Intel Corporation Visit

At Intel's campus in Bangalore, Naresh Sehgal, lead architect of the EPSD group, provided us with an overview of his group and IIDC (Intel India Development Center).

IIDC is Intel's largest non-manufacturing site outside of the United States. Previously just a sales and marketing organization, Intel India has evolved into a research and development center due to the engineering talent pool in the country. Currently, Intel is one of the top ten employeers of choice in India.

Intel's EPSD group works on developing unbranded server platforms (hardware & software) which it sells to channel customers and local OEMs. With the help of this group, channel customers can better compete in the market because most of the ground work and research is provided by the Intel team. These customers merely brand and sell the product without dealing with any of their own R&D costs. This program also provides a two-fold benefit to Intel. First, by supporting channel customers, Intel is able to dilute customer power. As described by Porter's 5 forces, by increasing the customer base, no one customer can squeeze Intel on prices. Secondly, since larger customers are slower to adopt new technologies, Intel focuses on getting their new technology to market through its smaller channel customers. This in turn forces larger customers to jump on the bandwagon.

After the initial group presentation by Naresh Sehgal and his team, the students formed three breakout groups where they interacted with a few Intel managers and individual contributors. The key learnings of these sessions are presented below based on the feedback from the three team leaders.

Group 1 (Team leader: Joan Simon)

Topic: Challenges and Solutions of Managers from an Indian Cultural Perspective

Similar to the structure of technology companies in the U.S.A., the career path for Intel India in Bangalore is like that of two rungs of a ladder where an employee can either follow a management or technical path

There are three types of managers at Intel, India:
First Level Managers – manage 9-15 individual contributors
Middle Level Mangers – manage first level managers
Senior level Managers – manage middle level managers

Challenges:

1. 
   One of the challenges that first level managers face is that their individual contributors want to be managers after a short amount of time. This is due to peer pressure as the individual contributors from a small company like Intel, India compare themselves and the rate of their career growth to peers of much larger companies that can handle the infrastructure of having many managers.


2. In the Indian culture, criticism, though constructive, is not seen as an opportunity for improvement, but as a sign of failure with no room for redemption. Hence, managers need to be cognizant of their communication style to encourage employees to improve and not to quit.


3. Reduce attrition.


4. Motivate employees to be more proactive and innovative.
   
5. Develop leader leadership skills in employees.
   

Solutions:

1. Quarterly performance reviews for providing timely feedback and reiterating expectations


2. Facilitate a system for employees to provide anonymous feedback to managers.


3. Commit to working with or mentoring employees to reach their goals.

Group 2 (Team leader: Dang Nguyen)

Topic: Work-life Balance and the global collaboration

How does an Intel employee in India deal with time zone differences?

Intel provides laptops and where possible home broadband connections to allow employees to reduce the impacts of both traffic and time zone differences.Intel also stated that they also try to share the pain by rotating the time when the conference calls occur.

Why an MBA and what value does it have?
The individual contributor in the group asked about the value of an MBA degree and if that has implications on reducing their technical abilities (i.e. reduced focus). The Santa Clara students gave multiple view points on this, including examples of the MBA improving their analytical skills and their ability to view technical issues in a different way. The Intel middle-manager, had a different opinion, as he believed technical contributors should continue to focus on their technical training.

Retention of Talent?

The managers discussed ways to retain employees by ensuring employees saw the value in what they were doing. Even though it may mean changing some lines of code, they should know the impact of their work. The Intel manager also discussed how titles and positions are important in India, as employees are looking to fast track their careers. Also, Intel being a MNC, is more competitive from a salary point of view than Indian companies.

Group 3 (Team leader: Shabnam Karimi)

Topic: Management Model

Two out of three Intel participants had management roles in US before moving back to India. The first challenge they faced was that the management model they we accustomed to in US was not applicable in India. In US, management by objectives is fully enforced as opposed to India where the focus is on relationships and feeling. Since the average age of the workers is relatively low, managers need to focus on coaching and developing their employees

Another challenge is that the sense of ownership is not as evolved in Indian workforce as compared to the US. Managers have to implement many checks, balances, and contingencies planning in to project planning. In addition to human behavior, environmental factors play a big role. Family obligations, traffic, and many other shortcomings interfere with task delivery. A manager needs to understand all the human and non-human issues and find a way to work through them to have a successful project.

Currently, the attrition rate ranges between 15-20%. The average salary in India is 1/3 of the same role in US. If this gap decreases, it will not be worth it for global companies to come to India. Therefore, India needs to improve its worker knowledge and efficiency to ensure more than just a cost benefit.

-- Ritu Manocha