I used to work at Intel (around 1999) in their Jones Farm campus in Oregon. My employee stock grants from that time are still underwater.
This was the heyday at Intel. I left within a year because I noticed that the talent that was respected, compensated and influential at Intel was the sales engineers. I can't pretend to have known that would lead to the decline of the company, but I knew that as an engineer uninterested in sales, that it wasn't the place for me.
The sales engineers had a special rotaion program so they could work in different parts of the business and get experience in different areas, and they had special social events, dinners, etc. Their starting salaries were like 25% - 50% higher than regular engineers' salaries. The rest of us peasant engineers just wrote code.
This was the heyday at Intel. I left within a year because I noticed that the talent that was respected, compensated and influential at Intel was the sales engineers. I can't pretend to have known that would lead to the decline of the company, but I knew that as an engineer uninterested in sales, that it wasn't the place for me.