Thread regarding Intel Corp. layoffs

Boy oh boy! I took the VSP and haven't looked back till now, when I decided to check out this forum. I was happy with my decision before, but often wondered if I'd go back to Intel if given the opportunity. After reading through this forum, and reading recent news, I'm thinking hell no. Thanks, Intel, for financing 5 months of domestic and international travel over last spring and summer. And thanks, Intel, for my new truck paid off free and clear. The best part, when I was ready to go back to work after my summer of fun, I got a job offer TWO DAYS after my first interview, at a higher pay rate. And, I'm much happier on a daily basis at work. Some things are just meant to be :)

I am OK with the no rehire clause. Who in its right mind wants to go back to that nasty environment?

I agree completely with 2wmv -

I wish there was a way to convince BK/HR to remove SL4s from the no rehire policy as most of them did get average or above average pay raises (meaning 2nd quartile and good peformers) but got penalized with SL4 for subjective reasons or even running out of 'stocks' because they gave too many SL2s.

Like it was said, I can take being laid off, but the no-rehire stigma is what still stings

2wmv - Great points, assuming some one in charge is truly listening. If these naked emperors were capable of listening, they would not have bungled so many opportunities in the past, would not have handed business to competitors on a platter, and then would not have made mindless acquisitions as CYA strategy. Firing employees is not even CYA strategy, but a "cover your poo*" strategy, hoping the stench can be masked. Fixing performance issues? Least of their concerns.

At Intel, performance is what your manager thinks of you. Want to improve performance? Be the soft spoken always YES man to your boss. It works for many like a charm.

Intel ceased to be a tech company a while ago. It is run by mindless process czars who need to spend 10 meetings among 10 equally clueless managers on whether an engineer should or not spend an hour of his time fixing a bug or feature that spans 3 lines of code, while the engineer is asked to come up with s-xy PowerPoint foils on the alternatives to not fixing the issue. The sheer magnitude of engineer hours wasted on PowerPoint at Intel is mind boggling. These are engineers trained to solve complex problems. Yet a half of their time goes into PowerPointing. The number of people playing the role of sheepdogs who do nothing but micromanage engineers has grown phenomenonally during the last few years.

The tragedy/farce of this is the "no rehire."

• Don't trust managers focal judgement - force a distribution regardless.

• But -- do trust manager's focal output as a permanent decision - no rehire allowed. Regardless of individual circumstances as to manager, individual, team, timing, etc.

This illustrates the main problem for a decade - inability to make decisions, hold management accountable. On anything.

In this case, deciding who to fire based on the need and circumstances - instead, (it's not fun), they transformed focal to a permanent layoff decision that focal was never meant to be. I had to sigh when cleaning out my basement I came across something on "meaningful development discussions" that was handed out to managers - impossible to do this in this environment.

To fix the cultural problem:

• Management commit to never again do a pseudo-performance based layoff on focal criteria. If someone is to be fired, fire them. Performance = poor performance review and manage them out of the company. If there is a layoff, do a skills evaluation like the old Intel used to do. End of story.

• Lift the "no rehire" policy on people who were let go with SSL4 (and maybe even BE) and apologize for it. People can handle a layoff, but the permanent taint was offensive. If you trust managers to decide who to hire, you need to trust them. if they hire badly, discipline the managers or make them otherwise accountable.

• If age and higher salaries of senior people are the issue, don't transform employees at high pay grades into a performance problem when they aren't . Have a real mechanism to reclassify people at lower grades if their job responsibilities have changed over time, with salary re-calculating, without resorting to phony focal and performance metrics. You can't have it both ways - "move laterally, try new things" - but you will be punished if you are senior and do this. This should be an open conversation and policy. What, afraid of exposure to age discrimination? Better de-toxifying the culture with fake performance process.

Other suggestions?

@2cjq, I hate to say how many people I heard that same comment from about "taking an SL4 for the team". I'm torn between the idea of managers being that deceitful vs being unaware.........I was never in any Focal sessions where the L4/5s were not positioned as performance " messages", but I did run across way too many managers that were unaware of these guidelines when they were passed down back in 2010. And not just FLMs, these were dept-like managers of large groups that you would think had to know better.

@LJMHpaK-2kra Well my VP and senior VP decided to give me a L4 as convenience to make distribution at higher grade. 20 plus years first level 4 after 4 promos and unceremoniously walked out. I got above average raise but they needed to make distribution and I was a convenience.

In many ways happy I am out of that $hithole as I had five offers so I certainly wasn't deadwood. I do feel sorry for my many friends trapped there. Sad how far Intel has fallen from being a place for th best to go to just another American tech company very ordinary with bad management

A good read across the board, at least from the perspective that it reminds me why it was a good choice (of mine) to take the ERP last year. I love what over 25 years at Intel has provided for me, I'm sad that I don't see that as a possibility for most of the people that remain - especially since the biggest thing I miss daily is the interaction with some great individuals and teams.

I do however take exception to some of the comments by managers saying that they had no choice in complying with HR/Sr Mgmt regarding forced distribution. Is it the worst thing ever? Yes, no question. Is there no way around it? Yes, there most certainly is. You can stand up for your people when warranted and judge them fairly so they have the opportunity to grow and keep pace.

Will this potentially rile your manager (and their manager/etc all), will it potentially put you in their distribution crosshairs? Of course, but as a manager that's your role and your choice - if you're not up to it, go back to an IC role. After 15 years managing I'm comfortable with never having to deliver (or receive) a "message" that was not deserved, and even at that I can count them on one hand and have a finger left over. From my perspective, I was much more qualified to do an open-door and argue my case for NOT meeting distribution than a valued member of my team that had met expectations and been successful all year.

HR is pxxxking dirt. they played gangsterism and mafia style. don't feedback any good advices on 360 mgr feedback. otherwise u r a death meat.

so how about diversity quotas? any word on that yet? How many women need to get EE/O this focal round? sadly they never communicate that one in writing only verbally

GPTW

Couldn't be happy to leave that $hithole, as a manger loved my people and hated focal. It is so broken and embarrassing.

😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

People actually ask what is wrong with a forced distribution?

Throughout the year, we managers tell our team members that they are doing a good job. They are achieving the goals we set and we commend and recognize them for that. Then we have Focal talks with them where we again reconfirm that they have achieved all goals. That is the management culture that HR and upper management promotes. We are supposed to have a "growth mindset". We are supposed to focus on positives. We are supposed to help people improve by motivating them. We are explicitly told all these things in trainings.

Then we go into meetings with upper management and are told to enforce a quota. Now we have to tell 5% of the people that their work was great but not great enough. HR tells us that we have to be 100% behind this and that we can't blame the system, but we have to act like it was our own decision to kick that employee to the curb.

That is the problem. The management culture HR Claims we should live by vs the management culture HR actually makes us follow during Focal.

there is churn on management level for different reasons. the ones with a conscience leave after a while. doesn't happen often though - draw your own conclusions from that.

@omx No, a modern company improves itself by developing employees, by giving them long-term perspectives, by trusting them and allowing the employees to trust the company, by working with people who might have weaknesses in some area and by discussing those weaknesses openly and by working to fix them. A modern company does not pit employees against each other but makes them work as a team. This kind of management style has been proven to create highly effective people in highly effective teams. Intel is applying a management style from the 90s that he been shown many times to foster low efficiency. I am not pulling that out my arse and that is not management b---s--- bingo.

Intel's approach to people management is actually the laziest possible approach to people management. It's what you do when you have no clue what to do.

Also, Intel's enforced churn policy only works in a company that is ultra-attractive with highly competitive salaries. Otherwise, you will replace those "low" performers with equally low performers every year. Then all that gets you is churn that kills your teams' effectiveness and a competitive culture with a latent atmosphere of uncertainty.

Yes, if that is the company culture, then ok, that's up to Intel management to decide, but at least HR should come out and admit it and also allow the managers to communicate it like this to the people. And I know only one tech company that thrives on that. It's an ultra-attractive company with highly competitive salaries that is famous for its extremely competitive company culture. You'll probably guess the name om the first try. It's not Intel, by the way.

But even if we say that the "get rid of 5% every year" system is great for Intel, the Focal system is broken, because it allows the managers to push the 5% quota down to the lowest level, so managers are very very rarely hit by SSL5 and IR. They are the only part of the company that is not graded on a bell curve.

@1sgh. Well said. GE used to fire the bottom 15% of their executives every year, and Microsoft did similar things before. It took them awhile to figure out this is not right. I guess Intel is following their footsteps....

@1iop. Thanks HR.

Good to see the hire then fire churn is alive and well.

I am okay with it. A high performer this year doesnt necessarily mean a high performer next year. Its not a job for life folks. Get over it. As an organisation, Intel doesnt owe you anything. Its primary motive should be profit.

Think it's not so much the 'bottom 5%' that must go every year per Intel Exec's but more like the 'oldest 5%' (or who took FMLA, etc. Truly sad for a company that supposedly used to have integrity.

Every SLM manager is required to meet a quota, don't believe the management charade they tell you.

The money and stock they get includes an assumption of 5% IR and another similar amount of L4 and a limited amount of raises and positive stock to. To reward some they must penalize some and give less. The budget is fixed so to meet budget someone will be singled out and fired this time! 🤔

Everyone meets budget even organization with all PhD and working 7 days a week and putting in 80 hour weeks. BK don't give a phuck but about himself and same with managers at focal 😉

Look around in every group of 10 one will be gone next year! 😉

Welcome to the GPTW Intel BK has created. Makes billions and lays off hard working just so he looks good while he pursues stupid destined to fail new initiatives that will cost Intel billions like Tablets and Mobile.

Does matter. Intel will change the rules as the game goes on to get rid of people.

@omx - In theory, I can agree. However, the metrics for rating are not known to employees ahead of time. FLMs cannot coach their teams correctly throughout the year, and then are forced to rank/rate on a new, extensive list of metrics nobody even knew about during the ranking period. After ACT, every employee is now aware of this, and it doesn't exactly foment a GPTW atmosphere, now, does it?

I see no problems with weeding out bottom 5% every year. That is how an organization improves itself.

What's wrong with the distribution is that we supposedly weeded out the deadwood last year. So now we're supposed to weed out another 5%. Another 5% next year. And so on. The message to the teams is: Make sure you are not at the bottom of the ladder. Or even better: Make sure someone else is at the bottom.

@jjl It's a strictly enforced quota, not a guideline. The upper managers squeeze the management ranks below them until they get the 5%.

What exactly is wrong with forced 5% IR/S4/S5? Very few Intel managers can admit that any of their people are below avg. This forces the needed actions.

And this kind of crap is why I am (by choice) no longer a front-line manager in the crazy-town known as Intel TMG.

It was basically impossible to do the right thing for the people in the org. Any attempt to fight for your team resulted in serious backlash both from upper managers and other front-line managers.

Make some tech females and urm ssl4 and see if hr wants the 5 percent

It's a guideline not s quota

the greatest thing about the focal system: we managers are completely safe. as long as we deliver our managers the percentage of improvement required ratings that they need, they will not give us an improvement required. don't believe me? then why did no managers get ISP in ACT? HR supposedLY even has a statistic they are not allowed to publish about how management was severely underrepresented in ACT. and they have no idea how to fix the broken system.

@1lc Hey BK welcome to our little forum here. Say, do you get a focal rating as well?

Nice fairy tale, Brah! Now go back to the burger grill and start flipping them.