Arm

Potential for great things, if only they can get out of their own way to do them.

• Few skilled architects, software experts left.

• Only one architect runs the show, not enough experts left to contribute.

• Ever seen an architecture designed by people that neither know software nor hardware well enough to do so? You’re about to.

Clean house with your fellows and directors. You’ve far too many people that have successfully failed up. Listen to your people, if they say nothing with many words in every meeting, key in on that. Challenge people to provide substance, repeating buzzwords will not produce innovation…. You think the race to leave Arm is caused by the market, or salaries, or many other factors that you have failed to really mitigate…while partially true there’s a key factor you can mitigate with little cost, that of workplace culture. Masa ruined Arm’s culture. It’s time for real tech innovators like Rene to do what needs to be done to make it right.

It was once an amazing place to work, now it feels like multiple siloed companies, with one side (the engineering side) trying to do good work, with the Architecture group on the other trying to wrangle back control of they company. It’s definitely not a good dynamic. Hopefully they’ll figure out how to run it as a single company, but it’s been years of this so I tend to doubt it. Also, perhaps ensure that fellows don’t run amuck. You’ve promoted too many that were really only promoted because of cronyism. Why promote friends? It definitely diluted the meaning of fellow when you promote them with zero engineering success to their name. Lastly, get rid of the fast track promotion path for certain groups. If you’re not on it, you’re hosed.