Not just technical dominance — we’ve all heard of lead Intel engineers hired away to Apple/Google/Amazon/etc during this period of stagnation. How many senior engineers, staff engineers, and low-level talent in general has Intel bled in the last 5-7 years? How many of them have moved to Qualcomm, TSMC, Apple, Google, etc? At this point, I wonder if Intel is even capable of fixing their technical problems since most of their talent abandoned the sinking ship long ago.
Talent comes and goes. If other companies can hire away talent, Intel can hire them back too. If you pay enough, people will come. Intel currently seem quite willing to pay.
It doesn't sound like Intel has been competetive on salaries for quite some time. Last time this came up, it sounded like Intel thought they could get away with Oregon salaries, meanwhile they're now competing with Cupertino salaries, among others. I suspect that they've had a captive audience for so long that they don't have a 'playbook' for a seller's market. All of the people who remember are either fat and happy or long gone.
Love of the work is one thing, but if you can love the same work somewhere else for 40% more you'd better think pretty hard about the wisdom of staying.
That's a change then. Before they use to aim for paying at about the 50th percentile. So Google and other companies would literally pay twice or more as much in salary in comparison.
Yeah I would assume the cause and effect are reversed. They lost technical dominance but still had a road map that counted on all of those people still being there and on the ball.
