zlacker

Rant:

There are too many companies out there that started with a good product/service - and then bureaucrats took over. Smart companies minimize layers of management, and manager headcount. Bad companies don't - and they eventually are unable to grow/innovate. A shockingly high percentage of corporate America is parasitic management.

Intel happens to be in an industry that moves so fast that this doesn't work for long, relatively.

>>rybosw+(OP)
About 70 years ago, C Northcote Parkinson (of Parkinson's Law fame) wrote an essay on "injellitance" that you might enjoy.

>>rybosw+(OP)
It is not the layers of management that is the problem, it is the quality of management. While great engineers mind their own business and deliver great products, the people that are not great engineers manage their way into management. They are more and more incompetent and corrupt and this is killing the companies, slowly or not that slow. So it is incompetent and corrupt management, not too much management.

>>readth+a3
More here, Forbes 1989 article: https://adamsmitheconomics.wordpress.com/2010/05/02/how-do-y...

It seems like the author of this article requires another reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Brimelow

>>rybosw+(OP)
Either way, Intel needs to get their new fabs sorted out and improve their products. There will be money to be made if Intel can get back the energy efficiency crown. The GPU division are starting to actually enter the lower market segment, but drivers leave a lot to be desired. Reducing work force even more just tells me they have no clue how to fix these issues and are grasping hard.

>>rybosw+(OP)
My company is increasing the manager headcount greatly! I suspect it's related to changing to a CTO from USA instead of one from EU.

I don't even know who my boss actually is now.

>>javier+oa
It's not just drivers. I'd line up to buy a a couple 24GB B580s to play around with local AI, but they're only going to be available in workstation systems. When it gets to the point where you're losing, but still won't sell people things they want, I think it's a good indicator that management is just plain dumb.

>>LtWorf+7b
What does the geographical location/cultural origin of the CTO have to do with management headcount here?

>>fakeda+zy
After all all cultures are completely identical

>>Adrian+j5
If they are moving into management and causing more harm than benefit, then isn't that by definition too much management? Said another way, not having that manager would make things better, all else being equal.

>>rybosw+(OP)
It can be rational for big companies to act like this because their existing assets are not protected from creditors.

A small startup can just go bankrupt if it fails, but in a big company (like Intel) there can be more collateral damage

>>rybosw+7u1
Management is needed. Having bad managers is bad. For example, a manager cannot have too many people without becoming a full time people manager and doing nothing else, a good manager can handle 5 other people while still contributing him/herself. That means a team of 25-30 people need another management layer, a team of 120-150 another and so on, similar with armies having teams of 4, squads of 10, platoons, companies, battalions, brigades, divisions, corps etc. So based on the size of the organization the number of layers have some optimum numbers, too much or too less is bad. But the worst is the bad quality managers - fragging is not a thing in the corporate world, there is no way to get rid of bad managers and the organizations start to rot, get worse, sometime die.

>>donmcr+Tb
What you mean? You want to put multiple B580s in your laptop? Do you want 10 minute battery life on this machine?

>>javier+xZ5
No. I mean they said they're not selling them directly into retail channels. They're only going to be in workstation machines which are expensive, high end desktops. It would be the same kind of thing you would see with Quadro GPUs.

At least the way I understood it, you won't be able to go to a computer store and buy 24GB cards off the shelf. You'll have to shell out for a workstation class machine which will cost a ton. I'm not talking about a simple desktop. You'll have to buy something like a Lenovo Thinkstation and if you want one with two GPUs it's going to be expensive because they simply won't sell you a lower end machine with 2 GPUs.