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Technology Stocks : Intel Corporation (INTC) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: wanna_bmw who wrote (154750)	1/10/2002 11:45:03 PM
From: Jim McMannis	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 186894

RE:"They don't sit in cubicles all day in front of a computer, if that's what you mean. But I guess it all depends on what your definition of "engineer" is." I thought you worked at Intel. Must be in a FAB or something. I thought everyone had a cubicle at Intel. Even Craig Barrett. Engineers usually have engineering degrees or some related science degree or at least have acted in that capacity. I don't the definition is that hard. Jim

To: wanna_bmw who wrote (154750)	1/11/2002 3:27:42 AM
From: tcmay	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 186894

"Jim, Re: "Andy Grove and most all the upper management are Engineers aren't they? Who else made the decisions?" "They don't sit in cubicles all day in front of a computer, if that's what you mean. "But I guess it all depends on what your definition of "engineer" is." The three prinicipal founders were of course scientists/engineers, mostly in chemical engineering and device physics. The concerns then were of things like oxidation and diffusion rates, silicon and germanium purity, etc. EE and computer design didn't enter the picture until many years (decades) later. Craig Barrett was trained as a metallurgist, now known as a "materials scientist." He was a professor of MS at Stanford, and was very good at doing basic experiments. (He hired me into Intel in '74, working in his group, and I worked for him off and on in various capacities until I left in '86.) Other top technologists at Intel were mostly Ph.D.s from Caltech (Gerry Parker, Ted Jenkins, Ron Whittier, etc.) and places like that. I believe most of them have now retired. (Remember that they started with Intel 30-33 years ago.) Paul Ottelini is a marketing type (a good one, I hear) and Mike Splinter is a fab manager type (ditto), What strikes me is that Intel has no really senior folks who are very strong in design and architecture. (Those who were in dominant positions some years back, like Bill Lattin, Jean-Claude Cornet, Glenn Myers, have all either retired or left.) John Crawford is still there, but I don't know how high up in the organization he is. For what it's worth, when I worked for Craig in '74 he had been programming his personal HP-65 for a year or two. That was pretty impressive for a manager to have been doing.... (The modern equivalent might be a manager competent in KDE or Gnome or Mathematica, as examples.) Intel's strength has always been its semiconductor prowess. This sounds obvious, but it bears repeating. It's why "so so" designs end up dominating: the sheer ability to crunch out 15 million Pentium 4s in one quarter makes up for a lot of architectural imperfections. --Tim May