Intel

When I started at Intel, things were a little rough as I worked with a tough lead and worked many hours (60+). I learned the ropes quickly and got acquainted with many people willing to help.

I felt we were more as a team as we were able to interact with other teams better, working on the same project.

Starting pay, RSUs, and raises were once good, like 5%. But ever since moving grade levels, I noticed the raises were not as good. I got higher pay increases when I started at a lower level than at a higher one, unless promoted.

I am ranking these as I see fit.

1. Under BK as our CEO, things have gone really bad, like our benefits. We are making record revenues and profits every year, but somehow our money is not going back to the employees. Our raises keep on getting worse every year, and for RSUs, the value keeps on getting worse. I remember getting promoted from grade 5 to 6, 5 years ago, and I got SSL2 stock worth $11K value. When I got promoted from grade 6 to grade 7, my manager was only able to give me SSL3 stock worth only $7.5K. Then, our 401K for retirement has not been reinstated back to 6%. Our quarterly funding drops as well, as we do not have winter parties anymore and they are replaced with "snag a snack" day.

Management always talks about cost cutting, but they seem to make some big acquisitions and spend a lot of money on external executive hires and a lot of diversity propaganda. Unfortunately, there are a lot of senior leaders that left the company that would have made a fine CEO in the future.

1. Go through many managers (1 manager per 1 year).

2. Working with other cross-sites in very different time zones. Europe and Asia, always trying to find the right time to fit into our schedules. Sometimes we need to have meetings either late or early.

3. Lots of reorgs, we go through once a year now. I do not see the point, other than it creates a new position for someone wanting to be promoted.

4. Working on projects, we tend to work within our own team instead of all different teams working together to solve problems.

5. Lots of meetings that are sometimes pointless. Find out which ones are important to attend. I tend to skip some because they are not relevant to me.

6. Lots of Intel senior management that stayed within Intel for many years have left or "retired" during BK's tenure, and most of the upper staff tend to be folks we paid a great deal of money to hire from the outside. They tend always want to focus on cost cutting instead of improving morale and culture.

Diversity and URM is a noble cause. However, the way Intel is going about it is all wrong, as it is creating a lot of tension within the workplace. There are incentives tied to this, as it seems like people are going to hire the URM over someone who is non-URM to get more money out of it.

The other thing is they have "red carpet" events for this where you only can hire a URM. I feel the manager should hire based on how they can be a benefit to the team and not based on URM pressure. That goes for promotions as well. This causes a lot of resentment within the team and questions the person hired: "Were they hired based on who they are or what they are?"

Things should be earned, not given. Unfortunately, we should have done a better job keeping Diane Bryant, as we respected her and her record was great.

Benefits and morale are going downhill, and I remember the #1 question in BUM was, "When are we going to get back the 10% SPP?" Now, morale is low, which tends to be the top question. Trust is low, as it does not look good that the CEOs and upper management tend to sell a lot of their stock, especially when they know about our security flaws.

Also, during BUM, they tend to answer questions very vaguely, like "this is corporate-wide standards across all tech companies, and we want to be in the 60th percentile in terms of pay and benefits."