The senior engineers I saw there are talented. And Intel has benefits and stock packages that rival those of big tech. I think I can expand on your point by saying the more senior engineers were risk averse and on the verge of retirement, and the young engineers were just there for the Intel name or some other reason. There is surprisingly very few middle-aged long-term people down there. This would be expected in software (Facebook/Google), but it is a recipe for disaster in hardware where long term thinking is critical to advance lithography (changed don't happen overnight). I also was surprised by how few of Intel's engineers believed in Intel. The most stark observation I made was senior engineers would max their stock purchase plan, but many young engineers would abstain. If the engineers don't believe in the product they are working on, I don't accept that the gov. must bail it out. I hope some investigative journalist writes a book on Intel and Boeing someday, as I would be curious as to how things unfolded and got to this point. There are many similarities (I never worked for Boeing, but have friends in Seattle that describe the culture in similar terms to what I saw at Intel). Also, to your last point, the Intel name does not hold as much weight as it did in the Grove days.