Thread regarding Intel Corp. layoffs

"Reminds me of Shawshank Redemption where Brooks after a jailed life of 50 years when pardoned commits suicide"

Excellent analogy. System ingests starry eyed young people at one end and spits dissipated, disillusioned, inconfident, depleted ones at the other.

Think PTD hires PhDs to get around the H1 and green card hurdles. A good initial investment for permanent wage slaves.

Everything good until the next CEO!!!!

Oh @jhz, you forgot one of the biggest con for preference! AGE

True @1qbx...

There is no coherent law of land is here. Some Engineers are preferred for their color(white/non white depending on the individual manager), some for their gender, some for their grad school (Ivy/Tier), some for their original affiliation (CR/PTD/D1D/D1C) and the list for comparison continues.

So there are innumerable such instances which has made this organization involved in foul play rather than meritocracy and fair evaluation.

The most posts here have been depicted from the perspective of a Engineer who joined PTD from start. I am a D1C Engineer and now PTD engineer after PTD/D1D/D1C merge.

From my perspective another feature of Intel emerges which nobody has mentioned yet. Even though officially I am part of PTD now, but unofficially there is a large chunk of class system between the engineers at D1C/PTD. A subtle ebb of impression is between the Managers that the PTD engineers are supposed for blue collar jobs (eg even whatever minimal process development work is done), however, for us who was not a part if PTD from start, we are supposed to do the menial jobs.

This class/caste system is ingrained in Intel Culture. The root cause of arrogance and misrule is this not difficult to trace.

“In essence what PTD engineers are valued for is to work like dogs and think like donkeys. That makes the ideal and most loved PTD Engineer”

Golden simply Golden what an amazing accurate discription of the wasting of US PhDs education system at Intel.

😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

The logic at Intel or more precisely at PTD has been very simple. Advertise to the world outside that PTD does work which is out of the box and insanely high tech and PTD Engineers are the smartest whizkids which Intel got.

But in real inside, make the Engineers slaves of the management and follow the rules whatever they have waterfalled from the upper chain of the management.

In essence what PTD engineers are valued for is to work like dogs and think like donkeys. That makes the ideal and most loved PTD Engineer.

A word of saying for PTD :

A worthless and low grade engineer if knows to backbite and yell, will make a great Manager.

Then the company got filled with such Managers and the rest is history.

Well said @anp.

That essentially summarizes the groups we have left at Intel.

And quite clearly, since the last group rules/will rule there is no way Intel will do anything else but beating their own drum at PR events.

Frankly speaking there is not much to say about PTD per se.

They hire a bunch of PhDs (smart/stupid does not matter). Give them some repeatative work which actually require no brain.

After couple of years, some/most of the bright ones depart and finally at the end of the day, four different groups remain.

One group who are stupid/without much skills/ feel secure to stay and insecure to move out because they know, they have nothing much to get hired to a decent company.

The other group, consists of smart people, but have gained some good stocks over the years and

do not want any financial loss from unvested stocks.

Group 3, are the kind, who think, it creates a good impression to outside world to say that they are part of Intel. Society outside thinks people at intel are smart and doing some huge innovation work.

The last group are the most important ones. They are the ones who know that Intel is a company exactly for them. Their skills are the ones which is the most wanted here. Politics, ability to torture, arrogance, pride, mass manoeuvre, backbiting and greed for power. These people have all of these and many times by excess. So why will they leave this place???

@tek - re: SMG:PTD - If you start a separate thread, I will contribute. I don't want to detract from the really good PTD conversation here.

The main problem with PTD aid that it’s part of mother Intel. The TD and wafer manufacturing should be a standalone P&L business so the layers and layers of manegement can learn to be competitive by serving a slew of customers. The ICF effort was such a joke, and no customer ever took them seriously. TMG needs to learn to sink or swim. ARM has the scale advantage now.

I truly agree with discussion board. PTD being at the fulcrum of the innovation for newer technologies has been totally ruined by ego, anarchism, arrogance,reticence and pigheadedness.

Only one word to describe - insanely corrupt organization, Period.

@qbj please expand on the similarities between smg and ptd.

This post has become very interesting and reflective of the actual inner world at PTD. It's not only about tools, look everywhere and everybody will see the signature of brutally toxic and primitive culture.

I know a bunch of PhDs in Biology who handle PTD integration.

Without any bias for any subject, it is quite established that bio majors are not known for their quantiative/analytical skills, which is the most needed for Integration.

But again who cares????

As a long time PTD engineer, the recent structure of PTD (officially there is no PTD though), is more than enough to put the last nail in the coffin.

A bunch of large number of incompetent GL’s and AM’s who have no knowledge and understanding apart from providing some meaningless AR’s to engineers totally unrelated to process development.

Can anybody imagine that a process class is offered to Engineers in some quarters, which is just 3 hours long? The whole semiconductor FINFET process in 3 hours? Is it for dummies? This totally speaks about the culture at PTD and the Intel Management.

However, new RCG’s are pretty happy. Most of them never thought they will ever in their life get the amount of money Intel offered them after school for the skills they have.

This the only company which does not care for what your expertise/major/interest is. In your whole grad school you may have never heard of the word lithography, but still get hired in PTD/D1 litho. Why not?, after all at the end of the day, what you are expected to do is to maintain some tools, nothing else.

Who is the biggest achiever in this company, a engineer who can baby sit the tools..... If that makes you happy, your manager will be happy.

So why we are trailing, the answer lies within.

This is fascinating. You could have substituted 'SMG' for 'PTD' and I wouldn't have seen the difference. But PTD/TMG is ultimately the litmus test for success or failure of Intel. If the next CEO is an internal choice, then the goose is fully cooked.

Great posts, everyone.

@U6tzNgn-srb There are no competent independent thinking people at PTD. A bunch of yes men driven by bias and fear and direction of one person. Innovation and dialogue and open honest communication and evaluation of new ideas is non existent currently. Anyone who has it has it beaten out of him, or beaten and managed out of company

U6tzNgn-rog.

Intel has experienced people that know how to develop process and methodologies and could change the future of 10 and 7 nm, but they are not accepted in PTD, because too experienced!

And this is not a joke.

The little real expertise of few GLs and AMs is some skill on how to run DOEs, thousands of wasted wafers, with conditions far from the real solution and a lack of data summerizing.

Scary?

A few years ago PTD stood ahead of the industry and the decade of leadership gave them arrogance beyond beliefthat their was the way that would work, no they were just lucky and luck has run out on them bozos

A few posters touched on competence and it is frightening and not a surprise that 10nm is a FUBAR. Ask those on the front line about fundamentals of etch, litho, polish and deposition and the process engineers know nothing. The little real expertise resides in a few GLs and AMs who are stretched beyond capabilit trying to juggle too many priorities and issues from 14, 10, 7 and 5. It is whack a mole and the 14nm mole delayed the 10 and will impact 7 and 5. The house of cards has collapsed and it is a spectacular circus in Hillsboro these days.

It was obvious years ago but management failed to evolve, it actually has regressed and is micromanaged with fear, it is one way or the highway management. Won’t change or get fixed without a complete house cleaning which would only delay 10nm more.

Lucky new CEO and BoD and what a fun future!

What is wrong with PTD!!

The answer is very simple--> PTD does everything but R&D.

Tons of money given to graduates just after college, and these days in the name of diversitevery, in most cases both partners get into the same place. Minting tons of money, pretty comfortable life, blindly obey the manager, flirt/date with ET/FSE to get the job done.

After all who cares for engineering/fundamental skills here. The only thing you should be competent is to show and manage. Rest will be cake walk, even if you are a graduate in literature.

Very true and relevant. Without exaggerating, work at PTD can be very successfully done by Associate or Bachelor degree holders with scanty/minimal training. What Ph.D. engineers are allowed to do in the disguise of R&D is anybody's guess.

I think nobody has yet communicated this to upper management. This can be a great source of cost-cutting. Whoever can bell the cat will get a promotion in the next focal of saving millions. Stock will hit $100 maybe...

New CEO can hit the jackpot!

I completely agree with the discussion here...

TMG shld have been open to external customers for fabrication.

The problem is people are just focusing on the sh-- they own and doesn't bother outside their scope.. this is not collaboration but saving your own a-- mentality.

I have seen people not taking informed risks ..they just freak about what if downstream flow breaks...and scared to go forward and have open thinking....

This is an outstanding and really serious topic initiated. Definitely, nothing is going to change at this paranoia generating company, at least not in many years if at all. However, that makes the topic more subtle and meaningful to discuss.

Whoever work/have worked at PTD knows that the Inner working world at Intel is just the marriage of opposites of instructions of not accepting the status quo and instructions of blindly following specs and BKM's.

And on the top of it in the name of Business Need to Know nobody wishes/dares to mingle in any territory which they have never seen before.

The result everybody has a bloated feeling of skills/knowledge.

The more a person stays at Intel. the more the real skills degrade and the more the person starts becoming unemployable in the outside world.

Cannot agree more. To add to it, what I have seen, the main purpose of hiring a Ph.D. Engineer at PTD is not to cultivate new thinking or development of a process but to manage and maintain tools 24X7 and follow BKM's.

The main task of Intel is to hire a Ph.D., keep them engaged in continuously boring mechanical stuff for years. However bright the person may have been, the wear and tear over the years makes one comfortable and blunt, to say the least.

Once the engineer has become comfortable enough, he knows this is all the life out there. There is nothing else he knows nor is able to go anywhere else. Just waiting for the worse to happen.

Reminds me of Shawshank Redemption where Brooks after a jailed life of 50 years when paroled has nothing to do but suicide.

This is precisely why the problems inside Intel will be nearly impossible to fix anytime soon.

Fully agree with both the views 👍

Excellent post. TMG culture of ignorance, arrogance and blindly following orders spread like a plague to the rest of the company during the reign of the skumbag klown, after all he was a TMG bozo from the start. This, along with the misguided and poorly implemented focus on 'diversity' and 'equity' has created a mediocre company in place of the meritocracy and excellence-driven company that Intel once was. Values that once made Intel great like constructive confrontation are completely gone.