Intel From Behind the Curtain 109
Good Morning Silicon Valley writes "So now that we've reached this postmodern understanding that all official corporate communication is, if not a charade, part of a ritualized dance where meaning must be divined between the lines, where do you turn to hear an executive talk straight? Why, to his or her blog, of course. Even more candid than the still-rare public executive blog is one meant just for internal consumption, and that's what makes Intel President Paul Otellini's postings such interesting reading. The Mercury News snagged a copy of Otellini's 8-week-old blog and found it full of frank interaction with employees on strategic initiatives and the competition."
Interesting (Score:5, Interesting)
I suppose seeing as he's the president that that would be sorta difficult.
Does anyone see the board coming down on him?
It's scary. (Score:5, Interesting)
A couple of cases come to mind:
Just last night, a mistrial was declared in a murder case because one of the witnesses had put stuff on the internet that made her seem less credible. The stuff had been taken down a long time ago but the cache was still there. (The trial is the 'Jonathan' trial in Toronto.)
Recently a bunch of brokers got nailed because the text messages they thought couldn't be intercepted were intercepted. The messages proved that they were plotting against their employer.
If you want to have a frank discussion with your employees, you have to be very very careful. Treat it as though it will become public and will be there forever.
Does it matter? (Score:3, Interesting)
I do not understand why "honesty" is something noone really cares for. The "candid" things a CEO might say is usually something everyone always knew. If Bill Gates said that Linux is a threat that must be watched closely... well d'uh.
For me the only real difference is the respect you gain by telling the truth. "Stupid Customers" that fall for those additional 5 GHz don't give a rats ass about such statements. Even if Linux was whooping MS's ass they would rather go petting a hedgehog than change what they have gotten used to.
But the respect you gain for someone that just tells the whole world the facts is worth a lot in my eyes. Because that will gain you attention from the people who will be advising their CEOs on whether that companies product will work reliably(!) and whether the support can be expected to be acceptable.
But that's just my opinion of course.
A funny techie answer (Score:5, Interesting)
however, when the jokes (and they are good!) are done, he goes on to offer a helpful reading list for the interested
It's a PR ploy (Score:4, Interesting)
While this is intended as an internal blog, I recognize that it will become public--welcome to the Internet! As a result, please recognize that I may be a bit limited in my comments and responses to protect Intel, and that we may exercise some editorial privilege on your comments for the same reason. I want to be clear on this up front. This is the price of entry to this blog.
Mercury News is putting quite a spin on this "internal" stuff.
did you see the PR part (Score:3, Interesting)
"Kudos to the PR exec who thought up this forum"
Apple, AMD, and convergence (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:You think the employees get the truth? (Score:3, Interesting)
And then two weeks later they laid off seven people. Because sales weren't meeting the projected quotas any more. WTF. We always have a downturn about this time of year, but now that we're corporate, that's unacceptable. Feh.
Re:"Customer Focus" (Score:4, Interesting)
However, its not always simple. Suppose you had an industrial robot company. Your guys have spent years successfully meeting the needs of industrial customers by making robots that are easy to integrate into different kinds of manufacturing situations, are modular, serviceable, and flexibly programmable.
Now you decide to make a Roomba competitor. The needs are different from what you are used to. The robot will be used for one purpose. It will not be user serviceable or maybe not serviceable at all, if it can be made cheap enough. It will perform one task only so it doesn't need to be programmable at all, except to perhaps handle several different precanned vacuuming routines.
Furthermore, the device will have requirements that are entirely new to you. It has to be very small. It has to be economical with power. It has to be mobile, and do things like maneuver around and fit under chairs. Above all, it has to be cute, maybe even have something that could be perceived as a personality.
I think, in a way, that this is actually fairly easy. You have so many new requirements, that your guys (and gals) have to start with a blank sheet. There's a certain appeal, like having a new field of snow to tramp around in.
What I think is hardest is when what you are doing is more or less right, but you have to track rapidly evolving customer needs. The necessary self-destructive work of tinkering with past successes is bound to be the hardest. So you've got a team that's focused on delivering raw computing power for ages and ages, but maybe power consumption is going to be an issue in the next generation of processors, or maybe the kinds of applications they run can't use the power the way they're planning on delivering it. I dunno, I'm not a CPU designer or design bigot, but I assume there are problems of this nature.
I do know geeks. If they have an idea they really like, it's going to be hard to get them off of it just because it may not be exactly what the customer is asking for.
It's called "reference design" (Score:1, Interesting)
Intel can become cool by creating cool reference designs for their chips. Employees who say "we're just a chip company" are really too blind.
BTX ain't it!
Re:It is still censored (Score:3, Interesting)
That's why executives play golf.