I was laid off in April. I was devastated. 6 months later, I am so thankful they picked me. First off, it would be very hard to work for such a dishonest and dishonorable company today. Second, everyone who is still there has this blank glaze when they are talking about how things are going. Countless time I am told “I’m just there for my paycheck.” I wasn’t just there for a paycheck, not for a single moment in 15 years. So I am relieved that I don’t have to be there today. My present is full of great new challenges and people who are supportive. My future is bright, full of opportunities. So I am very thankful for being laid off. I hope the other 11,999 feel the same. Happy Thanksgiving to my fellow ex-Intel employees!
31 replies (most recent on top)
Still bitter about my ISP, but thankful for the potential opportunities in knowledge and work out there, and that I am still "getting paid" to transition into something potentially better.
"I am confident in my contribution at Intel so am not worried about being cut.
-Stupid Intel lifer"
So toxic is the culture that actual contributions can be a liability instead of an asset.
I am confident in my contribution at Intel so am not worried about being cut.
-Stupid Intel lifer
Last poster got it right, don't wait till the ship sinks and look, get a lifeboat now before 10nm crushes intel!
My word of advice is to those still working at Intel is to start looking now. Don't wait until you're laid off.
As stupid as it is, many HR people and recruiters look down on people who don't have jobs but are seeking one. It can be the difference between being chosen and not for a competitive position.
Good luck!
Thanks @4rvm. That makes sense. Appreciate the response. I was scratching my head over that one. lol
-4jbr
I'll bet he means classlessly
No idea what this means @ 4moh: As classes as my manager and his manager treated me...
I can read typo pretty well but not this time. Say what?
As classes as my manager and his manager treated me, couldnt be happier they forced me out. What a pool of $hit the place has become. I feel truely sorry for those kicked out and struggling to find their next gig, but also the poor souls still trapped inside as things continue to deteriorate rapidly, almost like the Third Reich. Intel the fallen Reich, LOL
@KwPs6US-3qqa here.
I definitely don't feel bad about myself. I'm not a dirtbag. I had a job, I have a job and the group that I left at Intel is an absolute mess.
I did really good, innovative work for Intel in my short time there, which in Intel culture evidently puts a target on your back (!) There is no self doubt. I've moved on (literally and figuratively). But I remember that, despite holding up my part of the deal, Intel, my management chain and some peers treated me poorly. Really poorly. And it's that which I'll remember, both as a counter-example of decent, honorable, productive behavior and when some of these same people will try to come to me to get me to buy Intel. Sorry, not gonna take that meeting...
This perfectly describes my situation: "She left a top job with a top global company and immediately found herself mired in petty internal power struggles and trivial internal projects." I found myself alternately being attacked for either doing exactly what I was told or not doing exactly what I was told. I was hired for my external expertise (from a customer no less) and then being condescendingly lectured by people in Intel about what customers really want (by people who only leave their cubes in Jones Farm to take boondoggle corporate trips to other Intel offices to show other Intel people Powerpoints and made-up market data about what customers really want).
I'm Thankful for many things. Having Intel in my rear-view mirror is one of them!
@KwPs6US-3qqa. Interesting what you said about being recruited. I knew some of the people in Global Acquisition and they did a terrific job on recruiting--and then the company couldn't deliver the glowing promises when the new hires got here. I know one new hire personally, as I worked with her several times, who said she'd been mesmerized by a recruiter's presentation and felt so lucky to be courted. She left a top job with a top global company and immediately found herself mired in petty internal power struggles and trivial internal projects. I'm not sure what exactly happened, but within a year and a half, she was gone abruptly, just before ACT. But not before she posted a scathing essay on Inside Blue about GPTW (which was immediately taken down).
re: Being walked out of the office like some kind of a dirt bag will stay with me forever.
Intel, or any company for that matter, isn't worth you feeling bad about yourself. And after only a year and a half? Don't let them have that much power over you. YOU can make the decision to let some outside force cause you to feel bad, or decide you have the power to not allow outside forces affect you.
I don't mean to sound mean but just move on from it. It had nothing to do with you. Consider yourself lucky to have been let go after a year and a half. Yes, lucky. You found another job that you sound happy with, forget about Intel. They already forgot about you.
-3weg
I was ISP'd in April as well. It was both unjustified and humiliating. Being walked out of the office like some kind of a dirt bag will stay with me forever.
In my new role (it took me about 3 months to land it) I have significant sway over data center purchasing decisions, especially in developing HPC and AI capabilities for our organization. You better believe that I will do everything in my power to buy as little as possible from Intel, not just because they treated me like crap but because I know the internal dysfunction and struggles with delivering on promises. I know that acquisitions like Saffron and Nervana (and Altera for that matter) will go the way of other acquisitions: great fanfare, inflated expectations and then failure to deliver. The founders leave at their earliest opportunity and the company is turned over to some Powerpoint-jockey Intel ahole who drives it into the ground.
Honestly, being discarded like trash for stupid reasons was consistent with my experience during my brief time at Intel (less than a year and a half: I was ISP'd because I received an S/SL4 in my first full year review for being "new to Intel"). The place is badly led, politically managed and strategically adrift.
Like so many "strategic initiatives" at Intel, being recruited and hired away from a good job, lured with a nice signing bonus and compensation package...and then discarded (at more cost) is par for the course.
The Intel monopoly can only last so long. People in my field contact me about what it's like to work at Intel. And I tell them exactly what it was like. I can only imagine what 12,000 or more people like me will do to the future of talent acquisition for them.
If I'm pissed after such a short time at Intel, I can only imagine how I'd feel after a couple of decades there and being discarded because some political manager gave me an SL4 for no good reason (or for a bad one).
You can blame your peers for how you were treated @3ktt, not HR, Richard Taylor, or even BK. I heard the reason why they did that was because when they laid off people in 2015, and left them stick around for several weeks (I forget how long they got, might have been up to 2 months), a lot of pissed off people took that remaining time in office so sabotage things as a 'parting gift'. So that's why they decided not to give p|ssed off employees the time to wreck havoc.
Bing, bang, boom! You're gone. But again, it wasn't done that way to hurt anyone's feelings, it was due to what a bunch of p|ssed off people did the last time.
Just putting the blame where it rightfully needs to be. Do I agree with how Intel & HR do things? Oh H3LL NO!!, but I understood their decision on this one.
New boss nicely scheduled my exit on a Friday, total shock after 20 years. HR said she read all my reviews and history and was very sorry, than handed me a USB so I could download anything personal before they took my computer. Offered a box to pack my cube and walked me to the door. Not any time to say good bye to friends of decades.
What a class company and behavior to walk longtime and senior employees.
Can't wait to see as things get worse how they treat the people.
The way people are asked to walk out is so embarrassing as if the employee did some crime.
He / she may not be useful for this company. But other company may be interested in his / her skills.
Every one use to see the other employee as criminal :-)
Normally if some one involved in crime or any harassment , most of the companies will take the employee out and terminate.
Disgusting act of ACT.
Life is a gift and always worth living.
Why are you giving importance to those that give you none.
In situations such as this .. to survive .. a person has to be selfish !!
You need to forget your wife and kids that are ignoring you...
And attend to yourself. You have to build yourself.
Start putting your resume together, applying for jobs , rebuild yourself !!
Get a temporary part time job anywhere to keep yourself busy while job hunting.
You are lucky .. you are almost a free man ... you can even relocate without a wife and kids..
START NEW :)
Stop feeling sorry for yourself. Intel job is not the END of you. Like a fallen soldier get up.
Good luck ... YOU CAN DO IT !! You are IMPORTANT TO YOU, you don't need to be important to anyone else or get validation from anyone else.
Got ISP this year. My wife left me. My kids don't talk to me. My friends and ex-colleagues shun me. I am now homeless with just a few dollars in my pocket. My life is no longer worth living.
Do such people deserve packages ?
How do they not qualify for termination along with the person that brought them into the organization.
Make a TMG person a GM
and
then watch all TMG rodents come crawling wanting to spoil a perfect organization.
My Indian TMG boss only know how to impress upwards with..
With no answers or leadership to those that report to him. No clue about what his team is doing. As long as the team completes work asked of him, he is happy collecting a big pay check without doing anything.
Thanks, -rjl! Agree about TMG mgmt chain. These people are undeserving of the title, manager. Each manager in the chain just parrots everything the manager above says. There is absolutely no challenge to anything the mgrs above say. One would think mgrs would devise plans to help save their top resources, but no! They just go with the flow and are ok with laying off their own employees. Have never seen such weak management that are so totally clueless in performing their job function.
Nobody who got hit by ACT should feel it has anything to do with their personal worth. It was a way to trim payroll of senior, higher paid people, that's all. ISPs were engineered by the peanut butter algorithm, followed by the age-driven ERP and seniority-driven VSP. They are still hiring like crazy, just lower pay (RCG, interns, H1B).
@bqy Sounds like my 1ndian boss - clueless, deranged, psychotic, mentally unstable, gossiping... has built a reputation for himself and is disliked so much that it is very difficult to get any people to work for him, unless they are his own people. Hired leave him before even joining the group. Is there a trend that most bosses from TMG are pathetic ar$$wipes that think people will obey them without asking questions ?
30+ years, first l4 from indian boss. All the owg got them in my group. The clueless s---ups did not. Shocking how quick the a company that used to be honorable changed and gave so many devoted the perp walk.
I am thankful to get some cash and be gone from a place with so little honor.
.... H A P P Y 🦃 🦃 🦃 T H A N K S G I V I N G ...
There is so much to be thankful for.
No matter what happens,
😊 😊 😊 It's great to be alive and healthy!!
The Thanksgiving vacation i cancelled due to Intel's last minute end of year bu!!sh!t is working out well.
Using the four days time ✌️ 😎 ✌️ well....
to organize all my emergency preparation at home, car and back-pack today. And rest of days working on my resume, studying, reading, building my professional brand (republishing the web links about me currently hidden , fixing my linkedin, selecting topics for white papers I can write about etc).
✌️ 😎 ✌️ All in time for my 2017 plan
after I return from my NEW YEAR celebrations and partying
at an the best
NEW YEAR 🎉 🍷 🍸 🍹 🎉world destination.
Partying like a ...
🌴 🌴 🌊 ROCK 😎 STAR 🌊 🌴 🌴
Happy Thanksgiving, ignoring the trolls I appreciate the real posters.
I couldn't feel more fortunate to have been forced out and also bitter as hell as to how unfair it was and what it put my family thru.
The boss that upturned my whole family I see drive by every once in a while, never stopped once to say hi or see how I am doing, says a lot about him.
Gave more than two decades and countless weekends and almost never used all my vacations and postponed two of my sabbaticals.
Got my first level 4 in 20+ years from a new boss, It was convenient to give it to me and make his high grade distribution
Unfair and they way they walked me out simply was so classless, says a lot about BKs company.
Hate to see what they do to the next couple rounds of people.
But there is a bright side, couldn't be happier I am off that hell hole of a ship. It is truely the listing Titanic about to go under, thank god I am not with them poor souls.
I wasn't laid off (I ERPed) but I'm thankful to be gone too! I stuck around for a package after becoming eligible to retire. No way was I sticking around any longer. It was hard enough sticking around for a package. I feel for my friends and colleagues though.... They'll ride it out till the gravy train stops to let them out.
The ISP is truly bittersweet. I am bitter because I did not deserve the SL4 stock level, first one I ever got. I fell into the older male category so I guess my number was up. The sweetness is watching my colleagues lives just unhinged and sweating every new piece of news. They should be looking for new jobs at other companies but are two "frozen" in their routines to do so.
Try not to get bitter it will happen to most ppl at some pt.
Nope, I am still bitter about my ISP.