Comment by ksec | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ksec | Hacker News Reader

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We have a whole article on Intel's Board and not a single word on Andy Bryant?

Andy Bryant was large part of the reason Pat Gelsinger left Intel in the first place.

He has been the Chairman of the Board since 2012 and on the board as Vice Chairman for even longer. So yes, all the strategy and direction of Intel's CEO in the past 10 years prior to Pat Gelsinger can be attributed to him.

He also handpicked all the Intel CEO since Paul Otellini.

Pat was called number of times to be backed as next CEO to save Intel during and after Brian Krzanich 's era. He said "no" every time.

Pat agree to be new CEO to replace interim or later official CEO Bob Swan after Andy Bryant's announced his retirement in early 2020. Handing it over to his friend Omar Ishrak.

The share-holding part was the reason why Intel cant cut off its dividends the first thing Pat came back. They only wanted Intel to keep handing out those dividends.

And ultimately it was the Shareholders or Wall Street, handing out Board Membership to their circles until it is run to the ground.

Well said. Everyone kept acting like Intel “should be” an innovator but was somehow failing, when the shareholders were running it as a cash cow all along. Rightly or wrongly, they decided a long time ago that it would be more lucrative for Intel to be in decline, and that became self-fulfilling.

> the shareholders were running it as a cash cow all along

Those shareholders have seen an average dividend yield of 2.83% [1] in the past 5 years. In the meantime, the inflation rate has been 2.43%. And if you're about to say 'stock buybacks are more tax-efficient' the stock price is down 63% over that period.

If you think that's a cash cow, you should see what an amazing deal 5-year treasury bills are, with their jaw-dropping 4% return on investment.

[1] https://ycharts.com/companies/INTC/dividend_yield

GP probably means the 2010s, during which the board milked the company instead of investing.

Indeed, that is what I meant. And the fact that it is a poorly-performing cash cow now does not mean it is not run as a cash cow.

You can run something as a cash cow and not get tons of money out, just like you can run something like a star without actually being successful.

Intent != outcome

This is another reason that any federal investment in Intel should have strings attached.

I think Intel should just be bypassed entirely. Each node is such a leap in process it requires entirely new fabs. At that point going with the poorly run incumbent is pointless.

A few facts about intel. Wages have been stagnant there for over 20years now. Just recently they had wage reductions across the company and there’s been layoffs for those 20years of stock declines. Tsmc in Taiwan literally pays double on a ppp basis (it’s not even that far off on a direct dollar to dollar basis). Even china has been poaching from intel. Look up the Chinese government funded Lianqiu Lake R&D Center, they are offering more for talent in raw $ terms in a custom built luxury city. And yes I get that if you were born in the USA you probably want to stay there but there’s no hope of intel poaching international talent anymore.

Do you know what the current boards plan is? More layoffs and lower wages. Like how the fuck can they compete without talent which they haven’t had for over 20years now. Everyone there knows it’s a stepping stone job. Do the bare minimum in hire and jump as soon as the next opportunity arises. And the government wants to give funding to this short sighted turd.

Intel is hugely bloated.

- Intel: 126,000 employees

- AMD: 26,000 employees

- TMSC: 76,000 employees

- NVIDIA: 29,000 employees

If you add AMD (design) + TSMC (fab) it's not that far off from Intel (who does both, and sells >3x AMD by units). Clearly there are struggles at Intel but the simple math doesn't explain it.

You’d need to split that by business segment.

Intel has more foundries than even tsmc and the others don’t have foundries.

AMD 26K + TSMC 76K = 102k ~=~ INTEL (126K - 15K) = 110k

You might want to compare by operation.

Intel is also invested outside cpu and gpu architecture.

It does. No share buybacks for example.

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