Thread regarding Intel Corp. layoffs

This is absolutely true. I have been with Intel for 15 years. I moved to a different team around Feb 2016. My previous manager told me that if I stay with the team then I will get promo and if not then I will get SSL4. I did not think he can give me SSL4 as there was no ground for it but he did and now I will most likely get ISP. This in spite of my tremendous contribution in 2015. This is the kind of culture Intel is promoting. I will figure out a way to tell everyone about this through a mas email before I get the kick.

OP forgot one other behavior:

1. Managers that want to get rid of employee X simply have to justify SSL4 for them and let the system do the work. Don't like somebody? You have the power to get them fired.

It's easy enough to justify SSL4 for nearly anybody, just say that they're great to work with, valuable to the team, etc. But they're also slightly lagging their peers. That's impossible to disprove, so everybody will simply believe the manager "since they're the expert about their team".

I was told that "successful" rating and SSL4 or 5 for two of the past three years was one criterion for this layoff. That's how I got hit.

Managers are too wimpy to address the poor performers. They always argue "not in my people they all must be in some other group".

Getting rid of the BE helps with that, they all sighed a breath. Figured they could be cool with low stock levels (stock sucks these days anyway) and not have to call someone a BE to their face.

HR figured it out and used low stock levels to help identify low performers. Plus, this way they found twice as many. Managers never wanted to give 0 raise and 0 stock, so they watered it down and gave 0 raise to one and 0 stock to another. Told the employees the system made them do it - and it really isn't them, it's some other group.

Why do you care??

BK thinks he is doing an excellent job hiring that Hippo and paying him $25 million + private plane!

It is their money; they can do what they want.

But why call SL-4 a "performance- layoff" and humiliate thousands of workers who have worked very hard and work very hard even now? (in most cases harder and better than millennials)

Just say "thank you, good bye".

Buyout is not always offered to employees that get IR, and CAP can last for longer than 90 days.

You're right about the broadening the definition of poor performer, though. IR and SSL4/5 will get 5% of employees every year based on the distribution that the Focal tool quasi-enforces, but it sure looks like they're starting to consider too many years Successful/SSL3 and too many years at the same grade level.

The biggest change I see from the past is that managers always told me that getting an IR at Focal should never be a surprise. Your manager should be discussing your performance (or lack thereof) at midyear if you're doing poorly and help you correct it. However, SSL4 really IS a surprise, and before last year, in my 25 years at Intel I had never once heard or read that SSL4 was meant to be a performance message.

Amazing ! The whole do away with BE was just BS!!!!

Good job BK!!

When you get an IR at Focal you are immediately offered a buyout option or put on CAP for 90days, that has been the same since early 2000's (better than the old R&R system when we had quartiles). The only thing that seems to have changed is that they removed BE and now consider Successful SSL4/5 to be BE and they keep broadening their definition of "poor performer".