Inside Intel

                        For a change, I thought I could share my personal life on this blog. As most of you (if there actually are any) know, I recently transformed (had to) from a lazy insti dude to a working engineer, corporate style! Luckily for me I got into a company I have enormous respect for, though I now understand that I don't know much about the company or the industry for that matter. I joined Intel India on august 1st with a very enviable 3-day grand orientation ceremony with 160 lucky others at Leela Palace, Bangalore.

              I have learnt a lot of things about the workings of semi-conductor industry in this one month though not much has been achieved in the work I would be doing. One thing I liked about Intel was the importance given to Ethics and Values though I have my own doubts that this might be because I am a new recruit. All the senior folks seem to be dedicated enough and more importantly were quite approachable. They took a lot of pain to arrange a number of training sessions for us to have a smooth integration into the company. The Open-door policy in which you can schedule appointment with anyone in the company looked like a great idea though I guess it was not Intel's brainchild.

        I also realized that Intel is not an Almighty in semi-conductor industry. For example, AMD makes better client CPUs than Intel. Also, Intel too uses its brand name by over-pricing its products. I didn't think Intel would do it given their values though I am not saying it is un-ethical. Also I see that Intel is a traditional company in its own way, entering new arenas like mobile industry and Graphics almost a bit too late.

  
     I also got to know about Intel history a lot though any of this is available to everyone. I never knew about Andy Grove, the man who turned Intel fortunes and who is considered the most influential man in semi-conductor industry. His character was inspiring and interesting to know about.
    One thing I realized is, though I am a Master of Engg in VLSI from IITM, I knew very little of the industry and its workings. There seems to be a huge gap between industry and college education in Semiconductor industry. We don't even know the flow process properly or half the technical terms used here. I guess this is the case with any other engineering stream in India(This should be the topic for a different post).
    Finally, my first month at Intel is not at all complete without mentioning Foosball! I saw the game on Friends but never thought it to be so awesome! My first two weeks were spent on playing Foosball while attending training sessions in between till the table got damaged.

   Overall, the transition was not as painful as I thought it would be, but I miss IIT-M and my friends a lot. I miss the campus and the lazy life-style there. I miss jogging in the green campus and watching hundreds of  movies and sit-coms. But I think I am utilizing my time a little better now than in campus as I am learning a lot of new things at a much better rate.

  I would like to end with a couple of quotes by two CEOs of Intel:
    " Our business model is one of very high risk. We dig a very big hole in the ground, spend three billion dollars to build a factory in it, which takes three years, to produce technology we haven't invented yet, to run products we have designed yet, for markets which don't yet exist.
      We do that two or three times a year.
       Everything we do has an inherent belief in technology. " - Paul Otellini, present CEO of Intel.
 
    " What we start off with, is sand. Rest all is value added by people." - Andy Grove.