Which is missing the point that it doesn't make sense to lay the blame for this mess at his feet. What exact effect does a Senior VP have on driver quality?
His experience at AMD will have informed him just how critical drivers are + how much resources it takes for them to be competitive. As a Senior VP, he controls budgets, headcounts, project schedules, etc. If he can't be blamed, then it really seems like you can't blame anybody for this mess.
Intel has been coding GPU drivers forever for their iGPU's. By anyone's standards, the gaming side of them have been terrible. Did Intel replace the entire driver team when Raja was hired? How would that even have been possible? There's only two companies that had personnel with the knowledge to help Intel and AMD and Nvidia weren't about to let all their software engineers move to Intel.
So, the only way someone can know how to write good GPU drivers is by working at AMD and Nvidia? How did
they learn?
Look, I'm sure there are some ex-employees from various GPU vendors (don't forget about mobile GPUs) and Microsoft, who can be lured for the right price, not to mention current and former game engine developers. He hired on in Nov. 2017, which seems like plenty of time to staff up and re-invigorate the driver team, if it had been identified as an issue.
Raja is not the person who is going to teach Intel's software engineers to code proper DX11 drivers.
I'm beginning to think you have no idea what a Senior VP does.
Of course he doesn't, but that doesn't mean he's not responsible for making sure the drivers are up to scratch on launch day!