I spent a couple of years at Intel Hillsboro as an engineer, and left the company months ago. Now I'm enjoying a much healthier and pleasant working environment at my new company. It feels like enjoying breeze on beach of Hawaii with beers, after eating rotten meat.
I don't think i would be able to find a company being political & toxic at such a high level. There are many smart people at Intel and I feel sorry for them for working in such an environment.
- Many managers are busy with their political games, instead of doing actual 'management'
Many managers don't 'manage' employees, they manipulate them. They don't care if their employees actually grow along the time, or be initiative and creative on new ideas. They only care whether his employees actually deliver what he asks them to do. Surprisingly, they look to hate employees who is being creative and motivated. I heard one manager saying: "that guy asked me for some difficult new tasks. I simply let him work on a boring and daunting one and after that he never asked for it". And my personal experience: i proposed to my manager several times on potential new ideas\innovations, he simply ignored them. Also some managers reject high profile candidates simply because certain candidate is referred by someone he dislikes.
- Some so called 'senior\staff' engineers are extremely arrogant AND ignorant.
I used to see a senior engineer commenting peer's code in dirty words, and ironically his point was wrong. Once I proposed a new idea to a senior peer, he didn't seem to understand but he responded:"I don't think your idea is gonna be supported by management". These 'senior\staff' carefully pick their teammates. They never pick ones who are willing to learn and grow, because that'll jeopardize their position at the company. If you are creative, willing to learn, you'll never be able to work with them. They simply ban you from the team, and their meetings\email threads. At the same time they are so complacent with their outdated knowledge and skill sets, and consider they are on top of the world. At any time if you outperform your senior peers, they feel offended - and after some time, you will be out of the game.
I want to emphasize that not everyone at Intel is like what I described above. There are still smart and nice people. but unfortunately they are under the shadow of bad asses.
After Intel, people sometimes asked me, 'Why Intel is going downwards?' 'How Intel lost mobile market?' 'Why doesn't Intel produce AI chips?' 'Why huge layoff?' i've got my answer..