Thread regarding Intel Corp. layoffs

Sound like Intel criminals talking

INTC helped me buy a million dollar house back in 2000. But NVDA helped me pay it off last year. Please diversify it helps in the long run + we do not have enough eggs to put them all in one basket.

Stealing trade secrets like a multi-millionaire and be in jail at Intel.

https://www.oregonlive.com/crime/2025/02/ex-intel-worker-pleads-guilty-to-stealing-trade-secrets.html

Intel is always selling us something that is in the future. Until 18A is delivered this is just more hot air. The only thing Intel consistently delivers is failure and disappointment. Why would anyone expect anything else at this point. Intel has too many employees and spending is still out of control. If it meets its Q1 forecast it will be another loss. The economy is cooling off and the markets are oversold at historic levels. Good luck with your grand turnaround plans.

Thought leaders like the resident anthropologist senior fellow. Intel has been great for the lifers when Intel was dominant. All they had to learn was how to maneuver in Intel’s toxic culture with their internal network of friends and alliances. OKRs, insights are all BS when you have your network giving you nonsensical projects and then sending their input for your performance. Ah perfect life! Also, you have the most unethical HR on your side. Employees who showed better intelligence and results and questioned the internal practices (basically threatened the mediocre lifers) were quickly eliminated via the rank and yank system and with the help from HR. Just look around you, Michelle a linfield university BS in finance has climbed to the co CEO position. What does it tell you? A state of the art tech company, I don’t think so. Corporations are good examples of reverse evolution, selection of shittest

You just have to love these 10xxxxxx badge numbers that act like they're some kind of visionary in computing when all they did was happen to work right place right time in tech 25 years ago. They are neither smart nor talented. They just had above average timing. And the last time they put in a solid day of work was 25 years ago. The problem is compounded when they are put out to pasture and get anointed as a manager (untouchable). Then the name of the game is to increase headcount (quantity) with zero consideration for quality. Because why would a B player ever hire an A player. They want C players to cement their "thought leadership".

Thought leaders in Rural Oregon LOL - anyone below a certain badge number. Think about how deeply flawed that concept is. You have 25 year "tech veterans" in Rural Oregon called Thought Leaders.

Current fab rat here. Agreed. There's always room for improvement and I think letting Gelsinger go was a mistake. But overall? It's a great place to work. I'm so confident in the turnaround, I shifted some of my 401K contribution toward ESPP.

I worked in the Automotive group early 90's. Our major customer Bosch asked us to bid for the 2000 ECU model using the 386 core. We added the gods in Santa Clara and they said stay sway from our golden eggs, go push your 296 micro controller. Do not cheapen size x86!

Became a millionaire as an MT in AZ in 14 years. Put your Starbucks down and cancel your NFL network.

I left Intel 20 years ago but have great memories of my decade there. It was a great company. Unfortunately, it went downhill from there, both technologically and in terms of corporate culture. Rounds of badly designed layoffs ruined the morale, process leadership is lost, several key technologies missed, from mobile to ai. I am worried about my friends who still work there.

I am a 27 year employee and just before I left, i did an analysis on manufacturing the same node process (TSMC vs. Intel) and we were much more expensive. One of the things Intel underestimated was labor cost. Labor cost are far lower in Taiwan, plus they work way past 40 hours a week whereas the US labor cost are much higher and we have labor laws of 40 hours a week. Last, Taiwan does a lot of subsidy in manufacturing semiconductor products whereas we have the chips act but that is not for America companies only (e.g., Intel).

Intel has lost me tens of thousands. Sheer incompetence. If you had worked for Nvidia, you’d be worth $100mm at this point. For one of only 5 chipmakers in the world and the leader 5 years ago, it is absolutely inexcusable to have missed the AI boat and multi-core gpu’s. Beal up the carcass and sell it to the vultures. I am out as a stockholder.

Where do you park and what is your home address OP ?

I don't believe in Intel employees who have been with the company in the last 20+ years. Intel has a toxic culture that encouraged internal fighting, politics and a-s-kissing instead of focusing on competition and real, productive results. Toxic culture is pervasive across the company, across all layers. The company missed all growth markets - mobile, graphics, AI etc. It wasn't because they didn't see them or they didn't invest. They missed all them after massive multi year investments.

In the past 2 decades, Intel's manufacturing edge and dominant position in x86 allowed long-timers to become experts at Intel's bloated and wasteful environment - a skill only valuable at Intel, rather than building technical or business expertise. Most do not have expertise in x86. Most talk buzz-wordy nonsense. Engineering is full of program managers and architects, slideware warriors. Finance, one of the most bloated groups, is worse, an army of employees whose job is to kiss a-s to the higher ups while telling co-workers and subordinates what to do! if everyone tells others what to do, who is doing the actual work? Yes, BK was not great buy he was better than the two clowns running the show. And also, he was the product of Intel, the very best they can get. WE also saw Pat. He was a buzzwordy marketing person, preferred hobnobbing with politicians etc rather than managing the company. I did not see him at RNB working at his desk or having his lunch or walking in buildings. Not once!

Intel doesn't have a competitive edge. Intel has been losing share to AMD both in client and server (server is worse). But most important threat is ARM. Nvidia has ARM based CPUs targeting data centers today. They started to get into the PC market by targeting the high-end with a partnership with mediatek. The only reason they are not entering the PC market fully is because Nvidia makes over 70+% gross margin and already has plenty of opportunity in DC AI. But It is only a matter of time. Apple already has ARM based macs that run microsoft apps well. Young generation is well versed in Apple, they like macs. I don't get this great manufacturing story. When Intel's own divisions are using TSMC, need we say more?

Where is my cup of coffee mr millionaire?

Intel has deeper problems than just the process technology .... It missed the low power low cost risc processor, it missed the GPU, it missed the AI Processor ... its product planning has enabled AMD, NVidia, Broadcom, Qualcom to dominiate the market. It changed the culture from one that delivered a lot of results to one that hasn't delievered much of anything .. So to get Intel back running again they need to fix the process area, the product definition and design area, and the senior managment. Add in there the engineers who have been going to Intel are not the best and brightest they had to pick from during the 80-90's. Yah, that is all going to happen when the other companies stand still and give Intel time to catch up..just trying to keep things honest here.

You established all of your credibility when you wrote "I've lost hundreds of thousands by keeping all my stock." Brilliant! That's the take-away from your post.

@bh+1jmazktgs No one said working for Andy Grove was pleasant, just that it worked really well for the organization.

Otherwise they wouldn't call it work. They'd call it woke or something.

Fire the Bottom 5% every single quarter and watch miracles happen.

Do it because it works.

Bragging about being the richest and smartest guy in Hillsboro, Oregon is like bragging about winning a cow milking contest in Fresno, California.

This is awesome. It’s like there’s a Boomer around every corner waiting to rub his bag all over your face.

Not his money bag, either.

Can I get another order of SARS-19 already? The first one didn’t wipe out nearly enough of them.

Intel Made me a Multi-Millionaire too, but I'm not bragging about it in light of the fact of what a basket case has been left behind for the non-millionaires to suffer through. I hope your optimism is well placed.

Heartily second the original posting!

Regarding WFH, the reality for my team was that, even when we were at our desks, we were mostly on the phone, sharing desktops and debugging customer issues - only occasionally were we actually doing stuff face-to-face. So, WFH was a big improvement for us - didn't affect the work side of things at all, and made it so much easier to handle late night / early morning meetings (of which we had plenty, as we were dealing with US, Israel, India and Penang teams).

I was there during the Rank and Yank period. It was horrible. It caused cut throat additudes among coworkers and was unproductive. It cause short term mentality to look good now instead of the long run. Intel got in trouble because it tried to milk x86 to death and not move on to current trends. Thus bean counters were elevated to CEO. See Craig B. for the beginning of the end. He layed the groundwork.

Best description of what I've seen happening... Thanks for sharing a positive outlook..... Here's to Intel's recovery....

"While picking up his son from school every day at 3PM"
That's nice. Don't care. That is his/her personal life.
Either everyone gets the privileged time or no one does.

@ak I prefer BTO guy’s unspoken central premise honestly, that Intel is failing because of lazy employees rather than poor management current and previous. If we could simply BTO and suddenly catch up to our competitors I’m in. I have friends IO. It’s good to see them. And this is a prescription that puts the power in your own hands.

But alas it’s not true. We can’t fight the management’s bad decisions by collocating with our teams. Be nice if we could.

@ad+1jmazktgs I think the point is well taken, that overall it is better to have teams working in the same physical location.

WFH (or having team members located at different sites) appears ok for getting the sustaining work done, but less so for innovation. I don't think that is in dispute.

I'm sure there are plenty of examples where it works just fine, especially where the person involved mostly works on their own (even if part of a team), or does strictly sustaining work.

I also don't think WFH is going away, but also that Tech companies (investment banks, software companies, etc) are now strictly limiting WFH so that it is an exception.

Anyone who is long term WFH probably should be converted to be a contractor, and should not expect much in the way of raises or promotions (that last part is n/a at Intel for now).

I do not know what OP really want to say in his long write-up. Do you have confidence that Intel will be back on top and will be there for another twenty years?

@a6 you are a real narrow thinker probably the type who helps companies like Intel decline

We have a member on my team who is not collocated because he’s time share with another team. He’s doing great for both teams

While picking up his son from school every day at 3PM

Get with the times

Let me guess @OP is a Sr PM ? Non technical

Are you sure you won’t be let go soon OP? Ready to go collecting used cans from garbage to garbage or wait for the bank to take all your luxury stuffs? Your old CEO couldn’t even survived this company.

a constructive thread with ideas and discussions is a breath of fresh air here.

i a gree with the original poster with almost everything with the exception of the assessment about who's on the board. i think this is mostly intel people but many are not in the same position as the OP.

if you joined 20 yr ago, you are good no matter what. folks that joined 5 years ago, are bitter and do not enjoy the situation as much as the op.

all other, imo, is accurate.

good post pokemon and thanks for sharing your thoughts

By matrixed I mean any situation where the teams are not co-located.

WFH is obvious but equally detrimental are those who do not work at the same site as their team.

That has proven over time to be suboptimal, and should be a rare exception and not the norm.

Like WFH, there is no individual who adds so much value that they can not be replaced by someone willing to be co-located with their team, sitting in a nearby cube.

It appears that the best, most productive companies are without exception eliminating WFH.

The fab workers keep mindlessly trolling on and on about it, but it doesn't take a genius to see how having a matrixed workforce reduces the velocity of decisions and action.

That makes it inappropriate for any company that needs to hire the best workers and have them performing at a high level (in order to remain competitive).
Does TSMC, AVGO, NVDA, or even AMD allow WFH?

I'd venture that no engineering group is improved by WFH and they are probably uniformly degraded by allowing it to continue.

It seems like just another bit of woke nonsense, practically designed to break down American competitiveness and society. Hmm..what other country could want that to happen?

Support groups probably can use WFH to retain those who would otherwise leave, but even there they might foster more innovation and productivity by requiring workers to be present.

Strictly enforcing WFO might well be the easiest way to improve the culture and fortunes of Intel.

The site is full of TSMC, AMD, NVDA fanboys, but those companies got right what Intel got wrong, so fair enough.

There are also a LOT of fab workers who spend their time outside the fab surfing the internet. TSMC has a solution for that issue, and one way or the other, it is coming..

I'm in a similar situation as you describe and took the ERP this last time, because it looked to me that it might well be the last time anyone would get such a good exit package. Never held the stock but I do now and will scale up if it consolidates in the recent range, because divestiture will show the real market value. I think that is somewhere in the $30s but we'll see.

Looks like TSMC becomes an IFS investor and maybe Samsung does as well. They then push some volume to IFS and use that to avoid tariffs. I'd expect to see TSMC push to have the fabs reorganized, with far more centralized functions. IFS has been moving to be organized more like TSMC, because it works and is efficient. TSMC can probably offer a lot of guidance on that transition.

x86 is a legacy architecture, so best to get the most value from it as possible and the Broadcom interest seems real, but Qualcomm and AMD may get some of that side of the company as well.

One can go on and on about how the company got to where it is. The technical failures are well documented and I think the culture lost its way when Andy Grove stopped being CEO. Those that followed seemed to think that it was more important to keep employees happy or something. Nonsense of course.

I'm not hung up on WFH but it is abused by managers and workers alike. I'd like to see Intel bring back the kind of Rank & Yank that Andy Grove used to do. Terminate the Bottom 5% every quarter, and watch how motivated the workplace becomes.

Tech companies need to attract highly motivated individuals capable of contributing at a high level, and that can be a harsh, tense workplace that also does exciting things.

Do this or become another tech zombie like Intel, the Xerox of semiconductors.

I think a conservative approach is appropriate for both individuals and large corporations. Too many people have knee je-k reactions which lead to a "change for change sake" approach to situations. Sure, sometimes changing jobs is the only way to increase one's earning power, but over a long career in tight labor markets, it can backfire. Similarly, drastic changes in large corporations, like diversifying assets or reductions in benefits, can be short sighted. Slow down and give the situation time to resolve itself with a solid plan to change tracks if targets aren't met in a reasonable time frame.