A long career can give you two perspectives at once: pride in what you helped build, and a clear-eyed view of what changed after you stepped away. That tension runs through a LinkedIn post titled “My departure from Intel: a success and a failure,” written by Ray Arell, who describes retiring from Intel in 2016 after 30 years.
In the post, Arell frames his departure as both personal and professional. He says that when he chose to accept what he calls the “rule of 75” and retire, he felt he understood the company’s direction—and didn’t like what he saw. He describes a leadership shift he believed was harmful: a new CEO he calls “clueless,” and a workplace environment where attempts to improve Intel were met by “a culture dominated by his followers.” For Arell, leaving wasn’t presented as a dramatic protest so much as a practical decision: “for my own well-being,” he writes, he moved on.
But the heart of the post isn’t a resignation letter—it’s a reminder of what Intel once meant to the people building it.
Arell recounts the “pure engineering geekdom” of working on a striking list of technologies and platforms: the 286, 386, i960, 486, WiFi, 3D graphics, USB, RAID, vPro, and other contributions he calls “remarkable technologies.” He positions that period as transformational, writing that “we transformed the computing world,” and emphasizes that this happened without needing a larger-than-life archetype at the center.
Then comes the harder question he asks of his own legacy: did leaving change anything? His answer is blunt—no. In his view, Intel “lost its continuous improvement and results culture.” He says efforts to enhance the culture were “dismissed, undermined, and ultimately defunded,” and he describes that as a failure “from Intel’s longevity perspective.”
Still, he doesn’t end on pure disappointment. If Intel didn’t hold onto the culture he valued, he suggests the people did: “success emerged from people who took our influence to other companies, helping them succeed.” In that sense, the work outlasted the organization’s choices.
Taken together, Arell’s post reads like a personal history of engineering satisfaction set against an institutional cautionary tale. It’s the story of someone who loved the craft, believed deeply in the culture that supported it, and left when he felt that culture was being replaced—while still taking pride in what he and his colleagues built, and where that influence may have traveled next.
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