Intel CEO Bob Swan to Step Down in February

[MacBH928]

People make Intel sound like they are dead, sure they are in a bad situation right now, but they are still the major player and there is every reason that they can bounce back in. Remember Apple was near bankrupt in 1996.

 

[I7guy]

People make Intel sound like they are dead, sure they are in a bad situation right now, but they are still the major player and there is every reason that they can bounce back in. Remember Apple was near bankrupt in 1996.

This exactly. They own a significant chunk of the market that will not change anytime soon.

 

[alexjholland]

The CEO was the CFO? Well, that explains it all right there. Beancounters rarely can run companies anywhere except into the ground, history has shown that time and time again. They just don't have the right mindset to do it. Their mindset works well to cut costs and reduce expenses, but you don't want that guy deciding the course of your business, or you'll end up spending little into obsolescence.

Gotta say there's some truth here.

• Accountants rarely lead great companies.
• Do economists ever lead companies? I can't think of a single example.
• Engineers do lead companies, but they're a pretty rare blend of engineer/commercial skills.

And there are plenty of examples of engineers handing over a business to a more commercial CEO, later.

 

[Emanuel Rodriguez]

Gotta say there's some truth here.

• Accountants rarely lead great companies.
• Do economists ever lead companies? I can't think of a single example.
• Engineers do lead companies, but they're a pretty rare blend of engineer/commercial skills.

And there are plenty of examples of engineers handing over a business to a more commercial CEO, later.

Right. The best business leaders have to have a combination of knowledge of the industry they're in, and solid business management expertise. Financial management is why you have accountants. Their job is to find a way to make the CEO's dream a reality, and to give them a reasonable expectation of how far they can take that dream, given the business's financial situation. Once that accountant is running the company, it's unreasonable to expect that business to be able to innovate. It's not their job to innovate.

 

[alexjholland]

Right. The best business leaders have to have a combination of knowledge of the industry they're in, and solid business management expertise. Financial management is why you have accountants. Their job is to find a way to make the CEO's dream a reality, and to give them a reasonable expectation of how far they can take that dream, given the business's financial situation. Once that accountant is running the company, it's unreasonable to expect that business to be able to innovate. It's not their job to innovate.

Yup. The greatest sales director that I ever worked for was a walking disaster for anything relating to financial management. He'd have turned the entire company account into a 10-tonne mound of cocaine, given half a chance.

But he could walk into a sales floor and business would roll in, because of his incredible presence.

So, that's why we had a more moderate CEO who essentially existed to contain and control him.

Business is complex. It requires a variety of conflicting character types that depend on each other's strengths/weaknesses.

I love sales calls and pitching deals. But my organisation sucks. I work well when there's someone diligent to assist me. Typically they're shy and would hate my responsibilities, so it suits us both nicely.

 

[mzeb]

'Business' can mean a lot of things.

I think an engineer can transition well to - say - supply chain management; you're still solving engineering problems, to some degree.

Marketing is a totally different ball game.

Some very smart people just don't get marketing.

They struggle to relate to other people as part of an overall set of character traits.

In fact, being skilled at both engineering and marketing is extremely rare - they're differently personality types, as a generalization. But that's an incredibly valuable person when they do appear.

Agree. Having done a startup as an engineer I learned the basic ins and out of cohort management, demographic targeting and product placement. The one thing I will say is that I think it is easier to learn market on the fly than it is to learn the tech. Learning the value of segmenting your markets different ways is much easier in my mind as it is a "human" thing anyone can relate to. Learning the value of implementing advanced shader or machine learning cores is much harder as it a very abstract thing for most people.
Having tried both to walk a VP from finance through the holt winters anomaly detection algorithm and a back end engineer through how marketing cohorts are useful to build statistics the engineer came away with a much better understanding. That is admittedly anecdotal and every human is different but I have a few more experiences like this that give me a pretty strong bias this direction.

 

[alexjholland]

Agree. Having done a startup as an engineer I learned the basic ins and out of cohort management, demographic targeting and product placement. The one thing I will say is that I think it is easier to learn market on the fly than it is to learn the tech. Learning the value of segmenting your markets different ways is much easier in my mind as it is a "human" thing anyone can relate to. Learning the value of implementing advanced shader or machine learning cores is much harder as it a very abstract thing for most people.
Having tried both to walk a VP from finance through the holt winters anomaly detection algorithm and a back end engineer through how marketing cohorts are useful to build statistics the engineer came away with a much better understanding. That is admittedly anecdotal and every human is different but I have a few more experiences like this that give me a pretty strong bias this direction.

Yeah, that's probably true.

I think understanding marketing on a conceptual level and being able to execute are quite different though.

I generally get on well with high-level developers and engineers, as they tend to appreciate the process aspect of what I do. And I enjoy learning about the challenges that they encounter, even if some are difficult to understand.

A few entry-level developers can be resentful and feel that sales/marketing don't deserve credit/respect, as we can't build the product. But my response is simple - 'Sure, how about you lead the next sales presentation?'

Ultimately, we all need each other.