Intel Names Robert Swan CEO

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cageymaru

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Intel has promoted its chief financial officer (CFO) Robert (Bob) Swan to CEO. Robert Swan had served as the Intel interim CEO for the past seven months after former Intel CEO Brian Krzanich left the company in 2018. Mr. Swan is the seventh CEO in Intel's 50-year history. Robert Swan has been elected to the Intel board of directors. Todd Underwood has been promoted to interim CFO as the company searches for a permanent CFO. Intel CEO Robert Swan's email to employees entitled "Driving Intel Forward" can be read here. The markets are having mixed reactions to the announcement.

"In my role as interim CEO, I've developed an even deeper understanding of Intel's opportunities and challenges, our people and our customers," Swan said. "When I was first named interim CEO, I was immediately focused on running the company and working with our customers. When the board approached me to take on the role permanently, I jumped at the chance to lead this special company. This is an exciting time for Intel: 2018 was an outstanding year and we are in the midst of transforming the company to pursue our biggest market opportunity ever. I'm honored to have the chance to continue working alongside our board, our leadership team, and our more than 107,000 superb employees as we take the company forward."
 
Whoa! This is not going to bode well for Intel. Time to dump Intel and buy some more AMD stock.

The fact he thinks 2018 was an outstanding year is the best indicator of a failure in progress.
 
BSmith said:
The fact he thinks 2018 was an outstanding year is the best indicator of a failure in progress.
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2018 for Intel was a great year... Q4 was still good just not as good as their twice raised guidance. (And in Q4 they still beat profit expectations, just not revenue...)

I know there have been a lot of upper management shake ups while Bob has been the "interim" CEO, so it will be interesting to see where he plans to take things in the long run.
 
ikevi said:
2018 for Intel was a great year.
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It may have been from a purely economic point of view but Intel hasn't actually innovated in what? Ten damn years? It isn't called the 9th generation chip for nothing, it's been nine years of the same warmed over shit.

If Intel wants to know why the PC market is in the toilet right now they need to look at themselves for the reason, there has LITERALLY been no reason to buy a new PC for the majority of users because (up until Ryzen came to the scene) it's been nothing more than just another chip with another four cores. Yawn. Boring.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
We need the tech guys in charge, like in Europe where their CEO's tend to have phd's in the sciences or engineering disciplines.
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Exactly. See AMD with Lisa Su for an example of how things should be run. I wouldn't be surprised at all if Lisa Su had some hand in developing Ryzen since she actually has the brains for that kind of work.
 
trparky said:
Just another MBA and that's not what Intel needs, they need someone like AMD's Lisa Su to take the company by the horns and make them innovate again.
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People like Sue are very rare. She is a legit genius who helped pioneer the industries move to copper interconnects.... and she has the chops to lead people as well. She cut her leadership teeth heading the research team that turned out the cell chip. And now that tech has caught up to her she is going to take all that experience to lead the teams working on the chiplete designs. There just isn't a pool of people like that to pull from... she is a generational talent in the same way the handful of the very best sports team captains are.

Sucks for Intel though... sounds like more of the same is in store till this guy makes his exit in a couple years.
 
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trparky said:
It may have been from a purely economic point of view but Intel hasn't actually innovated in what? Ten damn years? It isn't called the 9th generation chip for nothing, it's been nine years of the same warmed over shit.

If Intel wants to know why the PC market is in the toilet right now they need to look at themselves for the reason, there has LITERALLY been no reason to buy a new PC for the majority of users because (up until Ryzen came to the scene) it's been nothing more than just another chip with another four cores. Yawn. Boring.
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I am not going to disagree with you that nothing super new in the CPU has come besides catch-up in the core count. I will argue that some of the memory stuff from Intel has been very cool (though not really that profitable for them).

Any real product changes takes time for development at least, but being the CEO for 7 months = at most a message change... which seems to have happened? When was the last time any company did something like the architecture day?

https://www.hardocp.com/article/2018/12/12/intel_2018_architecture_day/

And I would say that it looks like there are some cool things coming.

Honestly it will take a year or two to see if Bob wants to change direction, but obviously for now he seems to be focusing on the targets BK started working on in 2013. Remember CEO should be focused on where the company is going in 5+ years from now + fixing emergencies like Spectre... Everyone else is focused on getting out what was planned.
 
ChadD said:
People like Sue are very rare.
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Yep, very much so. She is like a god among men.
ChadD said:
Sucks for Intel though... sounds like more of the same is in store till this guy makes his exit in a couple years.
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That's what I fear, more of the same warmed over shit shoveled our way. At least we have AMD where the real innovation is happening.
 
Putting a bean counter in charge of a company deep in the heart of a technological and identity crisis? What could possibly go wrong with that?
 
So intel takes the “safe pick” in the bean counter instead of the bold move on an “innovative engineering leader”. They only hurt themselves and their investors as well as American technical leadership.
 
Good news for AMD! The noose tightens for Intel. Now we just need Ryzen 2 to come out to kick the chair.
 
halo000008 said:
Didn't this guy previously say he didn't want to be CEO?
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I'm sure they wrote a nice golden parachute into his contract for him. "I don't want to ruin my career".... "oh I'll never have to work again no matter what... ok"
 
Intel really needs to do what GM and Fiat/Chrystler have done and get the ENGINEERS back in charge of making product. This fucking around with Financial guys leading a company is only going to please investors in the short term. Any long term investors are going to jump out of this ship well before innovation becomes too expensive and they only 'innovate' for profit with 'known' investments. (Buying other companies.)

The Finance people should be figuring out how to give the engineers what they need and make their requirements come true. NOT the other way around.
 
Damn a lot of people here already think this is a bad idea, why not just give him a chance first before spouting Intel demise. Just remembered Hector Ruiz has a Ph.D. in EE and we all know how that work out for AMD.
 
ChadD said:
People like Sue are very rare. She is a legit genius who helped pioneer the industries move to copper interconnects.... and she has the chops to lead people as well. She cut her leadership teeth heading the research team that turned out the cell chip. And now that tech has caught up to her she is going to take all that experience to lead the teams working on the chiplete designs. There just isn't a pool of people like that to pull from... she is a generational talent in the same way the handful of the very best sports team captains are.

Sucks for Intel though... sounds like more of the same is in store till this guy makes his exit in a couple years.
Click to expand...

This is almost exactly what I was going to say. Su is an extremely rare person. Having multiple talents in engineering, technology and especially leadership are extremely rare and hard to find. When you get a person with that sort of ability mix they can go very far and drag people along behind them.

Intel could definitely use someone like Lisa Su but the chance of finding another person even remotely similar to her and her abilities is practically impossible.
 
Not only is Robert Swan the wrong guy for the job, but he also didn't even want this job to begin with. He literally failed upward.

Fast forward to the end of 2019, after a slew of bad choices and half baked products that Intel tried to push via YouTube influencer, the media, and expensive marketing campaigns, Mr. Swan will literally sing the lyrics to the song bellow until the end of his tenure at Intel, when the board will have him resign for failing to raise the toilet seat in the lobby restroom once back in 2017...

 
PhoenixGenesys said:
Not only is Robert Swan the wrong guy for the job, but he also didn't even want this job to begin with. He literally failed upward.

Fast forward to the end of 2019, after a slew of bad choices and half baked products that Intel tried to push via YouTube influencer, the media, and expensive marketing campaigns, Mr. Swan will literally sing the lyrics to the song bellow until the end of his tenure at Intel, when the board will have him resign for failing to raise the toilet seat in the lobby restroom once back in 2017...

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I bought some AMD stock today. Just saying.
 
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