Non-employee here, but one that in a former life used to program Intel microcontrollers (8051) and of course PC's.
I'd like some candid thoughts on what went wrong?
Did the employee mindset change? Was it outsourced? When did it begin?
Did the company become reliant on too high of margin chips?
Did they stop innovating?
How did this giant fall so low and can they recover?
No, it’s simpler than that: Awful management who is unable to make decisions. ELT should be fired.
OP here. Yeah, I've sort of been in a cave for 20 years. At least haven't been doing anything close to the chips for a while.
I still have Processor manuals for Intel 80x86 going some as old as September 1985, "Introduction to the 80386". Those were good days. Wish I could go back.
Anyway thanks all for your thoughts. Woke, second-tier, DEI, and the cash cow crowding out smaller / creosote bush, chancier projects all make sense.
@8051 programmer, nice story... I am EE and also did early embedded work on Intel micros and later went to work for the company.
Intel downfall is multifaceted, but I would simplify it to Intel being 100% focused on maximizing success in vertical integration around proprietary processor. During period of weak competition and high growth in pc, notebook and server it was pretty smooth... But Intel became very lazy and bloated. Anytime Intel tried to enter new market via I eternal growth or acquisition it simply could not generate any staying power. In part, internal competition from internal groups contributed to the demise of anything outside the core. aSG called the problem, Intel's creosote bush... Look it up ... A desert plant that consumes all adjacent resources. One example, powerful TMG / TD didn't help and even sabotaged any silicon projects that needed different process and libraries compared to high speed processor.
This is a vast generalization of what happened and there are many many elements of TBE failure but to me this is what Intel calls ' root cause' analysis. By contrast, look at Microsoft or n India they enter new markets and stick to it until they win. They have a wider product line and much better diversification.
Intel went woke, now they're going broke. It started when RAT took over HR.
Starts with an I and ends with a s? A word that shall not be uttered around these forums but everyone knows what I am talking about. I am a minority within Intel myself and sitting through some of these meetings..oof! its so rough and lopsided with complete lack of any meaningful diversity of thought or people....bunch of one trick ponies all larping as tech geniuses falling over each other brownosing to brownoser....talk about echo chambers. It is a completely insular circle of insufferable second tier academics who think that they are changing the world one chip at a time whilst forgetting the fact that the world outside has already left them behind in the dust.
Here's my opinion. I'm a former employee who left several years ago. Intel got arrogant when it had a dominant lead over AMD around 2016 time frame and the former CEO, BK, decided it would be able to reduce head count and shift resources to smartphone chips and wearables. BK also didn't value the employees by keeping compensation competitive. Profit per share increased for a few years, but the talent Intel didn't retain and didn't hire went to other companies such as AMD, NVIDIA, Apple. In the last 5 years, these companies started producing better products. Diversity and Inclusion was another distraction for the company. It's the right thing to do, but it was done without additional budget and with too ambitious goals, so non-diverse employees suffered and fueled more resentment within the company. I saw the writings on the wall and left more than 4 years ago. Only now has what I expected to happen fully take place. Pat has done all the right things since taking over, but it will take a few years before the turnaround take shape. I'm rooting for Intel to recover though since competition is good for engineers. Competition enables employees to change companies and negotiate better compensation. I don't want AMD or TSMC to become a monopoly.
Innovator's Dilemma, Dunning-Kruger CEOs from the early 2000s, giving up the the fight over future talent then cutting labor costs by recruiting at 3rd tier schools and 3rd tier H1Bs, missing the mobile revolution, tried to go woke with more DEI hires to gloss over fundamental tech execution issues, financing engineering over actual engineering. We didn't start the fire ...
Unless you have been living in a cave since after programming with 8051, it would have been very obvious. Intel has been a destroyer of shareholder wealth from very early on, even before dotcom bust.
Just a couple of years ago they were buying back shares at $50+ and look where the stock price is now.