Shedding some light on Craig Barrett:
<< Message #142510 from Michael Gat at Aug 30, 2001 3:24 PM
> Normally, people who study engineering and or finance are lousy at the vision thing. <
Barrett is an Engineeer... >>
I worked for Craig Barrett. In fact, he hired me into his group in Technology Development (Intel's R & D). I shared an office with Craig and another engineer (a chemical engineer).
Barrett had excellent technical skills. Besides the usual b.s. (Ph.D., actually), he was an excellent hands-on problem solver. Very quick to grasp points. When I worked for him, starting in 1974, he had even written programs for his HP-65 programmable calculator (really, a computer). This was not all that common amongst metallurgy/materials science/chem eng people, so it says something about his computer interests.
Later, he led Reliability Engineering (lots of chances for contact with customers, vendors, designers, assembly, marketing), Telecom and Automotive (customers, running a division), Assembly, and then eventually all of Manufacturing.
He's a tough person to work for, in many ways. But technically sharp and inquisitive in the same ways that the Troika were/are (the Troika being Noyce, Moore, and Grove).
As for vision, these are tough times. I'm personally confident that Intel is now mostly "firing on all cylinders," with fewer screw-ups than a couple of years ago and with the groundwork being laid for a new surge.
I worry much less about Barrett than about the guys coming along behind him.
--Tim May |
