The End Of An Era: With Thanks And Gratitude For An Intel PR Professional

There’s an old saying that goes something like “people do business with people they like.” If any shred of that adage is true, then Intel’s soon exiting PR Manager, Dan Snyder, has it “going on,” so to speak, on a number of levels. Dan has the privilege and good fortune to work for one of the most capable and powerful semiconductor manufacturers on the planet. With that power and capability comes a lot of attention and focus. Almost justifiably so, Dan could have been very hard to approach, tougher to access and even more difficult perhaps to relate to. Why? Because he works for Intel, a company affectionately referred to as “Chipzilla” over the years and frankly, as members of the press, you may or may not justify the blip on his radar screen or the bandwidth to engage with him. It’s simple physics and nothing personal. When you’re Intel PR, you get a lot of attention and a lot of requests and there are only so many hours in a day and even fewer in a week.

However, when Dan took over at Intel for his then semi-retiring predecessor, George Alfs (a man cut very much from the same cloth as Dan), he quickly got up to speed with us and it was readily apparent that he was looking to develop valuable, lasting relationships with members of the press and analyst community. Dan could have had his contact filters dialed up high, just to get through the day, but that just isn’t his style. A response was always given (whether you liked it or not) and any reasonable action item followed-up on.

After a few years of working with this gentleman had passed, my business partner Marco and I began to realize that “Dan The Man” as we call him, from Intel, was the real deal. Not only was he highly professional, diligent, skilled, informed and quick to follow-up in his approach, he “got it.” Referring to someone that “gets it” is sometime noted casually in business. It's typically referring to someone you work with that has a knack for knowing just what needs to be done and then appropriately responding in a timely manner. You don’t have to worry about where you stand with people that get it. They’re transparent and there’s no mystery. You don’t have to worry about whether or not they’ll do what they say. People that get it say what they’ll do and then do what they said, every time, without fail. People that get it not only understand their business partner’s needs and goals, but they find a way to mesh those needs with the goals of the company they work for, one way or another and intrinsically so, usually without much if any guidance. They truly get the bigger picture. 

Dan Snyder of Intel Corporation gets it and always has. He will be sorely missed.

This week at Intel Developer’s Forum in San Francisco, Dan informed key members of the Tech press community that he was moving on from his PR Manager’s role at Intel. Believe me when I tell you, a collective gasp was let out across the Internet. Dan has been working with us for a very long time, from Conroe to Skulltrail, Haswell and Skylake and every winding path (or board etch) in between. We had been to so many CES, IDF and other conferences with him, endless conference calls and meetings, that the years just seemed to blur together. He wasn’t just a PR Manager at Intel. He was/is a fixture; an employee so ingrained in the company he works for, that his persona and personal brand equity pays dividends virtually daily for the company in return, and in spades.


In this business (in any business really but especially in Tech) you have to learn to handle the constant change and to just roll with it. It’s quite literally evolve or die in this space. Still, not working with Dan Snyder of Intel PR feels like an unimaginable reality. Dan was and is Intel for so many in the professional Tech press and analyst industries.

At the risk of sounding a little sappy, one simple word comes to mind when we here at HotHardware.com think of Dan Snyder from Intel – “revered.” For us here at Hot Hardware Dan is the best in the business. People do business with people they like. It's common sense and human nature. It has truly been an honor and unique privilege to work with Dan for the past decade or more.

Great working with you, Dan. We’ll carry on of course but it just won’t be the same without you.

Dave Altavilla
Editor In Chief