Intel's Interim CEO Bob Swan Gets the Job Permanently (venturebeat.com) 46
Intel has named interim CEO Robert Swan to the role on a permanent basis on Thursday while also naming a new interim chief financial officer. From a report: [Former CEO] Krzanich resigned last June under somewhat peculiar circumstances, after he was found to have engaged in a "consensual relationship" with an employee a while back. The relationship, which only came to light much later, violated an internal "non-fraternization policy" that applies to all senior managers. Swan began his career at General Electric and spent nine years as chief financial officer (CFO) of eBay. He later joined investment firm General Atlantic, before leaving to become Intel's CFO in 2016 -- a role he has continued to hold while serving as interim CEO.
Re: (Score:2)
Often the Best CEO for the companies are not actively involved in product design. (The Steve Jobs model is more the exception then the reality).
The finance guys as CEO is often a better choice, because decisions will be based on numbers and less from Ego, or personal interest of the product at hand.
Too often the CEO of tech companies gets too involved in the technology, pushing bad decisions, because with the power granted to CEO, there will not be too many people who will say that is a dumb idea.
However as
Re: (Score:2)
The finance guys as CEO is often a better choice, because decisions will be based on numbers and less from Ego, or personal interest of the product at hand.
No. The finance guy as CEO will make boring decisions that will result in stagnation. You need an idea guy who is smart enough to listen to his CFO.
Re: (Score:2)
When you are the market leader, sometime the boring decisions are the better one. There were a lot of companies that went out of business, because they stuck with the high growth CEO, where they rush to the top, and when they get there the CEO freaks out and tosses the baby out with the bathwater. Because things seem stagnate, because there isn't someone else ahead of them to beat. So they go into a new market to fight to the top. This often prevents putting resources into the companies core services, w
Re: (Score:2)
When you are the market leader, sometime the boring decisions are the better one.
Like I said, he has to be smart enough to listen to the CFO. He also has to be smart enough to know when to take a risk. And finally, he has to actually care about the company's future. Most CEOs seem to have none of these qualifications :p
Re: (Score:3)
Right. Specifically Intel is a now high profit company that is losing out in all the new very high growth markets while there is danger of commoditization of their cash cows. For now, explosive growth in the cloud is pumping sales for server CPUs, but as the software industry learns to build complex software to take advantage of distributed computing, the highly profitable new Intel CPUs are offering less value to the customer.
The key here is there is nothing a CEO can do that will show traction and give
Re: (Score:2)
Specifically Intel is a now high profit company that is losing out in all the new very high growth markets while there is danger of commoditization of their cash cows. For now, explosive growth in the cloud is pumping sales for server CPUs, but as the software industry learns to build complex software to take advantage of distributed computing, the highly profitable new Intel CPUs are offering less value to the customer. Intel is not even the best chipmaker in the world anymore -- they cannot compete for
Re: (Score:2)
For now, explosive growth in the cloud is pumping sales for server CPUs
And especially pumping the sales of AMD's Epyc, doubling its share last quarter.
Re: (Score:2)
When you are the market leader, sometime the boring decisions are the better one.
Right, and it's a great way to ensure the the company declines in the long run to make way for better companies with better leaders.
from Krzanich to Swan (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3)
Buy High and sell low. Sounds good when you know the outcome. However when do you know if it is a just a fad, or a trend. sometimes a fad looks like a trend, and people buy too late.
R&D if done correctly will also run into dead ends. Science and Research doesn't always give you the outcome you want.
Putting capital in orthogonal market trends, we are back trying to figure if it is just a fad or a real trend.
Selling profitable divisions. This is a complex issue, if you want to grow your company, by sel
Hire an Engineering Leader, not a Financial one (Score:5, Insightful)
If you have a leader who comes from a financial background, they will tend to lead in that direction. If you have a engineering background you will tend to lead that direction. It's what each knows and you shouldn't blame them. They are who they are, but is this the direction for your technology company?
Intel used to be lead by former engineers or minds of that leaning. They would be wise to get back there.
Re: (Score:2)
I think it's been clear for quite a while now the board has decided to liquidate and cash out, and are hiring CEOs who can help them do that in a way that leaves someone else holding a lot of debt.
Re: (Score:2)
but is this the direction for your technology company?
Is this the direction for a company dedicated to the art of making money? I mean I understand what you're saying, but the share price is saying that the company is quite healthy.
I mean the last time Intel had a tech CEO was Barrett, and he left the company with a pretty damn poor shareprice compared to today. Those damn finance people seem to have done quite well (save for the 2008 market crash).
The board and share holders don't care about exciting new technology or faster and faster computers.
Re: (Score:2)
"Intel used to be lead by former engineers or minds of that leaning. They would be wise to get back there."
Up to this point Intel was lead by former engineers. So it's engineers that got them to their current situation.
Do some good (Score:1)
Get your temp spikes/max TDP down (and start accurately reporting max TDP)
If your K series of CPUs are meant for OCing, dont release a CPU that cant OC due to heat (e.g., 7700K)
Stop moving on to new chipsets so often and misleading the consumer about why (8700K really needs a z370 chipset? really??)
Stay committed to single thread performance
Dont use a goddamn 1000w industrial water cooler in product demonstrations
Solder your heatspreaders, or at least use decent thermal paste
Dont screw up your discrete GPU
Way more bathwater than babies (Score:2)
When I was at Intel, they were chasing what ever was getting press.
Wii? Let's do video gaming with motion controllers. Until we can't and wander off in another direction.
Set-top boxes, we can dominate! The sales guys were obsessed with "a dollar and a dollar"; getting a cut from both ad revenue -and- silicon.
Car Infotainment? Yeah, we can do that! Except the OEM demo hardware they sent out was crashing inexplicably for months.
The best part with the hardware was that, of all things, the radio section didn't
Re: (Score:2)
They made -so- much money off of chips that they struggled to burn it up.
They should have spent more on process technology, obviously.
Hmmmmm . . . . ??? (Score:2)