THE GEEKS at Intel aren't having an easy time. They're being made to work or 'cooperate' with people who mostly get in their way, justifying their very existence using biased 'studies' which they themselves control. The resentment isn't due to jealousy or zealotry; it's due to issues of a technical nature and there's reluctance to actually listen to technical people. The net effect is, Intel products and documentation of those products suffer. The end users (or developers) suffer.

This issue isn't unlike many that we've seen in other companies. Non-technical or barely technical people are made to enter positions of power, in turn driving out the real talent and leaving in place unsuitable people who aren't able to produce good products. If the real goal is to seed disharmony and harm products (or projects), then well done, mission accomplished. The Developer eXperience (DX) team seems to be self-harming... to Intel.

"I find it difficult to understand Intel's line of reasoning when it comes to hiring people for DX," told us a person who knows Intel from the inside, "as the company where I worked in mixed Linux/Unix/Windows environments gave adequate training to new hires to fill any gaps in Linux knowledge and skills."

He continued: "I also always made sure to test scripts and code in the environment they were supposed to run in in order to minimise the chance of bugs occurring and to get as close to the customer environment as possible. This really helped when working on solutions to problems, so it is disappointing to see Intel not having similar levels of documentation and support.

"Intel doesn't seem to see the urgency in doing this and it makes you question if they don't want that training effort to be made. This in turn will lead to more people with a Microsoft background being employed until there are few if any people with GNU/Linux skills left.

"Last but not least I realise now that it is a good thing that the people who do the actual technical work should also be the ones writing the documentation, even if this takes time away from doing other technical work."

The rest of this series can be found in the relevant wiki page. The video above deals with only a few examples (more to come tomorrow). ⬆