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by blantonl 636 days ago
Every company should strive to be an "engine of financial performance."

What other expectations do you have of Intel?

The amount of engine metaphors I could toss into this discussion are endless.

6 comments

There is a little bit of "when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure" with respect to chasing financial performance.

While you can't escape thinking about financial metrics, the goal should be something like creating great products, building a competitive barrier etc. Financials can act as a constraint rather than a goal.

A concrete example is Costco.

Even here, Gelsinger puts it last, which is sort of reads like a constraint. Seems fair.

This is a long term problem. Intel, and other once great American companies, do not have the talent or culture needed to make great products anymore.
Yup, sure. I'd argue one of the factors involved in the long term problem is when the company starts trying hard to make money as opposed to serving customers well (again, financial metrics must be a constraint). It's not the only factor (incentives get whacky, bureaucracy is difficult), but it's a factor which isn't appreciated as much as the other two.
It'd be nice if they could give me a compelling reason to upgrade my computer more than once or twice a decade, other than 'Our new AI computers have keyboards that go to 11'.
A company serves three groups.

Customers, employees, and owners.

I don't have a strong opinion about whether customers or employees come first, but owners should be last.

How could you have a strong opinion on what ought to be, when you've only baselessly asserted what is. Hume wept.
"The Shareholder Value Myth" is an interesting book about companies purpose https://www.amazon.com/The-Shareholder-Value-Myth-Shareholde...
I think with this kind of leadership they should probably liquidate and return money to the stockholders.
> What other expectations do you have of Intel?

I expect them to follow the Silicon Valley maxim of "Build the best product instead of focusing on making the most amount of money".