Got an interesting comment to my last post, about Intel’s restructuring that’s going to be happening. An anonymous (why are all the Intel comments here anonymous?) Grade 11 “concerned manager” offered the opinion that all of my blogging (and gadgets) is exactly the kind of “fat” that needs to be trimmed in the restructuring, and that all of my efforts around blogging, podcasting, etc., should just be spread around among other people:
Job functions such as yours are exactly the type of “luxurious” jobs/fat that we need to be cutting. Your salary and gadget costs could be better put to work in other areas of the company, and all of this blogging and other non-productive activity could be dispersed among many other people throughout the company.
I posted a follow-up comment correcting some erroneous assumptions (that Intel pays for my gadgets and conferences - they don’t - and that all I do is sit around and blog all day - I have lots of other duties). But my friend the anonymous concerned middle manager made the statement “I have a very difficult time seeing how you add enduring value to the corporate bottom line.” That’s what I want to talk about for a minute. And I REALLY want to hear what you all think, good or bad. Please, be completely honest with me. 
First, I want to present “my side” of the story. Just to give you an idea of what my job is about.
I am an “individual contributor”. No one reports to me, and there are 7 layers of management between me and CEO Paul Otellini. In corporate ladder terms, I’m pretty much a nobody. My official job charter is to explore, develop, and evangelize collaboration tools for design engineers. Basically, to find ways to make the chip designers’ jobs easier and more efficient. Part of that has been teaching people about how sharing knowledge through blogs, wikis, and podcasting can help them connect more easily with the people they need to work with and find the information they need to get their job done than existing corporate tools. I’m having tremendous success at doing so, particularly with wikis. I launched a company-wide wiki that has exploded in popularity in the four months it’s been around. I get several requests per week to either set up a new wiki for a group or provide training on what a wiki is, and how Intel engineers can use them to get their job done more easily and more efficiently. Besides all of this, I also have other, less visible duties, such as providing system and application level server monitoring our region’s Windows servers, and installing new CAD and design tools and managing licenses for the design engineering groups that use them.
Intel does NOT pay for my gadgets - unless you count the fact that I buy them with the salary that Intel pays me. I paid my own way to Gnomedex and the Portable Media Expo last year, and took vacation days for the time I was gone. I do occasionally write blog posts at work, but my manager is OK with that because it doesn’t impact getting my job done, and I also (like most Intel employees) work on Intel things while I’m at home, in “off hours”. For whatever it’s worth, I’m writing this on Sunday afternoon, off “the clock”.
Of course I’m going to argue that my job provides value to Intel’s bottom line. And I truly believe it does. In the coming years, technologies like blogging, wikis, and podcasting are going to become more important, not to Intel as a corporate entity, but to the people that work there, and that make up the company. As Scoble put it, the “Second Life” generation will be taking over. People are increasingly going to be dissatisfied working at a company that shuns things like blogs and podcasting that they, the people, know are useful. Not to mention the fact that customers are getting more and more used to dealing with companies that blog, where they know the human beings that work at the company from reading their human voices on their blogs.
So here’s my question: do you (anyone reading this) agree that my job is “luxury and fat” that Intel should eliminate? From what you know and see of my blogging about Intel, and what I do there, what “enduring value” do I add to “the corporate bottom line?” Hopefully this will kick up some lively discussion in the comments. I’ll be watching and responding there, like I always do. Or feel free to write about it on your own blog. I’m watching the blogosphere, too.
Again, please be completely honest here. I’m not fishing for compliments, or looking for ammunition to use if my management chain does decide to get rid of my job. I want to know what value you see in someone like me doing the things I do for a giant corporation like Intel. So let me have it!
TinyScreenfuls Feed (this blog)
I think that no, your job isnt luxury and/or fat. i believe that what you do is a job suited to you and what you are doing is in fact, helping the company in numerous ways!
I believe that no, your job isnt luxury, and/ or fat. What you do at intel is suited to you. I also believe that what you do helps the company in numerous ways! BTW, This is my first time commenting!
darn a double post!, must of forgotton sry!!
Pretty sad that a grade 11 doesn’t get it. Thinking like that is what got Intel into the gigahertz wars (such a horrible waste). Intel needs more of a voice and you’re one of the few people in the organization who really understands that. Not that you’re the type of person who would be bothered by someone making such an ignorant comment…but I really hope that person’s opinion has been given the 30 seconds of attention that it deserves.
I SOO agree with brian on this one.
People like this are the entrenched Intel “system” — basically the long-term employees who refuse to face the new reality of the industry. These people are killing Intel and should be removed from the company’s payrolls. The problem is that these people are “lifers” and are all set to reap all of the stock option rewards that all of us rightly deserve. We will never be able to rid the company of these types because they have the power.
I say we unite and revolt. Death to the system!!
I will be starting work at Intel soon and have been reading your blog for a bit. I’ve already talked with people that work there to get a feeling about what it’s like but it’s good to read your posts to get a reaction from the inside on announcements and happenings.
Sounds to me like whoever wants to cut your job and trim the “fat” is trying to be a kiss ass.
So far, then, you’re saying that as a blogger, I’m acting as a “voice” for Intel to the community, and that I’m providing a glimpse of what life at Intel is like to potential employees (and everyone else, for that matter). That sounds right in line with what I’m trying to accomplish.
I had kind of an epiphany over the weekend. Reading “Naked Conversations”, the chapter about international cultural differences, I realized that I’m not trying to get Intel to blog, but I’m trying to get Intel to open up and be more transparent. Easier to engage in conversation with employees, customers, and critics alike. Blogging is just a tool to make that happen. I’ll be simmering on that idea for a while, and post whatever bubbles to the top.
These new collaborative platforms are just what we (the workers) have been needing. I am so much better off for having the wiki and blog sites. It has saved me tons of time in my job, put me in touch with the right people, and educated me without costing Intel money. Sorry, G11, can’t give you a data driven report to back up those claims - that would just be wasting precious time gathering all that data to convince you.
G11, what are your ideas for making us more competitive if we can’t share ideas with each other, re-use each other’s stuff, expand on each other’s ideas and find each other to collaborate. You seem out of touch with the lower ranks to me.
Josh, I mentioned this situation in my podcast today. I’m always surprised to see what non-bloggers have to say about bloggers, though I shouldn’t be…
podcast: http://sleepyblogger.com/?p=206
What the heck was that all about? YOU ROCK! I don’t care about the negative comments. You have EXTREEMLY high values and morals and would never rip a company off. What a joke! YOU ARE GREAT! And so is your wife and daughter!
Reb
I’m not just saying this because I’m EarthLink’s geek blogger — you’re providing tremendous value to the company. In addition to being an open communication channel that they simply can’t get otherwise, you’re also providing content, which will sit on the web and can be useful to someone seeking information and analysis for a long time. And that endears people to Intel in a very real way. It costs a tiny tiny fraction of advertising, but has a much longer shelf life, far less overhead, and even has the potential to be *actually useful* to readers. As the editor of HowStuffWorks used to say when I worked there, content people are some of the few salaries in an organization that are guaranteed to pay for themselves.
I’m curious about where this goes. I’d like to talk more about it.
Josh, I wish Mr. Grade 11 would fess up to who he is. I’d personally send him a copy of “Naked Conversations”…
Trust me, you’re doing the right thing and he just doesn’t get it (or is scared for his own job).
>>
So here’s my question: do you (anyone reading this) agree that my job is “luxury and fat” that Intel should eliminate?
>>
You need to keep doing this because those of us in other industries need case studies to vet whether this stuff is really useful inside the firewall, so to speak.
I, for example, work in Healthcare eLearning — training MD’s and RN’s how to use things like med ordering software — important stuff.
My suspicion is that blogs, podcasts and wiki’s are important tools in connecting, training and equipping the folks that work here.
When companies like IBM are very open about how they are using this stuff in their org to better connect folks and info — they increase their reputation to folks like me across the industry.
This is a market building activity that does contribute to the bottom line of a company – just not in a ‘measure it in a test tube’ sorta way.
As Jason said recently over on SvN — ”When the edges are blurred, and one thing is many things, you can achieve so much more with less time, effort, and people.”
If Blogs are such a waste of time, why is G11 reading it ? It’s providing value to him, else he wouldnt be here!
I would therefore say you are adding value yes. Are you building chips ? no. Are you selling chips, maybe.
Maybe you are making people see that Intel has not got it’s head in the sand, and so make’s intel a company that they want to do business with.
BTW the current round of reviews is caused because we had our head in the sand. I dont know who said it but - the words of a dying company are, “thats’ the way we have always done it ! ” - keeping on blogging !
I hope you don’t lose your job. You sound like a capable young man and large corporations need to understand that young people need time away from work at work to explore new trends in order to be part of the “next big thing”.
Frankly, if my hit the big time, fortune 50 employer didn’t accept me taking a few minutes off work for blogging, listening to podcasts, picking my nose, scratching my ass, or other non work-related endeavors while on the job, I’d pack my bags and look for another one. I’m not going to be nickle-and-dimed for minutes by an overweight, aged monkey that does nothing but sit in meetings all day long and is only concerned about making another 10k in salary to get closer to retirement. How’s lvl 11’s productivity? Does lvl 11 know how to monitor the servers? Probly not.
What lvl 11 does, and does so well, is spend literally 110% of his/her time justifying his job via the powerpoint presentations his secretary edits for him, the phone calls she makes, and the envelopes she stamps for him. Of course a person like that will have a strategy of bring you down to his level, then beat you at it. Because people who do stuff for a living don’t spend 110% of their time justifying their job, they spend their time doing work.
Pretty sad that a company like Intel doesn’t get it.
Now, about those servers…
Why oh WHY are you still running wincrap?
Josh - your question and the need for managers everywhere to answer it for themselves is very timely. In the past year or two I have wondered the same thing. I have concluded that blogging, podcasting, wiki’s, and IRC chats are all just different forms of communication.
Just as we expect employees to read their e-mail and in turn respond to e-mail questions we should expect them to do the same online, whether it’s through a blog or through IRC. I wrote about this on my blog (matsu.wordpress.com) just to set my own employee’s minds at rest.
Good luck! Keep us all posted on what happens.
First, I wish I remember how I found this blog.
Second, I work for Linden Lab, the company behind Second Life—as referenced by this sentence: “As Scoble put it, the “Second Life” generation will be taking over.”
I started out as a Resident of the online world, and was absolutely amazed by how personal the employees of LL are. I’d often see them hanging around inworld and interacting with, well, everyone who wasn’t an employee who’d come by.
The world grew, the world got busier… it doesn’t happen as much anymore, and it’s certainly not scalable to do the same things over and over.
But, that not need deprecate the substance of having a conversation. These things are important. And it inspired me.
It leads me to: third, I blog. I blog a lot about Second Life, not just from a “I work here and this is cool” perspective, but from a, “Wowza, this really energizes me! I love this shiznit!” enduser glee.
In these transitions, I am constantly thinking of how to measure what is contributed by blogging–or communication in general. How it can be better quantified and substantiated. I hear a lot of happy anedotes of, “I’m a regular reader, love your blog!” altho really, it’s something I do very naturally and casually.
I’d like to be able to measure more, tho.
What do you do, Josh, or anyone reading this who blogs passionately in relation to their company? I’ve heard references to “adding value” but I’d like to learn more. Suggestions please?
Hi Josh,
It’s not about blogging.
It’s important to understand the process big companies use for “restructuring”.
1. Process is decided by “upper management”, with input from HR and highly paid consultants which are always on retainer.
Generally the process involves taking all projects and activities in the company and ranking them in order of perceived value toward making money.
Then HR folks and bean counters walk the list from the bottom up until enough folks have been caught in the net to meet the layoff headcount target,
where headcount == $$$.
By design, the process is meant to not be very subjective about individuals. The reason for this is to avoid lawsuits. Of course the process can include, chop everyone who had a low performance review where the assumption is that the performance review is sufficiently objective rather than subjective.
2. Your “friend” in middle management has *nothing* to do with #1, but in fact does get to fight with his/her peers to see that his/her projects/activities rank as high as possible on the corporate list.
The key to surviving a layoff is always to have your main work an integral part of a project that will rank high enough on the list. If you have side efforts like blogging they won’t affect you. The key here is more “what is your immediate manager’s main responsibility?” If it’s design tools and something that the chip folks would howl about if his “whole” department disappeared then you’re probably ok if the head chopping is done at the department level. If your whole organization disappeared and most chip designers wouldn’t realize it until many days later then you’re at risk.
The assumption here is that the chopping will mostly be done at the project level. The reason companies do this is to avoid impacting work efforts that are expected to bring in $$$.
Hi tech has always had booms and busts, and ups and downs. It comes with the territory. Worst case sometimes folks who get laid off wind up somewhere better than where they were, particularly factoring in that post layoff things are often no better morale/work wise. Best thing is just to save some extra money and, with the addition of a severance, take a nice vacation and have some fun if the “opportunity” for time between jobs arises.
Josh,
Regardless of what anyone at Intel thinks (I do work at Intel), keep doing whatever makes you happy.
Obviously, some very imprortant folks at Intel think you are adding value with what you doing or your position would not be funded / above ZBB. Until your boss becomes conviced that you are not adding value, don’t sweat what anyone else thinks.
Also, do you think that same G11 manager would say the same thing to PSO and the other GM’s who also blog (but inside our firewall)? My guess is even if he feels that way, you are an easier target.
Brent
Yes, your job and Scoble’s job for that matter should be gone/cut/trim. You guys are nothing more than pointers to other sites, a lot of whining, complaining, kissing-up to mgmt, and annoying and obnoxius when mixing your personal life into the blog .
Ironically, people like “robert casanno” here seem to think that it is necessary to downplay the importance of blogs by doing some of their own whining instead of just deleting the blog feed from their newsreader. The same goes for Mr 11 who seems to think it is unnecessary, yet he is most likely wasting company time reading the blog and complaining about it instead of focussing on his own form of contributing to the bottom line.
Also, there were company managers who said the same things about creating a website for their company way back in the beginnings of the internet. After all, the results they now see from that move far outweigh the naysayers who thought it a waste.
I think the truth is a little of both and unfortunately the majority of the comments you are going to see here are from the people that have already embraced blogging so odds are the majority of comments will be positive. This really isn’t the best way to get an objective answer, now is it? I mean hey bloggers and blog reders do you think blogging is good? Well of course we do, that is why MOST of us are reading this!
But more to the point. Does your job return long term value? It sounds like your job as a corporate communications specialist does return direct value to the employees of the organization.
Does your blogging return value? That is a much different question and the answer to that question is most likely it does but in a much different way. Maybe this blog attracts a really talented candidate to Intel, which would add long term value to the organization. But the reverse could be true too and odds are you will never know. That is just one of many examples.
In the end if I were in control of the situation I would encourage your to continue to blog, just not on the company time. That means if you are at work and on lunch or a break blog away. But if you are at work hopefully you will be focused on the over all corporate communcation aspect of the position and not a “personal” blog. Better yet if their isn’t an offial corporate Intel blog maybe you should be the one to start it and if there is if you want to blog during work hours maybe that is were you should blog?
Just my 2 cents.
I was at Intel 7+ years, and while not the *leading* reason for my leaving(to another large company in the pacific northwest), *a* reason was this kind of issue. I view the lack of respect for blogging as symptomatic of a larger problem: Lack of respect for customer. It’s very old-school Intel engineer mind-set (”how could an end-user possibly understand what they want in a processor better than us engineers”). It’s what got Intel into trouble over FDiv fiasco, late to the game on low-power, and let AMD beat Intel to market with a better-accepted 64-bit extension story while it had it’s head buried in the Itanium sand.
It’s also poisoned (to some degree) the respect for marketing within the company. Initially, that same engineering mindset lacked respect for marketing. Later, they got it (though the jokes will always be there) but by then marketing had turned into “we know better than they do” mindset, rather than a *Listening* mindset.
Anyhow, don’t get me wrong. I love Intel and I think it’s got a lot going for it. There are many in the ranks fighting the good fight. You are one of them, keep it up.
I’ve always firmly beleived that everyone in a company should get outside and talk to customers; and stop drinking the koolaid. Blogging’s a tool that finally allows everyone to do that in a cost effective manner.
K
Josh,
You seem to be an effective evangelist for Intel. I have read very little here, but you seem to be forward-thinking, cheerful, and you run a friendly blog.
Not knowing the details of what you have proposed within the company, how many of those proposals have been implemented, and what their results have been, it is difficult to make a call other than to say this. I have purchased in the last 3 years two motherboards with processors and one laptop. The first board I bought was a “company money” buy and I selected an Intel Processor. A lot of this was because I did not want to get an inferior product that would not be useful at work.
The second MB I bought was with my own money and I saved about $150 buying an Athlon setup. Once I got it all together I noticed that it did about as well as the Pentium. When I bought my laptop, also my own dough, I saved around another $150 buying a Sempron equipped unit. Were I to go back and have to buy another MB for a company asset, I would doubtless check prices, and if there were a $150 price delta, I would spec an Athlon this time.
Intel should be insuring that there is no way I would ever do that, either by making processors that are so clearly better by way of performance that it would be worth it to me to spend the extra dough, or by making sure that they are not more expensive to buy in the first place.
My concerns are basic, simple, ones. But I think they are something Intel should be looking at. Best of luck and I hope you don’t get “restructured”. Nice blog, too.
Cheers,
Scott
Good blog. Keep it up! Intel needs some transparency.
As far as I can see, the recent problem are created by the head count hoarding grade 11’s. They need to go. Bad people demotivate. Bad grade 11s demotivate grade 0 to 11. Fire them now. Get new graduates and get to work!
I’m a founding member of an Intel employee group at Intel and worked as a supervisor at an Intel factory and also as a design engineer. I wrote reviews, received them, and dealt with Intel’s internal politics extensively.
As part of the extensive, often divisive ‘diversity training’ and the HR training I reveived while working there, one thing became clear: Intel’s HR policies are to protect Intel and not you.
The internal, unwritten, unofficial politics of Intel give more protection the higher your grade level. If anyone with any real influence sees you as a political, technical or competency threat, you will be marginalized and eliminated, legally.
Intel has perfected group psychological intimidation. If you don’t dance the same dance and sing the same song, management will use their current ‘crisis’ as a smoke screen to cut staff, and low hanging political fruit are always the first to go.
I mentioned in my opening that I was a founding member of an employee group. As of last year, the last founding member of that group was politically pressured out of the company under the guise of ‘reorg’ crises.
I think the fact that Intel sits on the richest pile of intellectual property in the world and is failing against scrappy AMD is emblematic of Intel’s internal problems. Too many people in management got rich during the 90’s PC boom and thought they were responsible, and their egos grew accordingly. Now that the serendipity associated with Intel getting IBM’s original PC processor bid has passed, Intel continues to wax so nostalgic that they made the guy that got that deal CEO.
It’s insanity.
Bob Noyce is surely spinning in his grave. The only way for Intel to save itself is to let the smart people make the decisions and the egomaniacs make commercials.
I don’t know if you have the luxury to be able to leave Intel, but do yourself a favor and find something else as soon as you can. It will save you alot of heartache.
Good luck and feel free to contact me. I might not have all the answers, but I do have nearly a decade of insight regarding Intel.
BTW, All the comments from Intel people are anonymous because they fear for their jobs if they speak out.
Hey, I think the present Intels woes are more to do with bad higher level decisions and faux pas’ than the lower rung people. I am a MSEE and a circuit designer in another company. I have previously interned at Intel and I know the work culture. I know that especially the lower rung (and probably even the managers) work really long hours, People take work home, sometimes work weekends over a period of months, and do the same job day in and day out (like a designer working on the same block) for years on
end. The work culture does not promote any creativity and beyond a point it gets mundane enough so that people dont care much about the work anymore - just their career I guess. I think I could have got a job at Intel but knowing this, I never tried.
On the other hand, where I work, its a medium sized semiconductor company where I work at a non CA design center of about 50 people. Here we are always doing different things, changing projects and basically loving what we do. I wake up every morning and love going to work. I know this is true with most people, and so everyone is always coming up with new ideas, when we have to work hard for deadlines, we dont mind, etc. We just love working here.
Where does all this fit into the discussion - I think what you are doing is trying to be reative (if what you say about the wiki things and such is true) and thus contributing in ways better than your 2 lines of job description. Whats important is for Intel to encourage its people to think outside of the box - for you its about communicating wbetween people where a blog thing is definitely a hady tool. It needs creativity and passion in
its employees and so when someone does do soemthing new, it should instead encourage it. I think the otehr points of Intel being more open and everything is also quite valid but this is one more point I thought is important. Even designers can talk about their issues at work and instead get help from otehr designers and so a blog is definitely useful in that regards.
Well, dudes, every company’s HR is there to protect the company, not you. Get used to it.
Intel need to look at the rest of the industry for how many people are needed for the same job. Managers everywhere have the tendency to kick out the high performers in order to hire more bad ones.
Remember the 20-80 rule? A manager who gets rid of the 20 performers gains the justification to grow 4X the head count! That is serious promotion for him! You get it now??
Joshua
How can someone who works in Intel IT be a technical evangelist? Since when is an IT internal job at your level one that is customer facing? To me you unfortunately qualify for the trim the fat pile. I am sure that there are 10,000 other people in Sales and Marketing whose roles it is to Techically Evangelize. Having a mini-Intel spoutlet is good irrespective of whether you end up keeping your job or not.
Mark
Mark is a DH of the 11th degree in my mind! You can be an evangelist for the tecno nerds who live in the land of shell scripts and unix. I can tell you I design at the transistor level in another company and we need guys like this. All to often I am so damn concerned about how some stupid tool flowis not working or how do I need to modify this data to work with another tool. Having someone who can make my life easier is a lifesaver. Just shows how little you know of the guys who actually get the JOB done.
What Intel has is an engineering problem. Intel’s CPUs are simply outdated and have no hope of catching up within a few years. AMD has become a world class server CPU company. All of AMD’s designs are based on server. Intel is light years behind in that regard.
If you look at Intel’s balance sheet, it’s terrible. $9 billion of cash and $7 billion accounts payable, $2.6 billion of debt. Intel management has squandered the cash. With 100,300 workers, so little cash, and products piling up as inventory, you should be happy that you still have a job at Intel.
But I think it’s time to polish your resume.
BTW, fire those hard working guys who can’t get their job done within 8 to 10 hours. If they still do that after 2 years on the job, they are disqualified for the job. Why are they all at Intel?
I have confidence in this once great company. I believe AMD is as dumb as you are. After a bit of benchmarking and fat cutting, you will do just fine. Good guys (the 20% that does 80% of work) please stay. You may out last that “grade 11″. AMD can only go down. You may go up.
Its 180 deg. out of phase with the hype, you know.
I got to know about your blog when “EE Times” picked it up. Usually I neither read nor post on the blogs.
Here is my 2 cents:
1. You have already saved Intel millions by giving outsiders and insiders to post their views on an important subject matter. This is useful and relevant data that can and should be used by Intel to review current policies dealing with the subject matter.
2. Internet is continuously changing the way we interact. In my opinion blogging during work is not much different than talking with a friend or family over the phone (both use company resources). Excess activities that deteriorates an employees’ performance ought to be discouraged. However, reasonable social interaction, in my opinion, usually has an effect of improving the productivity.
Thanks.
Why does your blog have to provide value to your employer?
If you get good performance reviews on whatever’s in your job description, then spreading the word about Intel one your weblog is something you do for the company for free.
It’s not something you’re taking away from your employer. It’s something you’re giving to them.
And if you get good performance reviews and have the productivity and efficiency left over to allow you time for your own personal social pursuits, then I’m not sure I see where anybody has any standing to complain. Does anybody seriously want to argue that employers deserve every drop of energy an employee has over and above their job description? What, then, do they think is “allowable” to “take away” from the employer? Time to sleep? Bathroom breaks? Reading a book to your kid?
Employers don’t own us. We make a contract with them to perform work in exchange for a certain salary. That’s it.
I can only wonder what G11s opinion might have been years ago if you were the one spearheading interoffice instant messaging or an exchange server or a global web presence or a CVS repository or batch processing or the use of blackberry or any of the myriad of technological tools we now use to efficiently run our business. While not Death through Risk Aversion, this is like Death through Stupidity.
Hi,
Myself have not been into any large corporations before, so not sure if my suggestions and comments does justify anything. Ah well .. here goes.
1. You’re valuable despite anything that has been said before. All employees are assets for a corporation. As much as we realise that we’re all disposable/replaceabl, but the spirit and efforts which you raised on your own account to work for your company is indeed valuable.
There’ll always be people who works just because of a typical life just to make his/her living. However there’ll also be people who wants to work for the better of the company .. be a part of the company .. a huge entity working together to achieve a larger greatness. This we cannot always ignore.
2. Management by right should always form better allegiance with their employees and espacially the bottom liners. It’s a big effort, but it’s the best way for both worlds.
However it highly depends on the culture and management style they adapted to. Correct? If you’ve worked in a small-time chinaman style business .. it’s totally different than a large japanese corporate company .. as well as different to an all american large corporate company.
Some asian companies find blogging or public outcry or publicly published information on any internal sections poses as possible thread to the company in a few ways
a. internal security. information on companies management style and culture.
b. sabotage of employees morals and unity.
c. potentially used as internal political joust.
d. possible affect on companies image and reputation in the market and to customers.
To some of us this seems ridiculous, but you can’t ignore the possibilities, hence the paranoia anyway.
3. What you can do is figure out if what INTEL has in mind is what the employees like you have in mind. IF in fact they are only interested in mindless drones .. it’s definitely not your place.
IF INTEL has in mind what a perfect unity + togetherness to achieve the largest dream, then yes .. by all means you should not leave just like that. Besides, you mentioned your immediate superior is ok with you on blogging as long as it doesn’t impact your work. But find out if he says this because it’s really because it doesn’t impact your work and deadline? Or is it that he realises the importance of what you’re doing?
4. Tools and gadgets you develop for your tasks should be measured on your performance. However it should be within corporate knowledge and acknowledgement as well. Your boss should be aware of the things you bring and use on your tasks. Ideally it should not be your costs alone. You’re paid to “explore, develop, and evangelize collaboration tools for design engineers. Basically, to find ways to make the chip designers’ jobs easier and more efficient.”
What more of a better way then give out as much proposals as possible to enhance fellow employees lifestyle at work and such? I don’t see a problem with this one where you should not fork out your own wallet for these reasons. IF you do still intend to fork it out .. there should be no regrets nor complaints in the first place. Correct?
Anyway usually the reason why people post on some topic like yours is that you needed assurance on a choice which you probably made already
Whichever path you take, so as long as theres no regrets .. by all means go ahead with it with all you got all the way till the end.
*hopes opinion from a small time employee like me in an asian country gives some insights*
Cheers
Though off-topic, I think this is very pertinent and at the very heart of Intels potential for the future
“Intel should be insuring that there is no way I would ever do that, either by making processors that are so clearly better by way of performance that it would be worth it to me to spend the extra dough, or by making sure that they are not more expensive to buy in the first place.”
Rather than doing this we have been wielding political might to forge deals with OEMs and penetrating new markets. As those markets mature and the consumers are educated with having more choices the decision will be clear, equal performance vs. non-equal cost, a no brainer.
Thankfully, also being mentioned was “Intel sits on the richest pile of intellectual property in the world” and it will be our insight and ability to effectively manage that in the new years to come that determines our effectiveness.
I really don’t know what I could add to what has already been posted, however I found myself being moved by your piece and felt absolutely compelled to respond. I don’t know who you are, and being that, I cannot be a judge of character for you. I don’t know if we line up philosophically, politcally, or socio-economically. What I DO know, is that what you wrote had a great deal of resonance within me, and I appreciate your incredible honesty and forthcoming-ness. I am relatively new to the Web 2.0 and am trying very hard to catch up. It seems that I spend countless hours (my free time) devouring what I can. I am also the systems admin for a CMS at the University I work, and have found it diametrically opposed to the free and open bloggin system.
I wish you luck sir, and maybe we will actually meet, and discuss our feats, woes, lost battles, and won wars.
As a competitor employee, I am really interested in how your job improve the communication inside the organization. I am an open engineer and would like to share my experience with others. But frankly to say, I hate to repeat the same answers (explanations) time and time again to other colleagues. It just cost too much time!
For G11’s comment, it’s a typical response from a boss who belongs to the dinosaur generation. I am quite glad that Intel still uses such kind of “little brain” animals.
As a competitor employee, I am really interested in how your job improve the communication inside the organization. I am an open engineer and would like to share my experience with others. But frankly to say, I hate to repeat the same answers (explanations) time and time again to other colleagues. It just cost too much time!
For G11’s comment, it’s a typical response from a boss who belongs to the dinosaur generation. I am quite glad that Intel still uses such kind of “tiny brain” animals.
Your job is, I am sure, important. However, from my experience they do not want to eliminate you because you or your job is unimportant, they was to cut you because of company politics, kissing ass and unhealthy environment at Intel. If I was you I would find myself a better company to work for, obviously you are too good to work there because you do your job and don’t play the political and clickish game as the most do.
Good luck and forget Intel