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Comment by gwbas1c | Hacker News Reader

I worked at Intel 2005-2007. I read the article hoping to see an independent description of the culture I observed. I hoped to see someone use words to explain something that I can't explain.

The thing about Intel's culture that I observed was that it wasn't toxic at all. The worst thing that I could say about it was that it was boring, which was why I left so quickly.

If anything was "toxic," it could be that some managers and co-workers had very bad people skills... But that happens at all large companies. HR can't witness and guide every interaction between employees. In reality, when I was there, Intel's HR made every effort to create a culture where, if something "toxic" happened, they could fix the situation as quickly as possible.

Granted, things did happen. The "toxic" situations were more of ordinary human nature, and can happen anywhere, even in non work situations.

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At a big corporation, like Intel, we cannot really talk about just one culture. I would say that your experience can vary quite a lot based on the team you’re in and to a certain degree the org you’re in.

Various people assign the ‘toxic’ label to various things. What may be ‘meh’ for one person could be ‘toxic’ to another.

Also: Mandatory HR is not your friend reminder. HR is there and it’s trained to protect the corporation.

> At a big corporation, like Intel, we cannot really talk about just one culture. I would say that your experience can vary quite a lot based on the team you’re in and to a certain degree the org you’re in.

Slightly. Ultimately, the high-level culture is set by the execs.

> Various people assign the ‘toxic’ label to various things. What may be ‘meh’ for one person could be ‘toxic’ to another.

No, definitions are important. The word "toxic culture" has a very clear meaning; and the article does not use it correctly.

Specifically, toxic culture means an environment that leads to high stress and poor mental health. That's not what the article discussed, and it's completely appropriate to criticize. A "toxic culture" is a very serious accusation, so incorrectly using the term isn't something that falls under the "I say toe-may-toe, you say toe-mah-toe" attitude.

Re: definitions are important

Yes and no. Some of the biggest conflicts I’ve seen started because of misunderstanding ‘basic words’. So definitions matter in the sense that they help clarify intent. But they also can make things harder if you insisting on a certain definition comes across as condescending.

Possibly true but irrelevant here, since the OP does not come across as condescending, and their distinction between Intel’s culture and a toxic culture is making it easier to understand Intel.

And yes, the high level execs do have to shape the culture, but it’s far from the formal “we want things to happen like X” and it’s usually a live/evolving process that happens over years, and it’s usually tailored at org and team level.

Sometimes the high level directives are great but the culture sucks, sometimes (less offen) the culture is great in spite of high-level.

>Slightly. Ultimately, the high-level culture is set by the execs.

Depends on the size and the structure under which the institution operates. If there's autonomy within an institution execs might attempt to set a culture, but they can obviously not control it and the result will be a mix of organic bottom-up developments that diverge from section to section, and top-down guidelines.

At a company the size of Intel, with over 100k employees, it is almost impossible to have an iron grip on the entire workforce.

HR can be your friend, when the interest of the company, and your interest happen to align, which in my experience is more often than not.

But its important to recognize, that HR is only to your benefit, when interests align, the OP is right, that HR is not there to protect you, but to protect the company, sometimes protecting you however, is protecting the company as well.

>HR can be your friend, when the interest of the company, and your interest happen to align, which in my experience is more often than not.

I think that very much depends on how HR decides to view things.

Someone complains about another coworker's behavior.

"Oh man we better protect the company by addressing that person's behavior."

"Oh man we better protect the company by addressing the person who complained."

Just about every HR situation can go in a lot of directions, it just depends on what HR decides their best choice is. The problem as an employee is that you DON'T KNOW what HR thinks or will do, pretty much ever.

HR as an organization has all your personal information, and HR groups expect / requires you share that with them .... but generally you have no relationship with them and no reason to trust them. It's a weird situation.

I really don't think that's the definition of a friend.

> Various people assign the ‘toxic’ label to various things. What may be ‘meh’ for one person could be ‘toxic’ to another.

So in your view, does toxic culture have shared meaning or not?

For me ‘toxic culture’ means high stress, agressive unwarranted behaviour and dehumanizing the people to justify things.

"Far more serious than just a lack of professional competence was the utmost contempt for human dignity…"

https://projectfailures.wordpress.com/2008/06/24/project-fro...

:O speechless

With re:

>Also: Mandatory HR is not your friend reminder. HR is there and it’s trained to protect the corporation

That I will not dispute. However, I would also say that _everyone_ is there for the progress of the company. We’re all hired to do what’s good for the company, not the boss, manager, subordinate, colleague, etc. Now, yes, HR has a special direct role to execute that goal.

Not always. I once worked for a company that had an ombudsperson who reported only to the CEO. The ombuds' job was to investigate employees' complaints without fear of being fired him/herself. In that company, the system worked well.

Agree with this, Intel is as boring as big bureaucratic government contractors, much to my dismay (and quite different from 90's software giants, which seem to move at a faster pace). Their processing and manufacturing lead can only keep them going for so long until they find some visionary leadership that can revitalize the company from the bottom up.

I never worked for Intel but they were clients for a number of years and I wrote an in-depth strategic analysis of them at one point.

"Toxic" seems a poor choice of phrase based on everything I've seen. Boring--which is to say very heavily into process in all things--is perhaps apropos.

Their biggest issue was projecting x86 into everything. Either by assuming they had the ability to push ecosystems into existence by dint of being Intel (see WiMax) or by inventing essentially non-reasons why x86 would succeed in areas like mobile (Flash will run better if it's the same architecture as desktop).

Was it obvious back then that Flash would be dead by now, Microsoft gives up on phones, x86 fails at gaining any foothold in the phone business and intel fails at performing the next structure shrink?

It wasn't obvious that Flash would be dead. But it still seemed an odd hook (at least to me at the time) on which to hang mobile needing to be on the same architecture as desktop.

I get why Intel was pushing x86. OTOH, they also pushed on other architectures for networking which also didn't pan out for other reasons.

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