Kyle Bennett of HardOCP Joins Intel as Director of Enthusiast Engagement

[dj-electric]

@W1zzard don't leave TPU and join Intel i think i would kms if you did

and people thinking i'm joking lol........... (ಥ ͜ʖಥ)

Holding yourself hostage to another individual's chance of advancing in life. Nice approach.

 

[Bones]

Well 1st thing that matters in this world is $/hour so i wish him alot of it.

At this level of business there isn't any $'s per hour, it's all salary with things like benefits packages and such included......Also with proviso's stating what's-what within the contractural agreement(s) signed.
That's why I said there has to be "Things" within that stipulates whatever they do it can't be detrimental to the company's interests which would undoubtedly include any reviews done.

If there is some wiggle room I'm sure they'll use it but do not expect a blatant blasting of Intel from them as long as they are under contract, even if said blasting is well-deserved.

 

[Valantar]

Hm.

On the one hand: awesome. Kyle is a solid journalist, with integrity up the wazoo. A much needed quality in marketing also.

On the other hand: this sounds like a community engagement position. HardOCP's community is horrible and their forums is a complete cesspit - which, regardless of other factors and direct responsibility, is the responsibility of the site owner. At the very least, he has allowed it to continue. Might not be the best starting point for a marketing/community outreach job, even if the job is mainly towards the high-end OC scene and similar niche groups.

We'll see how it turns out, I guess.

 

[Xaled]

Yeah, some interesting wording there.
Either way, they haven't published anything interesting since the GPP debacle. I used to enjoy their "highest playable settings" reviews, but they dropped those a while ago. I'm still hoping someone else will pick up that format, it was super-interesting to see whether the extra 5-10fps other reviews showed oy could actually enable you to up some setting.

Why even bother? He would've got headache for being honest

 

[Pruny]

So biggest HJW sold out?

Feelsbadman

 

[AmioriK]

Holding yourself hostage to another individual's chance of advancing in life. Nice approach.

I'm bitter because I will never be as successful or awesome as W1zzard

 

[cucker tarlson]

I'm bitter because I will never be as successful or awesome as W1zzard

can you make what you write about here anything but discussing yourself and your hatered for intel ?

 

[Assimilator]

I'm still not sure if this is a troll or not.

 

[Zubasa]

These guys aren't called the "best tech journalists" for no reason. The main reason for anyone to become famous in the tech journalism, is great work ethic.

If they retain their ethics standards from when they were tech journalists, then Intel will go in good direction.

The issue is there will always be a signifcant conflict of interest from this point on.

 

[Moofachuka]

As long as they don't hire any journalists from Tom's Hardware or The Verge, I'm fine with that...

 

[nemesis.ie]

Maybe some of those would actually be a better fit.

Just buy it! Build your PC like this - sounds about right. Right up there with water chillers under the desk.

 

[badsykes]

This looks to me ass a 1st April fool joke from Kyle / Hocp
Quoting:

"Effective April 1, 2019 I will be taking on the position of Director of Enthusiast Engag ..."

Also there is no discussion button that gets you to their forum ...

Is way too much coincidence

 

[Patriot]

This looks to me ass a 1st April fool joke from Kyle / Hocp
Quoting:

"Effective April 1, 2019 I will be taking on the position of Director of Enthusiast Engag ..."

Also there is no discussion button that gets you to their forum ...

Is way too much coincidence

Either the other editors are in on it...or it is real.

 

[64K]

Also there is no discussion button that gets you to their forum ...

I was just there and there is a link to the Forum within the front page article about leaving and in the Forum under Front Page News there is a discussion 19 pages long as of now.

 

[MyTechAddiction]

A bit late, but this is also a great way to kill a critical news outlet without going to extremes.

 

[bug]

Kyle is not a person who can pick a side and stay honest. I remember when HardOCP was not invited to this weekend’s launch in Macau as AMD PR and then AMD failed to send GPU (think polaris) sample to hardocp for review. Afterwards their site was bashing AMD at every opportunity they got. In recent years he totally switched sides when AMD sent him early Zen/TR samples.

Kyle is his own words never liked AMD.

"NVIDIA spends time getting game ready drivers going, AMD spends time getting canned benchmark drivers ready?".
"Trouble is brewing for AMD, Radeon Technologies Group, and Lisa Su, CEO and President."
"The entire AMD GPU stack in about to collapse at the expensve of saving face". Quote on Quote by Kyle.

"He's been especially butthurt ever since AMD opted to not send him free Fury samples, and that was BECAUSE of the pre-existing bias he had against AMD. When a bunch of readers called him out on those shenanigans, he started banning people and any who remotely 'dissented' against him or the site. "

"So lots of tech press folks are flying out today for Macau China where AMD will be showing off its Polaris 10 and 11 architecture over the next few days. Just FYI, HardOCP was NOT INVITED to this event. When I reached out to confirm with AMD that we were not invited, and our invitation had not just gotten lost in the mail, AMD PR refused to answer the question. AMD PR has made a decision to no longer brief this site with the rest of the industry. Honestly, there is likely not much to miss here, as we do not think AMD has any answer for GTX 1080." Kyle

I remember when half a dozen people were banned over this fiasco.

Some of the people on this thread were banned from HARDOCP for speak out. "https://hardforum.com/threads/from-ati-to-amd-back-to-ati-a-journey-in-futility-h.1900681/
https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/505qzn "

Perhaps now Tech journalism at Hardocp will improve.

The thing is, we're all humans and we all have our bias. Nobody is 100% unbiased. The trick is to realize that and know where you stand.
I mean, looking at you I see someone who has no problem quoting when HardOCP was anti-AMD, but somehow misses how the whole anti-GPP campaign was also started by HardOCP based on little else than "our sources which we can't divulge told us it's bad".

PS Journalism over there can't improve after Kyle, because Kyle takes HardOCP with him.

 

[Mistral]

This is great for Kyle, I wish him all the best. I hope he is able to perserve his stellar work ethics at Intel.

 

[mcraygsx]

The thing is, we're all humans and we all have our bias. Nobody is 100% unbiased. The trick is to realize that and know where you stand.
I mean, looking at you I see someone who has no problem quoting when HardOCP was anti-AMD, but somehow misses how the whole anti-GPP campaign was also started by HardOCP based on little else than "our sources which we can't divulge told us it's bad".

PS Journalism over there can't improve after Kyle, because Kyle takes HardOCP with him.

Exactly my point and I am not in his shoes. He switched sides like seasons in the past. You also ignored the fact that his motives of journalism were without any code of ethics. One of those Journalist who want to report but also had no problem banning their readers who disagree. Point is Journalist bear some responsibility to their readers to provide information from all possible sources, unbiased and without jumping to conclusions on their own which he seldom ignored. In the end we are glad he moved on to something better. After all some of his ethical background is no better then INTEL .

FYI if you reread my post, anti-GPP campaign was not ignored.

 

[bug]

Exactly my point and I am not in his shoes. He switched sides like seasons in the past. You also ignored the fact that his motives of journalism were without any code of ethics. One of those Journalist who want to report but also had no problem banning their readers who disagree. Point is Journalist bear some responsibility to their readers to provide information from all possible sources, unbiased and without jumping to conclusions on their own which he seldom ignored. In the end we are glad he moved on to something better. After all some of his ethical background is no better then INTEL .

FYI if you reread my post, anti-GPP campaign was not ignored.

He's not a journalist though. He's a guy writing whatever he wants on his own website

 

[timta2]

Hm.

On the one hand: awesome. Kyle is a solid journalist, with integrity up the wazoo. A much needed quality in marketing also.

On the other hand: this sounds like a community engagement position. HardOCP's community is horrible and their forums is a complete cesspit - which, regardless of other factors and direct responsibility, is the responsibility of the site owner. At the very least, he has allowed it to continue. Might not be the best starting point for a marketing/community outreach job, even if the job is mainly towards the high-end OC scene and similar niche groups.

We'll see how it turns out, I guess.

I agree with this completely. I had noticed that things were really headed downhill over there, several years ago, and then I was banned for calling someone out, who was repeatedly being racist towards African-Americans. I guess I was the "trouble maker" and banned and the other guy was allowed to revise his posts to make them slightly less racist. Rather disturbing, but not surprising from a bunch of white guys in Texas.

 

[stimpy88]

This just shows me what an uphill battle Intel is going to have against Zen2.

To control the narrative is to remove/discredit or simply buy voices of reason and truth, and continue rewarding the access media, which is now about 98% of the tech sites out there. This is not good news for people with a brain.

In saying this, it's been very obvious that Kyle has been backed into a corner career wise, having been ostracised by the whole tech industry. He hasn't cared about his own site for a few years now. It's mostly a "news" regurgitation site with a few great and honest reviews from time to time, which is why I still go there, but it's lost its way, and it's passion. It's forum is a complete dumpster fire, chock full full of trolls desperate to have a fight if your opinion differs to theirs, and an awful moderation team, hell bent on fuelling the fire to the trolls advantage, and is hardly worth taking the chance to visit it anymore.

There are now only a very small handful of what I would call REAL tech journalists left. I think I can only count about 3 or 4 now. Sad news indeed.

 

[RoutedScripter]

Why not regard this as a temporary period, when he gets out of Intel things will go back again, or if he goes to another fileld type and he wouldn't want to run/ he can still be involved but have other people working or simply support it under a "break-even" basis, for example if there's not enough donations he would cover so it doesn't go bust, at least the forum and community.

Better yet why don't they simply leave things in place, he quits as a director but still owner, but has the finances frozen, for example all the money he would get from HardOCP would be put on a kinda read-only bank account which would be a special one created between him, the bank and intel, which means he could only access and take out funds after the employment with Intel ends. Come on, this is too of a legacy and it's not hard to come up with some more ideas.

Not saying he must go back to it, but if the whole thing was properly defined and put into contract that the one who will run HardOCP and forum would make sure it provides barebone support so that it wouldn't go offline, and that he would be able to take it back once emplyoment end, there has to be a legal doc on this and then inform the community.

 

[skates]

I'm saddened by this news. Hardocp was my go to, along with Techpowerup over the years during my lunch breaks. I don't see how this relationship will work long term considering Kyle's fierce independence from vendors and integrity in his reviews. I think he may be a bit naive to assume his bosses at Intel won't want him to engage the community in a positive way even though the product may not be very good. He doesn't get paid to say negative things about their product, or advise the community that the product is a bad buy, he gets paid to say good things about Intel, it's as simple as that.

If he sticks to his integrity, then I don't see this working long term. If he ditches his integrity, then he has a future at Intel.

This just shows me what an uphill battle Intel is going to have against Zen2.

To control the narrative is to remove/discredit or simply buy voices of reason and truth, and continue rewarding the access media, which is now about 98% of the tech sites out there. This is not good news for people with a brain.

In saying this, it's been very obvious that Kyle has been backed into a corner career wise, having been ostracised by the whole tech industry. He hasn't cared about his own site for a few years now. It's mostly a "news" regurgitation site with a few great and honest reviews from time to time, which is why I still go there, but it's lost its way, and it's passion. It's forum is a complete dumpster fire, chock full full of trolls desperate to have a fight if your opinion differs to theirs, and an awful moderation team, hell bent on fuelling the fire to the trolls advantage, and is hardly worth taking the chance to visit it anymore.

There are now only a very small handful of what I would call REAL tech journalists left. I think I can only count about 3 or 4 now. Sad news indeed.

Which 3 or 4 do you think are the real tech sites?

 

[Valantar]

Which 3 or 4 do you think are the real tech sites?

They said 3 or 4 journalists, not sites.

 

[Caring1]

Sorry Kyle, never heard of you before this thread, and I've been around a few years and read a lot of forums.