The long lead time between plan and production means he will be looking 5+ years out. Basically, he is going to need to science the shit out of this situation he will be in in ~5-7 years where AMD, Apple, QC, and Samsung won and everyone else in their client list is jumping ship to ARM Fabs (QC, Samsung) with more quantity small-node Fabs. You're looking at Good Arm Chromebooks, a Surface Pro X that doesn't suck, ETC.

Microcosm of America...

I wonder if it was the ‘wasp-saviour’ concept.

“I’m rich and went to an Ivy, I know that engineers are just as effective when we put the building machines in Asia and we save on tax money! I get a bonus to send my kids to private school too, this is great!”

Someone I knew who went to Harvard Business School had a cynical take like this: the whole system is basically set up to ensure high-paying jobs for the children of the rich and political elite... regardless of whether they are truly qualified.

I don't know if the elite university name brand bias had anything to do with Intel's story but it is a major anti-pattern in American institutions. Don't get me wrong... these are very good schools. It just doesn't follow that all people who went to Harvard are better than all people who went to some state school.

I wouldn't travel on a ship steered only by shipwrights, and I wouldn't travel on a ship built by sailors alone.

An engineering company needs engineers at the top levels, but we all know at least one brilliant engineer who is puzzlingly naive in other aspects of life. The business of engineering is more than "make good devices and sell them at for a profit." A good engineering business needs shrewd businesspeople to keep it running. You need solid management and solid engineering throughout the entire hierarchy of the business.

> It just doesn't follow that all people who went to Harvard are better than all people who went to some state school.

I totally agree. The capability of a student transcends the imprimatur of the institution where s/he learned.

However, business school is also about connections, and learning in an enlightened group often gives rise to a sort of intellectual critical mass that begets even greater learning through discussion and the interchange of ideas. If given a choice, I'd rather study engineering at Cal Tech than some middle-tier school, and I'd rather study business at Harvard than some less reputable school.

I think of it this way: to run a business, you must understand what the business does at least well enough to "grok" how it creates value and to tell the difference between good ideas and bullshitting. At the very least you have to be knowledgeable enough about the details to spot other people who know more than you do about said details and distinguish them from bullshitters.

In technical companies, engineers are often (but not always) the people who really "get it." Yet not all engineers have the other skills you need to lead a business like good communication skills, people skills, decisiveness, etc.

Depends if you want to a) actually practice engineering and b) fork out 70k a year (which if you’re shrewd you can make back by more lucrative SWE opportunities). HBS I totally get

When I was in college it became very apparent what the fraternity and sorority system was- a way for the elite and upper class to ensure that their children met other rich children and kept their money and power incestuously consolidated. Kids and hearts don’t care about class, the only way they can ensure a union is make it where pretty much the only people the kids meet are other elites and 1%.

Interesting idea. In this mental model, are the kids being coerced into joining one of these houses by the parents who want to ensure this?

Because from where I was sitting, the kids were plenty self-motivated by the parties, and the parents had basically no say.

In this case, the problem is that Intel did not use Asian (specifically, Taiwanese) fabs for its most advanced chips.