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LeonM parent
Alyssa works for Intel now, so I doubt she'll be doing much contract work for Valve anymore...
embedding-shape
What a jump, I'd be curious to hear first why anyone would prefer Intel above pretty much anything else, but also secondly how the actual experience difference between the two after working at both, must be a very strong contrast between them.
trenchpilgrim
On her website it says she is working on GPU drivers there - I wouldn't be surprised if that's something she greatly enjoys and Intel gave her then opportunity to work on official, production shipping drivers instead of reverse engineered third party drivers.
neilv
If I were Intel, this sounds like a great person to give an R&D skunkworks dream job.

Potential lottery ticket win, they are available for consulting internally anywhere that can add value, and they're not working for anyone else.

whizzter
Maybe she was given a huge signing bonus to avoid her working on making X86 irrelevant? Combined with perhaps some interesting project to work on for real.
array_key_first
Personally I don't think ARM can make x86 irrelevant.

I believe low wattage SOCs can make traditional desktop hardware irrelevant (ish), but I think ARM is orthogonal to that.

whizzter
I wouldn't have thought so 5-10 years ago, but with Microsoft offering Windows on ARM the is really no OS that specifically targets x86 (Legacy MS products will keep it alive if the emulation isn't perfect).

The thing is, x86 dominance on servers,etc has been tied to what developers use as work machines, if everyone is on ARM machines they'll probably be more inclined to use that on servers as well.

It's like an avalanche effect.

array_key_first
Microsoft has tried Windows on ARM, like, 5 times in the past 15 years and it's failed every time. They tried again recently with Qualcomm, but Qualcomm barely supports their own chips, so, predictably, it failed.

The main reason x86 still has relevance and will continue to do so is because x86 manufacturers actually care about the platform and their chips. x86 is somewhat open and standardized. ARM is the wild, wild west - each manufacturer makes bespoke motherboards, and sockets, and firmware. Many manufacturers, like Qualcomm, abandon their products remarkably quickly.

3 More Comments →
sitkack
Only x86 can make x86 irrelevant.
forgotoldacc
I imagine there's also some challenging work that would be fun to dig into. Being the person who can clean up Intel's problems would be quite a reputation to have.
sulam
There’s a real limit on what level of problem one engineer can fix, regardless of how strong they are. Carmack at Meta is an example of this, but there are many. Woz couldn’t fix Apple’s issues, etc.

A company sufficiently scaled can largely only be fixed by the CEO, and often not even then.

ikety
I'm sure most would stay at valve if they could. The just do so much contract work, and I'm sure a stable job at intel is better pay, benefits and stability.
bigyabai
Would it shock you to hear that many/most engineers don't pick an employer based on brand reputation?
collingreen
Would it shock you to hear that famous engineers with their own personal brand power have different opportunities and motivations than many/most engineers?
vasco
Their point is even made stronger by your comment. Engineers of this type don't experience megacorps like regular engineers. They usually have a non-standard setup and more leeway and less bureaucracy overhead. Which means brand isn't the biggest thing, the specific projects and end user impact are.
KerrAvon
usually a combination of money/benefits/locale is the answer to this question
skavi
Intel has a reputation of producing relatively high quality drivers for Linux.

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