My morning with Andy Grove and Gordon Moore
I worked briefly at Intel in 1991–2. At the time, the corporate culture there was based on the theory of ‘constructive confrontation.’
For most, that meant that in the clash of good ideas, the best one would prevail. For some at Intel, however, constructive confrontation was a blood sport. (I hope things have improved in the past 30 years.)
On my second morning on the job I was walking down a hall and a woman I didn’t know rushed up to me, pointed to a nearby conference room, and said, “You’re supposed to be in that meeting. Get in there right now! Go on, get in there!”
(I did as ordered. I was so new there I did not yet know who was who on the company’s org chart. This was my first encounter with constructive confrontation. She had sent me on a snipe hunt, as I discovered in about three minutes.)
I went into the meeting, and as soon as I sat down, I realized that I was the victim of corporate hazing. It was a meeting of Andy Grove’s executive staff, and just as I was about to get up and get out, Dr Grove walked in and took the only remaining seat. Right next to me.
Andy Grove was very smart, very observant, and very outspoken. But although he looked directly at me as he sat down, he didn’t notice, or didn’t seem to mind, there was a stranger in his staff meeting. Maybe the author of “Only the Paranoid Survive,” wasn’t so paranoid, after all.
Andy opened the meeting by announcing that tomorrow during the quarterly financial analyst call, he was going to announce that Intel was about to become the second largest advertiser in the US, after Procter & Gamble. The program was to be called “Intel Inside,” and the budget was going to be (as best I remember) about a quarter of a billion dollars. This was to be the first opening of the kimono for the upcoming release of P5, Pentium.
An unassuming man in a black suit, white shirt, and black tie across the table advised Andy that the better way to make the announcement would be to say, “We plan to increase revenue by X percent but it will require an investment of $Y.” “No!” said Grove, “I want to lead with the dollar figure. It will get their attention.”
“I really don’t think you should do it that way, Andy.”
“Well, I’m going to.”
“All right. But I’ll remember this when I do your performance review this year.” And with that, Dr Gordon Moore got up and left the room. And that was that.
That’s the day I learned that everybody — everybody! — reports to somebody. Grove reported to Moore, and I expect that even Dr. Moore went home to report to his wife, Betty.
The meeting went on and soon a topic came up resulting in a heated conversation between Grove and one of his staff. It happened to be the issue that was my focus there, promoting the first Intel device for laptop computers. The chip had been introduced too soon, was very buggy, and there was word of dropping it. Which would have put me out of a job during the 1991 recession.
So, unasked, I contributed my two cents. “Laptops are going to be BIG, and with this new Information Superhighway coming along that year, the Internet, this will be a game-changer. Imagine doing all your work in, let’s say, a coffee shop and have nearly instant access to nearly infinite information. Faust sold his soul to have instant, total knowledge.”
I was a No-Name suggesting to the exec staff that the company do a hard right turn, pull back from doing just another, though faster, line of desktop PCs. Imagine coffee shoppe computing.
I think I was foaming at the mouth when I finished my stemwinder, and then suddenly I came down to earth. Crap! What have I done! I am sole support for a family of five in a recession. What the hell was I doing!
But with that, Grove slammed his palm on the conference table and said to his staff, “He’s right!’
Then he spun in his chair, looked straight at me, eyeball to eyeball, and said, “Who ARE you?”
And that was my introduction to Andy Grove. I have numerous stories about my time at Intel and the other firms I did public relation for over nearly 40 years in the Valley. But for now, my present story in ended.
(Gordon Moore died on March 24, 2023. Andy Grove died in 2016. Robert Noyce, the third member of the Intel Holy Trinity, died on June 3, 1990.)
© 2023, Thomas Mahon
