"the more inward and much harder and more painful physical things intel must fix"
_The inward gaze points one epidemic across Intel. The amount of overhead engineers spend in following mind numbing processes, approval chains and decision matrix-es. It is no understatement to say that all engineers spend a good 40% of their time in meetings where they do not solve real technical problems, but convince some clueless manager, program manager or a planner on why solving a specific technical problem deserves their approval. Those who are in charge of leading the ship have created a massive middle management layer in order to control the masses and make them accountable on a daily basis. When people are directly accountable to their managers, you wonder what value is added by four other matrix managers. If it takes so many matrix-ed managers to manage engineers' time, how eficient is the process. In smaller companies, engineers talk to each other directly to resolve issues..At Intel, it will have to first go through a committee before even it gets a hearing. Then 10 other deemed stakeholders spend 4 meetings to approve that engineer will spend two hours to fix the issue, bug, feature or whatever. Is it any surprise that innovation and execution at Intel are the envy of glaciers. Intel works slower than all big governments.
How do you expect Bain and Gartner ever to understand this culture of nano management, caps and controls at Intel?_
Time Will Tell