intelinsider

Also, while it is true that I did sign an NDA, it listed very specific things that I'm not allowed to disclose, and internal policies and procedures were not on the list.

I haven't been fired. I am in a weird limbo state where part of the bureaucracy thinks I've been suspended but other parts know that this is just an administrative error and are trying to fix it. So I'm still being paid, I'm just unable to actually do any work because my security credentials were accidentally revoked (because part of the bureaucracy thought I was due to be fired because someone entered the wrong date into the system) and no one seems to know how to restore them despite the fact that everyone agrees that this is what needs to be done.

And, like I said, this is not an isolated incident. I don't know if this particular problem has ever happened to anyone else, but I have experienced similar issues that have affected others in addition to myself. This sort of thing happens regularly. No one is at all surprised by it. There are multiple processes that are deeply broken with no possibility of fixing them.

Here is another example: the design group I work with has been assigned a shared storage area of 100GB -- and no, that is not a typo: one hundred gigabytes shared across a dozen engineers. And we do chip design, so we generate lots of data. Needless to say, that shared storage is always very nearly full, and we get regular emails nagging us to delete stuff that we no longer need. So we have a dozen engineers spending time triaging their data in order to save a few dollars on storage costs. Yes, it is every bit as insane as it sounds. I once tried to point out that this is insane, with the result being that I was admonished for being a troublemaker. So now I don't bother any more.

So there is no doubt in my mind that at least some of Intel's troubles are entirely of their own making, and I'm in a position to know.

I work for Intel, so here is a first-hand data point: I have worked for a number of large organizations in my career, including the U.S. government and several large companies, but Intel is the hands-down champion of dysfunctional bureaucracy. Case in point: last week I took a week off. When I came back, I discovered that my remote access had been disabled. It turns out that my contract happened to be up for renewal during the week I was off and someone entered an incorrect date, so I was effectively fired while I was away but I was not notified, nor was anyone in my chain of command. This happened on Monday, and today is Friday, and they still have not managed to get me reinstated. And that is just the most recent in a long list of similar incidents.

So yes, Intel's market failures cannot be attributed entirely to financialization. They have screwed up in many, many ways.