Customer Reviews

Losing Faith: How the (Andy) Grove Survivors Led the Decline of Intel's Corporate Culture

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Based on my 18 years at Intel ('79-'97), the authors do an excellent job of accurately describing the Intel culture throughout Intel's 38 year history. They explain the good and the bad and the ugly. This book can be a wakeup call for Intel and all of its employees and shareholders. The abuse of power during the Grove era comes with a price (what goes around, comes around). The advice that the authors provide is right on!

I worked at Intel for 8 years, so the book was very interesting to me. The insights on the lack of management development to tackle new businessnes (like networking) rang true to me. Also, the description of how to culture evloved to take on huge projects with poor results was a good insight.

The book completly fails to talk about the Technology & Manufacturing group which continues with amazing progress to shrink transistors economically. Intel leads the world in bringing new processes to high volume. The book also completly misses the differing cultures in the key design centers. Some design centers have had dramatically differing success than others over the past 15 years.

This is a good read regarding the decline of the Intel Corporation. The book is based primarily upon the complaint that the corporation's employees are not held accountable for their actions and failures, especially when the actions are not in compliance with the corporation's own written codes of conduct and behavior. The authors attack the typical band-aide approach to many of the corporation's problems (which are primarily outside the technical fields of microprocessors, and deal with the supply and customer service side of the corporation). The book targets Andy Groves successors as CEO and Chairman of the Board -- their managerial style, lack of technical expertise in particular, and lack of involvement on a more personal level.
The book addresses the culture of those employees who survived the Grove tenure and their attitude of "entitledness" and the discord between these survivors and more recent employees. The book addresses a form of "careerism" (my term, not the authors)among the established managers. The authors criticism sounds a lot like the criticism found in some books about the Army officers "ticket punching" during the Vietnam era -- heck, it sounds a lot like the successfully promoted folks at the hospital where I work.
The authors play with kid gloves when the subject of Andy Grove comes up. They only more than hint that his "in-your-face" management style directly contributed to Intel's decline. They do not even discuss the Pentium debacle under Grove and the public relations disaster that ensued.
The authors also lightly touch upon the technical competence and backgrounds of Grove's successors, and this is important since they are not the technical geniuses that founded or nurtured Intel (Noyce, Moore, and Groves)-- most of their experience is not discussed but it is in marketing and other non-technical fields.
This is another good book discussing the ills of big corporations that lose their way in a fast changing world and fail to keep pace, especially after a level of arrogance rises within the corporation -- is Intel falling from its lofty heights just like IBM did -- is Microsoft not far behind. Stock holders should look closely at the trend of mis-management and the subsequent loss of billions of dollars (especially in bad acquistions and lack of overall business planning) that could have been paid out in dividends. Stockholders should hold the board of directors more responsible for rubber stamping poor CEO and chairman of the board's decisions/performance and not holding them more accountable.

This book focuses on many facets of Intel's operations and behaviors, from the annual employee review process (focal) to the company's poorly-executed acquisitions.

It's an interesting read, particularly for a (former or current) employee, contractor (Green Badge), or vendor. That being said, there was a fair amount in this book that was based on conjecture and anonymous quotes. Perhaps that's a necessary evil, but I tend to mistrust quotes offered by people who want to remain anonymous. Several parts of the book left me feeling like it was a seedy exposé rather than a critical assessment of the corporation.

My other criticism is that it seemed the book, throughout, was holding adherence to the Intel Values as the corporate marker of success (with every chapter presenting a comparison of the stated values and the actual behaviors). If that was the intent, I reject its validity. A positive and strong culture often has a good impact on the balance sheet and overall success, but that doesn't mean that if individual actions don't conform to stated values that it's "wrong." Maybe it's the Values that need to change.

On the up side, I think this may have been as balanced as it could be, given it was written by (former?) employees. Personally, I'd agree with many of the descriptions of corporate jockeying for recognition, co-opting ideas, and "grabbing the glory" and run. That being said, individual mileage may vary and I'm sure the opinions about this book and Intel itself are as varied as there are employees (and stockholders).

I love the "Inside Intel" by Jackson and interested to know more about Intel. so when I saw this book on Amazon, I bought it immediately with lots of expectations. Regrettably, I was very disappointed. Compared with Jackson's Inside Intel, this book is like American Idol first round when Simon Cowell was sitting there making faces and getting bored by the amateurish contestants. the authors thesis aside, this book was written like a management text book with lots of abstract, generalized narratives but without specifics, although the authors quoted "Inside Intel" a lot - at the end of the read, i felt like if i wanted Inside Intel - which i already read and owned, i will buy Jackson's Inside Intel and no need to buy this one.

Whereas Jackson's book had lots of juicy stuff, like Noyce dated his secretary and she later was made VP (shows you "good working relationship" at the office always pays) and one engineer changed his love of Italian expresso to american style coffee. if you are looking for more juicy stuff from these two ex-insiders, you are warned. there is none.

for those who may be interested in management theory, the book offers lots of glaring errors in business analysis. an example, the authors believe the lack of execution or compliance to "intel value" resulted in "poor" performance. however, even if i buy their thesis that "intel value" is the holy water for success, the authors never defined what is "good" and "poor" is. product deliver? stock price? operating income? in the chapters where the authors discussed "growth" (i presume stock price growth) the authors compared Intel's management practice with GE's (quoting one of the many Jack Welsh's autobiographical books). whether Welsh's books offer objective assessment of his tenure at GE aside, i was like, wait a minute, i have owned GE stock from 2000 to 2006, i did not see GE growing much!! so, the authors just went by their halo effect that GE is good so Intel is to compare with GE. it is like Paula Abdul always voted for good looking contestant despite their singing ability.

the lack of concrete definition of "success" or "failure" aside, the worst mistake the author made was "confirmation bias", a halo effect commonly made by pulp fiction style business writing. the authors were not immune to this. so, they felt a certain company is "successful" and the reason they are "successful" is due to "value execution". someone is rich because she is virtuous and good. like your mom's apple pie. for example, they cited the "P6" project. it was successful because it was team work, think outside the box, no bureaucratic thinking. in truth, we have no evidence to believe that as the author never defined what success is measured and the "good practice" is subject to double blind study or even cursory first hand assessment on another company. we know too well that, in reality, when something goes right, it may or may not have anything to do with good business practice or good execution. how about just getting lucky? how about your competitors performed worse than you? so, it becomes a competition of who's less bad rather than better. this shows another two additional errors the authors committed, which is the illusion of "absolute win" and the illusion of "single factor win theory".

finally, i don't know what the authors have to hide. they just do not deliver any first hand observation. everything in this book is quoted from other books on Intel, especially the "inside intel" by Tom Jackson. i found it funny that even in the inside cover, the authors stated they held "degrees from top universities". i don't know why there is a problem to state the degree they earned and the school they attended.

i would recommend readers to buy "Inside Intel" and spare this book. Inside Intel gives you so much more for less $$$. the authors would concur with me on this one, as this book has extensively quoted Inside Intel.