remember........
April 28, 2005 12:36 PM PDT
Intel's big hiring day
Employees come and go, but Intel had a particularly good hiring day back in April 1974. On a single day, incoming employees included Paul Otellini, the incoming CEO; Tom Dunlap, an engineer who later became general counsel; and Harold Hughes, who helped jumpstart Intel Capital and is now the CEO of Rambus, Hughes recalled.
Hughes wasn't too familiar with the company, but noted it was in California. He lived in Michigan.
"There was a mimeograph sheet with Intel and a funny 'e' in the recruiting center," Hughes said.
Posted by Michael Kanellos
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May. 16, 2005
Intel's new boss leads by example
NON-TECH EXEC TO FOCUS ON CHANGING MARKET
By Dean Takahashi
Mercury News
Paul Otellini becomes Intel's chief executive Wednesday, the first non-engineer to head the world's largest chip maker. But that doesn't mean he can't bond with the technologists responsible for Intel's innovation.
During a team-building exercise, the soft-spoken Intel veteran led rampaging engineering executives through a cluster of cubicles, firing paint-ball guns at cornered opponents. ``We were all out there charging the flag. He would take the bullet. He would pull together a team,' recalled Cadence Design Systems CEO Mike Fister, a former Intel executive, of the paint-ball battle six years ago.
For Otellini, that ability to marshal the support of Intel's engineers will prove crucial as he tries to retake the high ground in microprocessor design from rival Advanced Micro Devices and outdo competitors such as Broadcom and Texas Instruments. It is this leadership skill -- not his origins as a numbers guy with an MBA -- that won him the top job.
Otellini, 55, is taking the helm at a momentous time. Intel dominates the market for personal computer chips but has faltered in its bid to expand aggressively into semiconductors for communications, cell phones and consumer electronics.
The bottom line
Still, Intel remains hugely profitable, raking in more than $2 billion in net income a quarter. Its sales exceed $9 billion a quarter, surpassing those during the peak of the dot-com boom in 2000.
Otellini declined to be interviewed for this article. Those who know him describe Otellini as quiet and modest, at least compared with Intel CEOs like the blunt Andrew Grove and the sometimes sarcastic Craig Barrett.
``Paul was less confrontational,' said Bill Davidow, a former Intel marketing executive who worked with Otellini in the 1970s. ``He was very smart, energetic and unflappable. I saw Andy Grove as a great manager, but I see Paul as a leader, someone more like David Packard.'
Said Jim McGregor, an analyst at In-Stat, ``He was born and bred in the same `only the paranoid survive' culture that Andy Grove created. So it's not a huge change.' But as the company matures, ``It's better for Intel to be run by someone with a business perspective, not a technical perspective.'
While Barrett concentrated on transforming Intel into a manufacturing powerhouse, Otellini is focused on making Intel into a market-driven company. Otellini is reorganizing the company around platforms -- packages of chips and electronic components plus the marketing needed for customers to launch new products.
For instance, Otellini led Centrino, a successful campaign that pulled together all the technology needed to get consumers to use laptops to access the Internet wirelessly.
Raised in a religious San Francisco family, Otellini was an altar boy as a youth.
But Otellini had a mind for business. As a teenager, he sold hot dogs at Candlestick Park. He received an economics degree from the University of San Francisco in 1968 and an MBA from the University of California-Berkeley four years later. During school, he worked at a clothing store and in the purchasing department of a slaughterhouse. When he left Berkeley, he wanted to break into the tech industry.
He accepted a job from Intel in 1974 and started in the company's finance department on the same day as Harold Hughes, now CEO of memory-chip designer Rambus.
In the beginning
The two men bought a house together in San Francisco. For a time, Hughes said, ``I thought it would bankrupt us. But we wound up making money on it.'
Otellini had a knack for making money -- and for finding important projects within Intel. He moved to Intel's fledgling microprocessor group in the late 1970s at the start of the PC revolution. His work attracted the attention of Intel co-founders Gordon Moore and Andy Grove.
Otellini kept moving up the Intel food chain. He started Intel's PC chipset business, which has grown into its second-largest business behind microprocessors.
Grove began grooming Otellini and in 1989 made him his technical assistant. Others teased Otellini about the seemingly menial job -- Otellini had to make sure the chief executive's speeches went off without a hitch and teach him how to use a personal computer. But Grove wanted to assess Otellini.
He passed the test and continued his rise through the ranks. Otellini ran the microprocessor products division, helping to launch Intel's enormously successful Pentium processor in 1993.
``In those years, he moved beyond being just a finance guy. He understood the business from one end to the other,' said Atiq Raza, a former AMD president.
Barrett, then Intel's president, asked Otellini to move to head sales and marketing.
All the while, Otellini continued to commute from San Francisco to Santa Clara. He once bought a house in Los Altos Hills but eventually moved back to the city. He met his second wife, Sandra, at Intel. She worked as a lawyer in legal and management positions until she retired in 1995.
After Intel's board of directors named him CEO-elect in November, Otellini reorganized the management team around five technology platforms.
Change for better
``Paul has carefully thought through the platform strategy and cajoled and encouraged conversation in the management team,' said Sean Maloney, senior vice president of the mobility group at Intel. ``I've never seen such a big organizational change carried out this well.'
Intel recently reported stellar financial results. But among the challenges Otellini faces is the need to re-ignite the company's growth. Indeed, the word ``growth' has been posted in every Intel building to drive home the task at hand.
``Otellini knows where he has to take the company,' said analyst McGregor. ``At Intel, he has operated in the background behind some very big personalities. Now it's time for him to step forward and show his.'
William Davidow Ph.D.
Director Emeritus
Dr. Davidow was a director since Rambus's founding in March 1990 through May 4, 2005 when he was appointed Director Emeritus. He served as chairman of the board until January 2005. Since 1985, Dr. Davidow has been a general partner of Mohr, Davidow Ventures, a venture capital firm. From 1973 to 1985, he held a number of management positions at Intel Corporation, including Senior Vice President of Marketing and Sales, Vice President of the Microcomputer Division and Vice President of the Microcomputer Systems Division. Dr. Davidow holds A.B. and M.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Dartmouth College, an M.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from the California Institute of Technology, and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University. He also serves as Chairman of the Board of Directors of FormFactor, Inc.
AI
