News on the wire today is that Intel has rehired Shlomit Weiss, a 28-year veteran, as senior vice president and co-general manager of Intel’s Design Engineering (DEG) group, a position recently. left vacant by Uri Frank who left to lead Google’s SoC. development. As stated in Tom’s gear and confirmed in its own LinkedIn Announcement, Weiss will work at Intel’s design center in Israel alongside Sunil Shenoy and is “committed to ensuring that the company continues to be a leader in chip development.” Weiss is the latest in an ever-growing list of Intel veterans who are “re-hiring”, leading to the problem that at some point Intel will run out of former employees to rehire and instead develop internal talent for it. these roles.

During his first 28-year stint at Intel, Weiss is said to have led the team that developed both Intel Sandy Bridge and Intel Skylake, arguably two of the company’s most important processor families in the past. decade: Sandy Bridge reaffirmed Intel’s leadership position in the market. with a new core microarchitecture and continues today in its 6th generation at Comet Lake, while Skylake has been Intel’s most profitable microarchitecture to date. Weiss also received Intel’s Achievement Award, the company’s highest bid, but is not listed as an Intel Fellow, while CRN reports that Weiss also founded the Intel Israel Women Forum in 2014. Weiss left Intel in September 2017 to join Mellanox / NVIDIA, where she served as Senior VP Silicon Engineering and led the network chip design group of the business.

In his new role at Intel, Tom’s reports that Weiss will lead the overall development and design of Intel’s consumer chips, while other Intel DEG co-GM Sunil Shenoy will lead the data center design initiatives.

If you’ve been following the news from Intel staff lately, you might start to learn a pattern:

• December 20: Intel hires Masooma Bhaiwala (16-year veteran of AMD)
• January 21: Intel rehires Glenn Hinton (35-year Intel veteran, Senior Fellow)
• January 27: Intel rehires Sunil Shenoy (33-year Intel veteran)
• January 27: Intel hires Guido Appenzeller (various)
• February 15: Intel rehires Pat Gelsinger (30-year Intel veteran)
• May 28: Intel hires Ali Ibrahim (13-year veteran of AMD, Senior Fellow)
• June 7: Intel hires Hong Hao (13-year Samsung veteran)
• June 8: Intel re-hires Stuart Pann (33-year Intel veteran)
• June 8: Intel rehires Bob Brennan (22 year Intel veteran)
• June 8: Intel hires Nick McKeown (professor at Stanford for 27 years)
• June 8: Intel hires Greg Lavender (Sun / Citi / VMWare 35)
• July 6: Intel re-hires Shlomit Weiss (28-year Intel veteran)

Of those named hires (many other people hired below the vice president role), seven are listed as former Intel employees rehired into the company, mostly in engineering-focused positions. These former Intel engineers have a long line of accolades within the company, having worked and built the fundamental technologies that power Intel today. The exact reasons they left Intel in the first place are varied, with some peers willing to cite the brain drain during CEO Brian Krzanich’s tenure, but it looks like the promise of working on fundamental next-gen hardware, with popular CEO Pat Gelsinger, is enough enticement to keep them coming back.

It should be noted, however, that the number of engineers Intel could rehire is limited – tackling the key personnel critical to Intel’s growth over the past decades, despite their lists of successful products and accolades, does not. may not be the ultimate goal. the entire next decade of Intel’s growth. If we also strictly adhere to the usual retirement ages, a number of them will soon be at this level over the next ten years. Intel cannot continue to rehire seasoned talent in key positions to move on to the next phase of its product evolution – at some level, it has to rekindle the initial passion from within.

Key Intel personnel are often local, or what we call “lifers,” who spend more than 20 years with the company, typically straight out of college or college – every rehire on this list. fits that image, especially CEO Pat Gelsinger, and a number of contacts I have within the company are the same. However, if Intel is to rehire those who brought the company to past glory, one has to ask exactly what is happening so that the talent already within the company does not escalate. At some point, those veterans will retire and Intel will be at a crossroads. In a recent interview with former Intel senior vice president Jim Keller, he said that (paraphrased) “building a chip design team in a company is volume-dependent – you hire if you don’t. not the right people, but if you have a team of 1000, then there are people out there and it’s about finding the right people. ”In a company with 110,000 employees, it seems strange that Intel feels forced to rehire to fill these key roles Some might wonder if those rehires would have left in the first place if Intel’s brain drain had never happened, but it still poses an interesting question.

Source: Tom’s gear, CRN
Picture: LinkedIn

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