Intel CEO suffering from corporate culture shock
SAN FRANCISCO — Google Inc.’s freewheeling Internet culture of Razor scooters and lava lamps has made it famous worldwide. Director Paul Otellini, also the head of Intel Corp., says it drives him nuts.
“There are dogs in there, people have futons in there, free food,” Otellini said in a speech to the Churchill Club in San Jose, Calif. “It drives me nuts. It’s everything that is not Intel. We’re very disciplined and organized.”
While Otellini won’t be handing out smoothies or offering doggy daycare at Intel any time soon, he said the straightlaced chipmaker could learn something from Google. Mountain View, Calif.based Google, the most used Internet search engine, has used its fast-paced culture to enable it to move out new products quickly, beating Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo! Inc.
“ There are things I’m learning at Google that I would like to adapt and bring back,” said Otellini, 55, who has been a director at Google since April 2004.
Otellini said he’s impressed by Google allowing employees to spend one day a week to work on projects of their own choosing.
Otellini, awarded options on 65,000 Google shares before the company went public last year, has benefited from the surging share price, which has more than quadrupled since its initial public offering.
Otellini, who took over at Intel in May, said he works in a grey cubicle that’s smaller than the orange one he was first given when he joined the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company in 1974. “Not a lot has changed” at Intel in the past 31 years, he said.
All Intel employees, including Chairman Craig Barrett and Chairman Emeritus Andy Grove, are given the same sized grey- sided cubicles typifying a manufacturing approach that emphasizes uniformity.
At Google, offices include lava lamps in the lobby and rubber exercise balls on the floors. Some desks are made up of old wooden doors.
One of Otellini’s jobs at Intel included a stint as personal assistant to former chief executive Grove, who personally approved all expenses and forced employees, including founder Gordon Moore, to sign a late list if they arrived after 8 a.m.
By contrast Google employees zip around the campus on Razor scooters, swim in a pool and get their cars parked by a valet service.
Intel’s plant workers follow an exact routine and use equipment that is replicated around the world, known as “ copy exactly.” For example, an air hose attached to a machine in Intel’s New Mexico plan is the same length and coiled in the same manner as an identical machine located in Ireland or Israel.
Bloomberg