the most junior or unqualified hires who
| (are great if you got time/budget but if not) will need
| to be trained by the few seniors left holding the place
| together.
|
| I'm not surprised Intel does this and the
| telecommunications side I have seen from them in Europe
| was rotten to the core. I have several anecdotes here
| just one: A friend got poached from Intel in a cushy job
| with great pay in a key role a lot of niche knowledge,
| they had to know how valuable he was, after the first
| week on the new job with Intel he got told that the
| department decided to reduce the headcount due to a
| restructuring and so he was the first to go.
|
| If it sounds like "business as usual" let me add nobody
| else was fired, he had a 3 month long negotiation, 6
| months notice period on the old job, 3 kids, and in his
| late 40ies in a specific market. What he was promised
| would have justified taking the risk. Later I heard they
| do this all the time from a guy who recruits for Intel.
| Also this was not in the enterprise market with lot of
| talent but telecommunications O&M (operations and
| maintenance plane). He eventually went to go beg to get
| his job back. He'll never have the same standing in the
| company tho.
| taway992 wrote:
| Then, they will make the case there is a "talent
| shortage" and attempt to hire overseas workers at
| salaries that barely pay bay area living costs.
| mc32 wrote:
| Sometimes recruiters get things wrong, mix things up. That
| might have been for a different position that got redefined
| without commensurate pay adjustment.
|
| That said, 45 is really low for any position in an
| engineering company, unless it's ancillary support services
| that get farmed out. Something like 'Lab Admin' type of
| thing.
| pvarangot wrote:
| I don't think it is. I got approached by consulting
| companies and recruiters to work on embedded development
| for Intel, including on-site work in Santa Clara, CA and
| travel to Asia. The hourly rate was 60 and days in Asia
| were 250 each plus accommodations. I've never done a trip
| to Asia were I was working less than 10 hours per day.
| walshemj wrote:
| That's cheap 20 years ago I looked at a secondment in
| Malaysia and that was full ride tax free expat - house
| and servants! provided.
| MaxLeiter wrote:
| Amazon software development interns (undergrad) in SF get
| $65/hr + a housing stipend. 60/hr seems far too low
| Unklejoe wrote:
| That's what I make at my full time job in NJ with 7 years
| of experience. Damn.
| mc32 wrote:
| You have to ask yourself if the raise is worth the COLA
| as well as quality of life in the Bay Area which include
| housing stock quality per dollar as well as nuisance
| crimes you have to deal with (garage, car break ins and
| dealing people suffering metal health issues in the
| street, etc.)
|
| It works out for some people but it will not work out for
| everyone.
| munk-a wrote:
| Although right now the math is rather different - you can
| easily remain living in NJ with all your nice local
| things while switching employers to someone in CA - most
| people are hiring fully remote people though you may be
| required to work west coast hours.
|
| And, honestly, I think that after the pandemic companies
| are going to have a lot of trouble trying to pull
| employees back into in-office full time work.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I have 9 years experience, an MSIS, and make a salary
| that works out to less than $45/hr, but of course there
| are benefits.
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| A quick search shows average US software engineer's
| salary is $92,046 / yr. Divide that by 251 working days
| and 8 hours to arrive at $45/h.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| This happened more than once over the last few years. If
| it was a mistake I could see it happening once. But not
| three times.
| grumple wrote:
| I'd laugh at triple that. This is a strong indicator Intel
| will not be turning things around.
| ab_testing wrote:
| That kind of positions are usually filled by H1 B
| contractors - primarily from smaller consulting companies.
| Usually Intel and other companies pay ~100-125 per hour but
| then the middlemen keep the rest.
| jandrese wrote:
| You were just the "proof" they needed that there were no
| domestic engineers with the right skillset for the job they
| had so they could hire a H1B replacement for that salary.
| wjnc wrote:
| A friend of mine was a professor at a US university in ML
| and came home to NED to work in medical ML and makes about
| that. I was amazed he wasn't at FAANG and his simple
| response was "My wife and I agreed that we would raise our
| children near their grandparents." There's perhaps more
| diversity in preferences than we can imagine.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| They were paying Eclipse and Java UI contractors a little
| less than that about 7-8 years ago. Maybe the MBAs have
| them all in the same bucket
| amalantony06 wrote:
| This is an excellent counter perspective.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > I don't see these moves as encouraging, more like signs of
| complete and utter panic.
|
| I read the GP more in the lines of since everything is on
| fire and most of the house has already turned into coal, they
| demonstrating some panic is a much better behavior than the
| previous indifference about the fire, and a signal that they
| may decide to do something about it. Thus, expectations on
| Intel improved.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > Intel engineers are paid supposedly similar rates at
| similar levels and similar locations.
|
| Again with this location based compensation trend. Maybe it
| works for flipping burgers but it seriously break down when
| you are a global player hiring from a pool of global talent.
|
| You can play CoL games and count beans as much as you want,
| but the engineering talent Intel is after are also pursued by
| companies like Apple that are wat above market rate.
| StreamBright wrote:
| I think there is more to the story. Apple and the new M1 just
| shows the strength of vertical integration. Once you can
| collect data from millions of devices and apply statistics on
| the top of it you can make decisions that Intel or AMD could
| never make. Intel also fall victim of its own success, become
| slow, stopped innovating at the pace necessary for the future.
| nimbius wrote:
| This is a disasterous move.
|
| Ringing up elderly chipmakers to help shore up a company that's
| been run into the ground by marketing and management only
| confirms the same disastrous management practices are still at
| play
|
| As a leader trying to resuscitate a brand, eschewing new talent
| for old is just going to get you handfuls of engineers familiar
| with corporate ladder climbing and various no wake zones that
| might challenge the status quo. It also sends a clear message
| to newly minted PhD and graduates: Intel is closed for new
| ideas.
| api wrote:
| > My secondhand understanding was that Intel was losing top
| talent due to pressure to pay closer to median industry
| compensation. Top engineers recognized they were underpaid and
| left the company.
|
| This is what happens when you're run by bean counters who don't
| understand your core business or industry.
| joshstrange wrote:
| In the same/similar vein it never ceases to amaze me how
| employers don't provide their employees with the best tools
| possible (within reason) to do their jobs. A company will
| give a developer a low/mid-range laptop/desktop pinching
| every penny they can then turn around any pay them a huge
| salary... Like do they not understand that running into
| RAM/CPU limits makes the developer less effective? I've had
| jobs where I've easily spent 10x the cost of the better
| components/computer in time waiting on company-issued
| computer. Very penny wise and pound foolish.
|
| EDIT:
|
| Two stories that still annoy me to this day:
|
| 1. We had been complaining about our slow machines for a
| while and my PM told me to write up a proposal to send to his
| boss for new parts. Which, side note, was the last time I
| went out of my way to /beg/ for equipment to do my job
| better. Anyway, I write up an email with the reasoning for
| why we needed new hard drives (SSD's, we were still on
| spinning rust) and/or more RAM (I think we had ~16GB but we
| were running VMs). I explained how each part would help and
| even found cheap versions of both online that would be
| sufficient for our needs (we are talking <$1-2K total for all
| of it for the whole team of 4). I specifically said that if
| it had to come down to one or the other that the SSD would
| help more than the RAM (and it was cheaper). I never got a
| reply to the request and then a few weeks later we got new
| RAM... Like why even pay people with the knowledge/skills if
| you aren't even going to listen to them or even
| engage/discuss it.
|
| 2. The company was going to buy the developers new machines
| (finally) and they were testing out various machines (with
| hardly any input from the developers). All of the developers
| (4, this wasn't a huge company) had personal Macs they used
| for meetings/WFH (we only had desktops from work) but the
| company refused to even consider buying Macs because someone
| up the chain had a vendetta against Macs. They were looking
| at crappy laptops that cost the same or more than the MBP's
| we all wanted but it a complete no-go. This was also the
| company where I used my personal MBP for work (with
| begrudging approval) because it was way better than the Dell
| desktop they gave me (to run Linux on). What made it
| infuriating was we did cross-platform development
| (iOS/Android) but I was the only team member who could
| build/test the iOS builds because I had a Mac. The company
| provided an old cheese grater Mac Pro (pre-trashcan) that
| couldn't even be updated to a new enough OS to build apps
| that could be submitted to Apple...
| [deleted]
| Pasorrijer wrote:
| Oh man, this. I remember I worked at a major defence
| contractor, and we absolutely bombed, like failed through
| the floor an employee satisfaction survey. And when the VP
| finally sat down with people they expressed how shitty the
| computers had gotten. And he's like wait a second. No one
| ever told me this. I can solve 90% of my morale problems by
| writing a cheque for like $200k?!?
|
| It was astounding how large the disconnect had grown
| between management and the front line. And also astounding
| how cheaply the employee morale was fixed once he wrote
| that cheque.
| indeedmug wrote:
| > how large the disconnect had grown between management
| and the front line
|
| That's just the nature of leadership positions. As people
| get high up in the position, the view of the company is
| shaped by their staff and reports. The VP never hear of
| the problem simply because no one ever told the VP. VP
| never asked about it because again no one ever told the
| VP. That's why corporates seem to ask a million surveys
| and reports because there is no other way to know that
| information.
|
| What if employee surveys were never conducted? The VP
| would only know about the employee satisfaction issue if
| everyone left, well beyond the point that it's fixable.
| If you are on the ground, it's easy to ask your coworkers
| for that information. But if you are the VP, that's not
| possible.
| makapuf wrote:
| If you're the VP, one of your main responsibilities is to
| ensure the structure you put in place has not that kind
| of issues.
| telendram wrote:
| > It was astounding how large the disconnect had grown
| between management and the front line
|
| Isn't this the core of the MBA-hate argument ? That they
| occupy middle-layer positions, and actively obfuscate
| messages and merit from front line in order to redirect
| all the benefits for themselves ?
|
| There is also a darwinian component there, where such
| behavior is beneficial to game company evaluation, so
| that only people with similar principles end up being
| promoted, then actively scuttling any other middle
| managers that don't adhere to the same set of principles
| since they are effectively representing a dangerous rival
| set of values, thus ensuring that after a few cycles,
| only they remain.
|
| That's how culture evolve in (most) big companies where
| upper management don't make an active effort to keep
| middle management in check. A begrudging hard work, that
| most prefer to skip (get the quick compensation, and move
| on).
|
| That's also why there is a big difference when companies
| still have their founders in, as they tend to pay more
| attention to these issues since they are personally
| invested in company's future and brand, than recently
| promoted middle managers which are just temporarily in
| for the check.
| joshstrange wrote:
| All my experiences around this have pounded into my brain
| that if I ever run my company or if I am an executive I
| will do everything in my power to make sure all the
| employees under me have the best tools to do their job.
| Labor is one of the most expensive costs, not empowering
| your employees to be the best they can be is just stupid
| and wasteful.
|
| My dad ran a software consulting company eons ago and he
| had a new programmer start but he didn't have a laptop so
| my dad took him to Best Buy (that's where you bought
| computers back then) and told him to pick out a laptop.
| They guy picked one and my dad was like "How about this
| one, isn't it better?" and the guy said "Yeah, but it's
| more expensive". My dad bought the better laptop and gave
| it to the guy and told him it was his now (as in not the
| companies). That guy was over the moon and my dad told me
| that it was the best money he ever spent. Not only did he
| effectively "buy" a ton of loyalty with that move but he
| would make up the cost of the laptop in a week or so off
| that programmer alone (difference between what he paid
| the employee and what he billed them out at).
|
| I also remember going to Sam's Club with my dad to buy
| snacks for the office. He kept snacks, candy, drinks, etc
| well stocked at all times and told his employees they
| could have as much as they wanted, no limits. Happy
| employees are productive employees, why more people don't
| get that I'll never know...
| joshAg wrote:
| Sometimes they do, but they just don't care that certain
| (or even all) employees are as productive as possible.
| They might even have a fancy graph showing how they're
| optimizing for some unit of productivity per unit of
| cost, so making employees more productive isn't worth it.
|
| One of the best pieces of advice I got early in my career
| was "Whatever you end up doing, make sure the company
| sees you as a profit center rather than a cost center,
| because companies are much more free with their
| checkbooks to the people they think are directly
| responsible for making the company money," and though
| things aren't nearly that black and white, it's
| definitely been a good general principle.
| treeman79 wrote:
| Mine gave me a top of the line MacBook Pro, fully loaded.
|
| Then loaded so much security crap on it that all cores are
| maxed out without me even touching machine. Base vim nearly
| unusable. Then they made it so I could only access things
| via a double Remote Desktop tunnel.
|
| Basically an expensive space heater.
|
| 3 months of nothing done until security software suffered
| an unfortunate accident.
| DelightOne wrote:
| > suffered an unfortunate accident
|
| scheduled or unscheduled?
| treeman79 wrote:
| I actually had a loop in background that would kill -9
| various services every few seconds until I finally got
| them all uninstalled.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| If you can kill -9 it sounds like it could have been
| uninstalled?
| a1369209993 wrote:
| You need to kill -9 the denial-of-service-causing
| services so you can actually interact with the system in
| order to delete them. (I used to have to do this with
| organizational Windows machines before I realized I could
| boot off a livecd and either rm -rf them, or just install
| a real operating system; I assume OSX/MBP is similar.)
| marcosdumay wrote:
| If I select "unscheduled" will I have to fill a survey
| before I can reboot the machine?
| joshstrange wrote:
| Ugh, this is something that friends of mine have to deal
| with. Thankfully my current employer sent me a new MBP
| with nothing on it but the core OS. It does annoy me they
| didn't get the 32GB version, like it was ~$400 to bump
| that up but no. I've easily spent more than $400 worth of
| time watching a beachball spin while I find what is
| eating all my memory.
| seiferteric wrote:
| I am living through this. It is especially true if you are
| at a company that does software, but is not their primary
| business. IT seems to have total control and puts very
| little thought into developer experience. Give everyone the
| same slow mid-tier machines, force everyone to use Windows
| whether they want to or not, then overload them with
| security bloat, then require a slow VPN connection. It's
| sad.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| > IT seems to have total control and puts very little
| thought into developer experience
|
| To be fair, I can assure you that developers give very
| little thought to the experience of people who have to
| support their software too.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| I guess management has never been anywhere close to Palo
| Alto.
| abledon wrote:
| my 'git status' command takes 6 seconds around 2pm-4pm when
| internal network traffic is high... go figure.
|
| (i use this cmd a lot!)
| stygianguest wrote:
| One possibility is that your global git config files are
| on a network drive. I had that problem on a corporporate
| laptop.
| dyingkneepad wrote:
| git status is not supposed to use the network, unless
| you're running it on an networked file system
|
| Have you tried running git gc (maybe --aggressive) and
| similar commands?
| STRML wrote:
| How? That command doesn't even hit the network...
| jdxcode wrote:
| I had a friend that worked for Intel and he had the
| absolute worst work laptop of anyone I know. I can't recall
| what it was exactly, but I remember it even had a low tier
| Intel chip.
| [deleted]
| fermienrico wrote:
| Ex-Intel perspective: There is also a lot of work that needs to
| be done at Intel which requires mediocre engineers by the
| thousands. Intel does pay well to their top engineers which
| climb up in the ranks.
|
| The engineer working on CAD, layout, specs, RFQs, Suppliers,
| Equipment, etc are hardly going to revolutionize anything.
| Their work is valuable but they're entirely replaceable.
|
| For every top engineer, you need 20 minions to execute. Folks
| who think otherwise haven't really worked in a large company.
| In the words of Jim Keller - "It's craftsman's work. It's fun."
| Chyzwar wrote:
| I saw these first-hand armies of cheap contractors that
| cannot deliver anything. In the meantime your neglected
| supporting software/infrastructure slow you down. Intel had
| enough money to get the best engineers on every level. Lower
| turnover and better and cheaper to maintain software.
| Instead, they choose to save money QA they got spectre saga.
| Intel saved on latest process and not used EUV and could not
| deliver 10nm at all.
| baybal2 wrote:
| > The engineer working on CAD, layout, specs, RFQs,
| Suppliers, Equipment, etc are hardly going to revolutionize
| anything. Their work is valuable but they're entirely
| replaceable.
|
| You just named all specialist who would get N-times the
| salary outside of the industry.
|
| That's the problem of the industry.
|
| A man who can "just write a CAD plugin" in semi industry
| would probable be an instant senior hire in any CAD vendor.
|
| A mid-level semi PM would be a senior PM, GM level manager,
| or a COO anywhere else.
|
| Analog IC designer is by default a top-tier EE.
|
| A fab "junior technician" is likely an engineering, or
| physics master, or more likely a PhD in Taiwan.
|
| And so on, and on.
| mywittyname wrote:
| > Their work is valuable but they're entirely replaceable.
|
| Intel is replaceable.
| fermienrico wrote:
| Sorry, I'm not sure if I follow your point?
|
| Basically, I was saying that top-engineers are
| irreplaceable but they need replaceable engineers to
| execute menial, boring, repetitive work. There is a lot of
| this to be done.
| cbozeman wrote:
| His point is, when you go from being practically the only
| game in town in 2014, to being a joke-ass also-ran
| "competitor" being trounced by the underdog processor
| company[0] who damn near went bankrupt and had to sell
| their fab just to stay afloat; and when your two biggest
| allies 1) make their own System-on-a-Chip that fucking
| slaughters your best offerings in a _ton_ of benchmarks
| and real world tests, and also does it on 1 /4th the
| power[1] and 2) is actively _working_ with another
| company to also make _their_ own System-on-a-Chip that
| you can be damn sure will also go into, not only their
| premium tablet and laptop line, but likely also their
| cloud service division [2], you had better shape your ass
| up with a quickness and do whatever you need to do before
| you end up a footnote of history.
|
| [0] - AMD
|
| [1] - Apple
|
| [2] - Microsoft
| fermienrico wrote:
| This feels like a distraction from what I was driving at.
| Whether it's Intel, AMD, etc. any large company needs a
| lot of work to be done. You don't need top engineers for
| that.
| cambalache wrote:
| You are confusing "top" engineers/employees with top-
| technical employees, that is not the same at all. If you
| staff a company with geniuses in R&D and gray
| mediocrities in all the other departments I am pretty
| sure you know what will happen. You want great CAD
| designers, PM, QA, logistics, marketing people? Pay them
| accordingly and not like mediocrities.It is pretty
| obvious you have no idea what you are talking about.
| cbozeman wrote:
| > You don't need top engineers for that.
|
| Top-tier companies have to pay top-tier compensation.
| atom_arranger wrote:
| Good engineering is about finding reusable solutions to
| problems, it's not manual labor.
|
| If you have good engineers the relationship between
| amount of work and number of engineers needed is non-
| linear.
| mywittyname wrote:
| Hiding in those pools of 'replaceable' engineers are the
| next generation of top-level engineers. Intel seems to
| have failed to recognize that fact and now have become as
| replaceable as their employees are.
|
| Having a boring or menial job is not an indictment of a
| person's potential or capabilities.
| mc32 wrote:
| Hopefully they also consider current engineers and harmonize
| their compensation too, else people will have reason to hold a
| grudge because it would prove the only way to get fair
| compensation is to play the game and accelerate turnover.
| speby wrote:
| > To be blunt, once the [mediocre] MBAs start realizing that
| the engineers are getting paid more than they are, the pressure
| to reduce engineering compensation is strong.
|
| Unfortunately, this feels all too true. I believe this kind of
| mental bias trap is true and widespread.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > However, being a top company in a winner-take-all market
| requires the top engineers. The only way to attract and retain
| them at scale is to offer high compensation. I'm hoping that's
| part of what's happening here.
|
| Anyone remembers Blackberry?
|
| That's pretty much what killed them. Going there typically
| meant you weren't good enough to get a callback from Apple.
| JJMcJ wrote:
| Remember, if you pay median, 1/2 the engineers are making more
| at other companies.
| chiyc wrote:
| This is a great point so many companies don't seem to get.
| The company I worked for previously thought their pay was
| "competitive" because they kept people at median of market.
| Company before that, same deal, I was paid a "fair" median
| salary. Turnover at both companies was very high as you'd
| expect.
| [deleted]
| cunac wrote:
| also remember that median always exists so it will always be
| a case that there is 1/2 under and 1/2 over.If all companies
| paying median raise that by 20% what is a current median?
| giantg2 wrote:
| I don't work at intel, but if I retire, I don't think I'd ever go
| back. It would have to be a big chunk of change... which nobody
| would pay since I'm worthless.
| b2hhaQ wrote:
| From what I've heard, Intel has started throwing out some really
| strong offers lately. Hope they're able to be successful; they
| sure have a lot of work to do.
| kylewatson wrote:
| Was the previous ceo from GE?
| chovybizzass wrote:
| wait do they not have legos and foozball? what about free
| lunch???
| john_alan wrote:
| Good! Intel need Engineers back at the helm. Too long it was run
| by bean-counters.
|
| I'm not a big fan of Intel, but this type of news makes for
| exciting possibilities from Intel again.
|
| Though the performance per watt of the M1 I type this on, is
| going to take some beating.
| dehrmann wrote:
| I agree that you need someone with a strong engineering
| background somewhere in leadership. Bean counters are useful
| when you're more interested in efficiencies than innovation.
| Even when you're interested in innovation, don't discount MBA-
| types too much. Look at Sun. They had a lot of interesting
| engineering going on, but they got displaced by commodity
| hardware and software, never really found their new business,
| and got gobbled up by Oracle so their bean counters could
| extract licensing fees.
| Goosee wrote:
| A bit off topic but I remember when Intel set up a special career
| fair presentation for my major.
|
| I forget the specific role the manager was hiring for, but it
| sounded like a quality/reliability engineer. Basically run a
| bunch of tests, identify and analyze errors on newly manufactured
| equipment.
|
| I immediately lost interest when the manager said the role would
| either work until 9 PM or start the next day at 4 AM due to an
| important (daily?) 7 AM meeting where the results would be
| presented. Ontop of that, it was required that you be on call
| during every weekend and most holidays. You would be required to
| do this for your first two years as an entry bachelor degree
| worker. Entering masters level students wouldn't need to be on
| call.
|
| After that, he mentioned this role would pay ~$65,000 USD. Bonus
| < $5000. To live in the bay area. Then he bragged to us about the
| ability to buy intel stock at a 15% discount or something like
| that.
|
| The manager presented in a room with fully qualified people to
| work at any FANG/Graphics/Aerospace company.
|
| I sold all my intel stock the next day [late 2019], it made up
| most of my portfolio at the time. I just did not see how intel
| would attract talent if it over-worked and under-compensated
| entry level employees like that. Compared to the FANG employee
| getting free meals, game rooms, huge salary, etc.
| smeyer wrote:
| >I sold all my intel stock the next day [late 2019], it made up
| most of my portfolio at the time.
|
| Sorry if this is too off-topic, but why did it make up a
| sizable fraction of your portfolio in the first place?
| Goosee wrote:
| When I was young, my family made me put all of my
| christmas/birthday money into the stock market. Intel was
| suggested by an adult family member who did not have a tech
| background. That made up a majority of my portfolio. The rest
| of my portfolio was allocated to a stock I chose, Apple.
|
| Reason for Apple: At my elementary school, everyone loved
| using the Power Mac G5's during computer lab. Every kid
| had/wanted an iPod or iTouch (and eventually iPhone).
| whymauri wrote:
| It's incredible to me how often recruiters will shoot
| themselves in the foot when discussing WLB. When I was an
| undergrad, I had a lot of management consultancies reach out
| for technical/engineering roles. I thought - hey, there's a
| reason why people want to work at Bain, BCG, and McKinsey,
| right?
|
| So I spoke to a recruiter and opened with: so what's the work
| life balance look like for technical ICs at your company? The
| recruiter literally laughed at me like I was doing stand-up
| comedy. Well, uh... ok? Waste of time, lol.
| Goosee wrote:
| Yeah, I noticed the people who went into consulting at my
| school always posting snapchats of them working well past
| dinner time and back in the office the following morning at 7
| AM.
|
| At least the recruiters you spoke with were upfront about
| expectations. Do you know if there was WLB as one got into a
| more senior role and climbed the corporate ladder there?
|
| This past summer I did some contracting work, putting in 80+
| hr work weeks, 7 days/week. Management figured I had nothing
| better to do cause of covid, so they just piled on work. I'm
| not complaining about the work, it molded me to be a better
| employee. I was also fairly compensated for my time. But my
| health was so bad. Blood pressure sky-rocketed, resting heart
| rate in the 80's as a mid 20's male. Eyes red when I woke up
| every day. Blurry long distance vision.
|
| Now that I have balance between work/life, I am back to an
| excellent blood pressure & RHR. Eyes all fine again. I
| learned an extremely valuable lesson last summer to never
| forgo life & free-time.
|
| edit: I don't have a problem working more than a 40 hr work
| week. In fact, my worldview believes it is necessary to work
| more than the average person. I found out I can stay healthy
| and happy by taking Friday nights and Saturdays off. I
| ideally try to work/learn 55-57 hours in a normal week.
| Nokinside wrote:
| I bought Intel stock when I heard they hired Gelsinger.
|
| While all this is a good news, microarchitecture is not the
| bottleneck for Intel. At least now there are guys in charge who
| are only one level away from the real problem and used to talking
| to them.
|
| Intel failed in foundry business.
|
| ---
|
| Intel FY 2020 results just came out Revenue up
| 9% Gross margin 56.0% Operating margin
| 30.4%
| als0 wrote:
| > Rehiring Retired CPU Architects
|
| Makes me wonder - why now and not earlier? They've been slipping
| for years.
| amelius wrote:
| They should also be hiring fabrication engineers, to get that 5nm
| process back on track.
| frabjoused wrote:
| This sounds like a placed PR statement.
| lallysingh wrote:
| > He also a lead microarchitect for Intel's i960 CA .. Expect
| PR to be better written from Intel.
|
| This is a fluff piece, which looks like it (perhaps
| intentionally) should buoy INTC share price. I suspect it's
| fluffy partially from a fanboi author, and partially to keep in
| Intel's good graces.
| sebmellen wrote:
| Relevant article: http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html.
| mikewarot wrote:
| If he's going to focus on maximizing threads instead of
| performance per thread, they'll come out on top. The race to make
| a single instruction thread move ever faster has obviously hit
| its limits as the main driver of overall compute performance.
|
| If they keep pushing the old model of ever more GHz, they'll
| fail.
| jtsiskin wrote:
| That depends on if developers can be convinced to actually use
| multiple threads...
| mywittyname wrote:
| Threading is very widely adopted today. Most programs that
| you use everyday will spawn hundreds or thousands of threads.
|
| Several languages today have features to manage thread
| creation, pooling, and task execution with minimal developer
| involvement. Coroutine & promise libraries are widely
| available in many languages and developers are generally
| comfortable with using them anymore.
| totalZero wrote:
| Maybe if you can find a PC or server that only runs one
| process at a time. We live in a multithreaded world nowadays
| due to multitasking and virtualization.
| pmontra wrote:
| We already did for a long time. In my business, web
| applications, that is mostly server side and it came as
| either running the app in multiple processes (Rails, Django)
| or with a runtime that natively use all cores (BEAM /
| Elixir).
|
| The front end is mostly single threaded (JavaScript) but
| browsers can use multiple threads to speed up the UI and we
| can also use web workers to do some real multithreading in
| JavaScript. Maybe some frontend framework uses them to
| speedup managing its DOM model. I hope I gave the idea, the
| terms are probably all wrong, I'm definitely more about the
| backend.
| mikewarot wrote:
| You seem to assume there is a choice to be had, but the lawys
| of physics say otherwise The single thread Von Neuman model
| is almost out of steam. The costs to push this model 2x
| faster are likely to break Intel.
|
| Concurrent programming, like it or not, is the future.
| fbn79 wrote:
| Wikipedia tell that Gelsinger is the cofounder of "Transforming
| the Bay with Christ" group. So the right person because Intel
| need a miracle to keepup with competitors
| tgtweak wrote:
| Divine intervention is required to put things on the right
| path. Hopefully this happens for the sake of consumers getting
| some innovation.
| intricatedetail wrote:
| It's interesting, but because they used to be at Intel that was
| on the path to today's misery, isn't that a bit worrying that
| they may be thinking inside the box and looking to again rehash
| tired and old architectures? Why not looking for someone fresh?
| chaganated wrote:
| Dan Loeb
| clubdorothe wrote:
| They've probably lost[1] few months ago their most talented chips
| engineer, Jim Keller[2]. Ironically, Jim suggested to outsource
| the manufacturing of their chips, what the new CEO just did [3].
|
| [1] https://www.anandtech.com/show/15846/jim-keller-resigns-
| from...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Keller_(engineer)
|
| [3] https://www.extremetech.com/computing/319301-report-intel-
| wi...
| mattashii wrote:
| Your [3] is (still) a rumour, and although signs of it have
| been around since at least July 2020, this has not been
| confirmed nor would I qualify it as 'something their new CEO
| just did' as it has been talked about by their current CEO as
| well.
| totalZero wrote:
| Gelsinger just said on the earnings call that it's likely
| they will outsource and that he will comment further after he
| takes the reins. So, it's all but confirmed.
|
| Here's the webcast link from the Intel website:
|
| https://edge.media-server.com/mmc/p/vjapujpe
|
| If you don't want to click that because of the URL, you can
| also find it on https://www.intc.com/.
| 95014_refugee wrote:
| "Losing" Keller is a net win.
|
| Hinton, OTOH, is the real deal. I had the privilege of spending
| some time with him and the gang back in the Nehalem days.
|
| Hinton and Keller don't belong in the same conversation.
| cbozeman wrote:
| I take it Jim fired you at some point in your career.
|
| Unless you're arrogant enough to look back at everything
| Jim's designed, from the DEC Alpha 21164, 21264, VAX 8800,
| K7, A4, A5, Tesla Autopilot hardware, and of course Zen, and
| then say "Yeah this guy that did Nehalem is more talented..."
|
| I would work for Jim Keller for free. Lightning strikes
| everywhere he goes, that's not by accident. No one is that
| lucky - no one. I said on my investing blog that Keller would
| get pushed out by Intel's shit corporate structure and I was
| right. Intel isn't rotten, its gangrenous, and there's a lot
| of tissue that needs to be excised if the patient is going to
| be saved.
|
| Everyone who listens to Jim Keller ends up with better
| products and more sales. Every time. Without fail.
|
| If you think that isn't being the "real deal", there's
| something wrong with _you_ , not Jim.
| quacker wrote:
| Can you elaborate? I'm an outsider. I see that both have
| proven track records. What makes Hinton the significantly
| better choice?
| Daho0n wrote:
| I smell fish. Keller is for those companies that hire him as
| Steve Jobs was for Apple. I can't think of a single person
| that is better at righting a CPU company's technical
| direction. I would even bet a lot on money on that he have
| been asked by Intel.
| phkahler wrote:
| Wow that's harsh. Is it a personality difference or technical
| knowledge, or something else that makes you say that? I'm
| curious, I dont know either of them.
| 1-6 wrote:
| Could Intel possibly buy a stake in ARM (from Softbank) rather
| than Nvidia?
| klelatti wrote:
| No. Massive antitrust red flag, especially as they could just
| buy a license.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| Too late now.
| 1-6 wrote:
| Is the Nvidia + ARM a done deal?
| klelatti wrote:
| No.
|
| - Antitrust investigations still ongoing.
|
| - Arm China issues not yet resolved.
| _the_inflator wrote:
| I like it when the old gang comes together and blends with new
| talent.
| HelloNurse wrote:
| On the other hand, returning veterans could have a strong
| demotivational effect on current talent. If the company doesn't
| believe in me, why should I stay?
| tonyhb wrote:
| If the new talent isn't performing, this isn't necessarily a
| bad thing. And for those who stay, they'll get to learn and
| work with the people who have a track record of being great.
| analognoise wrote:
| Dude, how could you not be SO EXCITED to work with some of
| these people?
|
| They're legends!
|
| If somebody doesn't see the value in "Got to work with a
| living chip design legend", _especially_ because they 're so
| stuck up about "their" perceived value, you don't want them
| as an employee at all.
| avipars wrote:
| no aquihires?
| klelatti wrote:
| Architect (singular) and Gelsinger didn't rehire - his move back
| as CEO was a factor in the individual concerned's decision to
| rejoin.
|
| Pretty disappointing headline from Anandtech.
| herodoturtle wrote:
| Yeah I tend to agree with you.
|
| They did say right at the end: _As we can see, Pat is already
| having an effect before his name is even on the door at HQ._
|
| But the way I read this headline, it kinda sounds like Pat
| actively rehired folk.
| klelatti wrote:
| It's a nice story and good for Intel that can attract a
| talented ex designer back - but the overdoing of the title is
| unnecessary and counterproductive.
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