[slivym]

As a former Intel employee this aligns closely with my experience. I didn't work in validation (actually joined as part of Altera) but velocity is an absolute buzzword and the senior management's approach to complex challenges is sheer panic. Slips in schedules are not tolerated at all - so problems in validation are an existential threat, your project can easily just be canned. Also, because of the size of the company the ways in which quality and completeness are 'acheived' is hugely bureaucratic and rarely reflect true engineering fundamentals. Intel's biggest challenge is simply that it's not 'winning big' at the moment and rather than strong leadership and focus the company just jumps from fad to fad failing at each (VR is dead, long live automotive).

[nabla9]

I thought that the secret of Intel's success is paranoia. Andy Grove's motto was "Only the paranoid survive" and he wrote a book with the same name.

[nine_k]

Andy Grove, sadly, has retired from Intel in 2005, and died in 2016.

I'm afraid the level of paranoia at Intel has decreased since then.

[baq]

not quite true regarding the focus - you aren't building a $50B+ company when you don't have focus, it's just that their core compentency isn't fashionable right now. they can't grow in the markets they're in because they either own them completely or were driven out, so they're trying different ones (pivoting, if that's applicable to mature companies).

[marcosdumay]

They had a presence on the currently faster growing market (mobile), but they decided to sell it a while ago because it wasn't trendy and margins were smaller.

Now they are pivoting everywhere, but theirs is the only market with sufficient margins. And the perspective is that their margins will shrink because of competition and software emulation (that they are keeping into control by patent trolling).

[rasz]

Intel also liquidated all ram fabs in the eighties, very costly process. Almost less than a year after last fab closed ram prices skyrocketed letting Japanese manufacturers grow strong.

[markenstein]

Intel had the problem of growing their market after their monopoly on 386-compatible processors in the late 80s, which AMD only caught up with their Am386 like 4 years later. Besides their shenanigans to rebate PC manufacturers for not using AMD processors, they did create the IAL—Intel Architecture Labs, which created and gave royalty-free technologies like PCI, AGP, USB, and PCI Express to move the industry forward so that it can grow. That was pretty innovative, at a time where getting a soundcard seemed more practical than choosing a faster processor.