- > "I also supported cloud computing, participating in 110 customer meetings, and created a company-wide strategy to win back the cloud with 33 specific recommendations, in collaboration with others across 6 organizations."
Man people keep count of this stuff?! Maybe I should too, it does make flexing easier.
- A "goodbye" post after only 3.5 years. Hard to relate.
In my world it's hard to imagine an impact after that short of a time. And in fact, reading the list of accomplishments ("interviewed by the Wall Street Journal") makes it clear it's a good PR piece.
I'm perfectly willing to believe he's fabulous, but this didn't move the needle for me.
- > My next few years at Intel would have focused on execution of those 33 recommendations [for a “company-wide strategy to win back the cloud”], which Intel can continue to do in my absence.
The idea that people are going to execute your arduous, detailed plan for world domination while you’re off doing something else seems a bit… unrealistic, to say the least.
- He doesn’t mention it in this post, but in another post he talked about the toll of needing to frequently attend meetings in the middle of the night in his time zone.
Whatever his reasons for leaving, I hope that he finds a better balance in his new role.
- I see some mean comments. I suppose maybe people doesn't know Brendan Gregg's work, this guy reserve some respect.
by foobarian
2 subcomments
- Wow is it me or is the self promotion strong in this one.
- Masterclass in turning a goodbye email into a hire me after my next gig ends. I’m not being sarcastic, this is a great example of highlighting the value they added.
- Intel losing great people at high speed. Not the first, not the last.
- If my back of the envelope math is right, in the last 6 months he’s been attending more meetings at possibly odd hours; he lives in Australia and Intel is based in the USA.
See https://www.brendangregg.com/blog/2025-05-22/3-years-of-extr...
77 meetings then, but 110 meetings in his resignation blog post…
- I think this is a good opportunity to guerilla-ask a question about cloud performance:
We've been running some compute heavy workloads on AWS, with some running on metal instances, and some running on virtualized instances of equal size.
Both were intel 192 core machines.
Virtualized instances tended to perform 20-25% worse in terms of CPU throughput, which is quite significant, and more than I'd have assumed.
Where does the performance go? Is this an AWS thing, does the performance get lost in the software stack, or is it a CPU-level issue?
I haven't tried with other vendors tbh, but would it be possible to mitigate this by switching to another architecture/vendor like AMD or Graviton?
- Hats off to Brendan!
- Leading the article with AI stuff is certainly a choice. If that's what they've ben spending their time on lately, maybe this is good for Intel.
- A periodic reminder Intel is still in business.
- What's with the retro gear on the desk?
Do you use it much and what for?
In particular Commodore tape player.
by brcmthrowaway
2 subcomments
- Terrible news from Intel, this guy seems like the best performance engineer on the planet
- I'm guessing he'll land at one of the big frontier model companies. I'm surprised he stayed at Intel as long as he did, they are dying fast.
- Glad this made HN. Just wanted to thank you for writing, and I've ordered one of your books.
- I’m wonder how much longer Intel will be around. It seems to be dying a slow death like Kodak or IBM at this point.
by markus_zhang
0 subcomment
- Congratulations. A fulfilling life.
by al_be_back
0 subcomment
- Leaving intel? That’s one case where an employee won’t get chastised for
- So...oai or google?
by ChrisArchitect
1 subcomments
- Extra slash in the url
- In the photo of him on his last day [0], there's a cassette deck on his desk.
That could be something mundane, but I'd like to believe something crazy happens if you yell at it [1]...
[0] https://www.brendangregg.com/blog/images/2025/brendanoffice2...
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDacjrSCeq4
by javaunsafe2019
1 subcomments
- I mean I understand if someone like Keller writes such posts but some dude claiming to have hosted conference events and some kind of process flame graph which could have been done by anyone…
by badmonster
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by ohhellnawman
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by sundayqtrbk
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- Read this blog post from the same author https://www.brendangregg.com/blog/2025-11-22/intel-is-listen.... I'm surprised that this narcissist Fellow wasn't shown the door by the company for 3.5 years.
Good luck to whichever team he now joins and get ready to be shoved with his accomplishments reports.