Why you fail as a manager

• If you know anything about CPUs you know about the last launch of AMD Ryzen and Intel Core CPUs.

• Intel screwed it’s launch big time.

• They were outclassed by the basic AMD Ryzen CPUs and left way behind by AMD 3D cache technology.

• Intel had to update microcode and firmware several times trying to catch up, but the brand damage to the product was done and people didn’t buy CPUs from Intel.

• AMD had new records of CPU sales.

• Intel could have easily averted this.

• They could have added more cores.

• Or higher frequencies with using TSMC as a manufacturer.

• Or add cache - they have the technology - the way AMD does it.

• But for profit they decided to do something that was “just good enough”.

• Over decades this thinking was ingrained into Intel. Never release what you can do, release CPUs that are just a little better, enough to make people buy one.

• The first time this strategy took a big hit when Apple switched to ARM and their own production, because Intel was holding back and doing too little.

• The last hit with the launch I’ve mentioned put Intel into a tailspin.

• Are you doing the same?

• Do you use the minimum amount of resources to solve a problem?

• If you under-provision resources to problems, you dramatically increase the risk that your solution will not solve the problem.

• Best case, the problem comes back again and again.

• Worst case, it does cost you your job or company.

• Even in the best case, managers struggle with problems that come back which they had thought were solved.

• They are overwhelmed by new problems that arise and more and more old problems that come back.

• Instead of under-provision, solve problems in a way the solution surely works and the problem does not come back.

• Ignore problems that don’t need to be solved, over-provision solutions to problems that are critical.

• Think “What are all the things I can do to solve the problem and make it stay solved?” instead “What is the minimal thing I can do that could work?”

“What are all the things I can do to solve the problem and make it stay solved?”

• This way, as an engineer or engineering manager or CTO you can make sure to not get overwhelmed by Boomerang problems.

• Don’t make the mistakes Intel made.