News Ex-Intel CEO Brian Krzanich gets a new job, igniting a massive backlash — new employer Cerence disables social media comments after blistering crit...

[JRStern]

This is how it works, major players stay major players no matter what.
CEO always gets some blame, but face it, the major screw-ups were several levels down.

 

[thestryker]

You could not be more wrong. BK was the supposed manufacturing and process expert, and on his watch, he let the manufacturing and processes stagnant. Instead he focused on drones and wearables and silly toys like charging bowls. And all that pales in comparison to his legacy "America's Greatest Makers" - an absolute joke from beginning to end. He paid Mark Burnett north of $50M to create the dumbest TV show of all time and put the world's most awkward dork - Brian Krzanich - as one of the judges. Otellini didn't lose process leadership. Otellini didn't bungle manufacturing. That was all under BKs watch before he became CEO and it was under his watch after becoming CEO and he fumbled it all.

Add in banging, and marrying one of his employees. Add in having an affair with his TA and then giving her a VP title 3 years out of college. Add in the most egregious insider trading I've ever seen as he sold literally every single share of stock he was allowed to right before announcing the Spectre bug.

And, if we're talking about appeasing the investor class, that was all Bob Swan with his nonstop stock buybacks. Otellini didn't have phone processors for Apple, was committed to Atom, and it would have taken years to do anything with the ARM license. But it was BK that allowed process and manufacturing to die on that vine.

Otellini oversaw the largest (until the current is completed) layoffs in Intel's history, sold off the Arm unit, made sure Atom wasn't competitive, tried to do foundry on Intel's terms and unlimited buyback authority started with him. These are just the highlights that I can remember without doing a dive. He absolutely set the path Intel was on and inherited the major success (Core) from his predecessor.

Krzanich was hardly a good CEO and I made that quite clear, but blaming all of Intel's problems on him is massive load of revisionist history.

 

[bit_user]

This is not news, they were major censors over the last five years.

I don't get what you and @Integr8d are even on about. Linked In didn't censor those posts! They give the company power to do that, on threads under its posts! This was a comments section under its announcement that it hired him as CEO. It's not like this was some general, public discussion area and they just swooped in and started deleting posts!

Geez. Triggered much?

 

[bit_user]

Otellini ... made sure Atom wasn't competitive

How?

He absolutely set the path Intel was on

That provides zero excuse to anyone who followed not doing what they could to right the ship.

 

[thestryker]

How?

Early Atom shipping products were designed on a node behind and once shifted to out-of-order performance was lower than it could have been. There was always a line of protecting the core business at all costs going through Otellini's tenure. I like to think the reasoning here was that they thought Core would scale down (ex: there was talk of 4W IVB) enough that Atom's performance wouldn't matter at the more premium end of the segment.

That provides zero excuse to anyone who followed not doing what they could to right the ship.

It's not an excuse simply a fact.

The point being made, which you apparently missed, is that you cannot look at one person in isolation then blame them for problems that started before. You can, and should, absolutely blame them for not fixing it/changing trajectory.

 

[bit_user]

Early Atom shipping products were designed on a node behind

How do we know they would've been economically viable, on the latest node? Was there enough capacity, on those production lines? I'm just thinking there could've been other reasons than actively trying to torpedo it.

The point being made, which you apparently missed,

I missed nothing.

 

[Pierce2623]

Your opinion is automatically invalid because of that Cow College you’re representing.

All Intel CEOs since Andy Grove were failures. One has to blame the Intel board for hiring Krazinich after so many leaders quit Intel at that time. Was that Otellini's fault.

Anyway not sure what impressed this company that they hired Krazinich as CEO. its flabbergasting for sure. His conduct as Intel CEO was bad and so he had to abruptly leave as well.

I imagine his successful performance since leaving Intel was why they hired him rather than anything to do with Intel.