Today Intel did a management reshuffle that doesn’t seem all that deep. The problem SemiAccurate sees is that the company isn’t addressing the problems it has, this is window dressing.
After that teaser we will say up front that this article is only about the basic changes today, not the implications. That story will have to follow tomorrow or Wednesday due to other things that we obligated for tomorrow. That said our views on Intel are now firmly in the negative camp, very very negative.
The changes at Intel are not huge, Kevork Kechichian is now running DCG, he comes from ARM. Jim Johnson is running CCG officially, Intel will have to spring for new business cards with ‘interim’ removed but I think they can afford that. Srini Iyengar is going to lead Central Engineering Group (CEG), newly formed, and he came from Cadence. Naga Chandrasekaran is EVP of Foundry now. Lastly Michelle Johnson Holthaus is out, sticking around for a reported two months in an advisory role.
Our views on these new appointments are quite neutral, the author doesn’t know any of them so it is a change without positive or negative implications for now. That may change for better or worse but those views will take time to develop. For now carry on. With the exception of MJ. Why? This. You will either understand that reference or you won’t, but we consider MJ’s ‘departure’ to be a very bad thing for Intel, the coming months will make that very clear. Remember, sales are about relationships.
So if the people coming are a neutral to Intel, why is SemiAccurate suddenly negative on the company? Every time a new CEO comes in, the executive leadership is mostly replaced with people he or she knows, right? Right. But Intel just had that upheaval and was mostly on the right path. Changes on that level, and restructuring, are the last things people needed to contend with. It isn’t going to help morale and that is the critical problem for Intel right now.
Worse yet all these things address the symptoms what ails Intel, not the root problem. That may sound cryptic but we will flesh it out in a near future article. In the mean time while we hope these changes end in a positive way, the fact that they happened was and is a problem.S|A
