Intel Corp (INTC)

[Tim May]

I saw a very long time ago, more than 40 years ago, that companies like Intel were hiring people classified by some (and government) as "minorities." I am speaking of course about very large number of Indians and Chinese.

I spent my career at Intel working with names like Chua, Yu, Khurana, Dham, Rao, El Mansi, Chou, and on an on. Way more than half of my professional contacts were with engineers, designers, and scientists from india, China, Pakistand, and toward the end, Vietnam and other southern Asia countries.I think that even by 1985 about 80% of all of the names on Intel papers, patents, and other professional achievements were either, variously, Indian, Egyptian, Iranian, Chinese, Taiwanese, Pakistani, or other such persons.

Nobody I knew of thought this at all strange. These were the MS and Ph.D. outputs of our major universities at this time. Oh, and,--dare I say this?--a lot of Jews. And the rest mostly traditional white people.

THIS IS WHAT IT WAS! It was what any institution which hired based on competency was hiring. Sure, there were almost zero negroes or Hispanics (of the Mexican-Guatemalan kind(), but some Spaniards, Brazilians, etc. Almost nobody from the urban ghettoes, unsurprisingly.

(We were not hiring illiterates or innumerates. As the "Airplane" movie put it, "We didn't speak jive.")

And, if anything, the mix has shifted even more in this direction. The negro and the inner city Mexican gang-banger is even more gutterized than he was 50 years ago. Sad. But best to think of this in cultural evolution terms.

It is what it is. "Brothers" (negroes) and "sisters" (college females majoring in Womyn's Studies, Gender Awareness, and Queer Politics) may rail against tech companies for not hiring them in "correct proportion," but the reality is crystal clear.

For intel to adopt "affirmative action" in hiring is an affront to everthing I believed Intel's founders and investors stood for 40 years ago.

--Tim May