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Title: High Output Management
ISBN: 0679762884
Author:
Andrew S. Grove
Publicate Date: 1995-08-29
Publish: 1995-08-29
List Price: $14.95
Average Customer Rating: 4.0
Format: Paperback
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $3.95
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $0.01
Amazon Merchant Price: $10.17
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1: Glad I Wasn't There - A Worker's Perspective
This book was referred to in a book I read called, The Microprocessor: A Biography (Silicon Valley Series). If you are more interested in what Grove did at Intel to win the microprocessor war, (who's outcome may actually be unfortunate for consumers, in that if PCs wound up with the superior Motorola 680X0 chip we might have better PCs). Do a search on "Operation CRUSH" for more on Andrew Grove.
From the aforementioned book, Pg. 171
"Grove refused to let even a recession force Intel to deviate from its planned trajectory. If Intel was not going to cut back from its current pace and profitability, it would have to increase its productivity instead in hopes of getting the next product generation out the door sooner and steal more market share from the equally suffering competition. Thus, in October 1981, the company announced its '125% Solution.' Simply put, every employee of Intel was expected to work two extra hours each day without pay for the next six months.
At a company with sixty hour work weeks was already the norm, the 125% Solution was something of a nightmare.........."
The "Microprocessor....Biography" book goes on to say that Intel may owe it's success more to the QUALITY of the scientists, engineers and technicians than the excessive work hours and that the need for such hours was questionable.
Some people might be proud to work in such an environment, but I must say I am glad I was working elsewhere and I had a balanced life. I too worked on a microprocessor project internal to Singer and put in some extra hours. I carried my experience from Singer R&D to get an even better job at Bell Laboratories, still working only a moderate, non-mandatory, amount more than a 40 hour work week and only because I was enjoying what I was doing. (If your workers love what they are doing, you won't have to force them to work at their best.)
I have read numerous scientific studies that have shown that it is more important for people to get enough sleep and that excessive hours are usually not productive. Further back, when I was in my 20s, I pulled a few 80 hour weeks, only to find that those of us who were working were giddy and half asleep as we worked. Many times I have gone home for a good night's sleep, only to discover that solutions to problems of the day before were solved overnight by my sleeping brain as opposed to the long nights, cranking away at a problem when nothing got solved.
By the way, about ten years ago, I had heard about some of Intel's sweatshop practices, which led me to insist on AMD boards in two of my PCs instead of Intel. I am now back to an Intel Quadcore "screamer," without which it would take forever to do the graphics work I am now involved in.
Whether one agrees or not with sweatshop work ethics, some customers, like myself, are sensitive to how workers are treated in the companies they do business with.
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2: Sound advice, if they really use it
I worked at Intel for over 5 years, and although this book is chock full of excellent strategies and advice for managers, I saw very little evidence that these principles were being put into use in the company during the entire time I was there, at least in my division, which was one of the bigger ones at the company.I will say, however, that Intel is a very odd place to work with its own unique corporate culture, some of which I would say is quite functional, but a lot of it isn't; or at least, the principles they say do work really don't, because nobody has the nerve to apply them. A good example of this is their principle of "risk-taking." This gets talked about more than most of the Intel cultural values. The reason is simple, although they say that it's okay to take risks, and that you won't be penalized if you fail, the reality is that no-one in their right mind ever does it if they don't have to. And it's not because your manager will give you a [rear-end]-reaming like you've never had before if your calculated risk fails and becomes a total disaster. That won't happen, because, as I said, they really do take this risk-taking principle seriously. Your boss may even commend you for having the cojones to take the risk even if your little project becomes a spectacular failure. The problem is in a much more serious area, unfortunately. If you fail, you'll get penalized through your performance review. (And if you're an exempt employee, all it takes is two below average performance reviews and you can be fired. They don't even have to be really poor reviews). Suppose you spend 6 months working on a risky project that fails. Now it's review time. Because you wasted so much time on this other project, you won't have very many other successful projects to brag about, compared to all the other employees who didn't have the cojones like you did to take a chance, but who now have lesser but at least successful projects they can ballyhoo during "ranking and rating," (or "ranting and raving," as it's called). Hence, you won't be able to compete in Intel's intensive and truly byzantine performance-review process, which insures that people pick safer but less potentially beneficial projects that they know they can pull off and bring in under the wire by review time. Another very odd thing about working there is that teamwork is valued almost over and above technical competence and originality. In fact, I would have to say Intel employees are about the most docile, uncomplaining, non-individualistic, and basically whipped employees I've ever seen. Someone should tell these guys it's okay to have a spine or a ... once in a while, instead of going through their work-life as a totally whipped, spineless eclair. Quite frankly, I'm not the most studly, macho guy in the world, myself, but these guys make me look like Brad Pitt, George Clooney, and Arnold Schwarzenegger all rolled into one. Anyway, whether the principles and strategies in this book are actually being put into practice or not, Andy Grove is certainly a brilliant manager, and Intel is a more than unusually interesting place to work.
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3: Good book of management techniques
This was a good book. I was not able to apply all of the techniques, but most of it came in useful. I always liked what Andy Grove did with Intel, his visions and his capability to keep Intel on the top. It's a good book. Read it. It will take you a couple of days, but you will be a better person after you have read it...
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4: Good book but...
Perhaps the strategies in this book work because Intel's people work very hard at implementing them, not because they are inherently better than other ideas.When I first started at Intel one of the things I noticed right off was how old Intel employees looked for their age (at least the ones that had been there for 7-10 years or more) compared to the other companies I had worked at over the years. I noticed women only in their early 30's who had worked there since their early 20's, for whom the rosy bloom of youth had long since departed from their cheeks. The men also looked older. I am not especially young-looking for my age, but I frequently get comments from Intel employees about how young I look for my age. Maybe that's because I haven't been here that long. Outside of Intel I rarely get comments like this. I may not look that young to most people for my age, but at least I don't look older than my age. On an even more sobering note, health researchers have found that people who look old for their age actually have shorter life expectancies, and correspondingly, people who look young for their age have longer life expectancies. I suspect that Intel's workaholic employees are the main reason for its success, but I wonder if they themselves understand the toll this success has exacted from them.
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5: Management - Straight from the horses mouth!
This book made its way onto the short list of books that I have picked up and read cover to cover in one sitting. Andrew Grove helped create a small memory chip manufacturer, and in the face of increased foreign competition, turned his company around to create the largest producer of computer processor chips to date. This book is a concise explanation of the methods and tactics he used to make Intel what it is.
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