Thread regarding Intel Corp. layoffs

How much profit did intel have last quarter and how much will they earn again? Small companies have a business to run just like a big one but often with fewer options.

Rarely can a company save itself with cuts, A company's strategy, execution are far more important.

If BK is right and ha minions execute whether he hired 5k this year or laid off 12k won't matter. History will show he failed and it won't be because he didn't cut enough, it is sadly because the strategy is broken!

Sad to see that "some" people have institutionalized and have come to accept the sort of behavior that Intel currently has.

May humanity just get extinct.

People had to sign an agreement to not take legal action or join a class action if they wanted the generous severance. This is SOP with broad incentivized separations, not just Intel. It is best to take the money and run.

In all due respect - considering your obviously, and not entirely unreasonably, agitated condition - what would be the legal grounds for a class action lawsuit? What law (or laws) would Intel have transgressed in their layoff methodology? Because "it seemed really unfair from my limited perspective" isn't, ipso facto, an actionable cause for judicial redress. The court system may seem all willy-nilly to you, but they're actually sticklers for plaintiffs exhibiting a Cause of Action.

It doesn't matter if Intel's employee ranking system chose to use the word "successful." It's a relative term based on their own criteria. (Kind of like in Little League, when Everyone Wins. But not really.) And it's At Will employment - it's not union: they don't have to prove that you did something wrong in order to get rid of you, particularly during a layoff. They can even fire more older workers than younger if their rationale is cost-cutting rather than age. (The older workers tend to be more expensive. Legally, it's considered a legitimate business strategy and isn't actionable, even if its results are disproportionate.)

And this "employee base" of which you speak includes almost everyone. So many of you seem to constantly kvetch about your managers - as if they're just the slothful and evil instruments of your destruction - but who do you think took all those ERPs? They get forced out, too - and they always have. The only time I've ever seen a chunk of the manager class leave Intel of their own happy volition was back in the late 80s and early 90s, when the stock kept splitting and the people who'd been with the company for at least 15 years had made millions off their stock options. Some of them did quit. Since then, I mostly just see people getting forced out. Yes, VPs and 11s and 10s. Even before these layoffs.

This isn't Serfs vs. The Aristocracy, so you should toss that pitchfork into your tumbrel and park it. The vast majority of people at Intel are facing the same kind of job insecurity - including your managers. That is, the ones who didn't already get hit with an ISP or were too young to be offered ERPs - or too financially burdened to take them. You truly are All In This Together - they just have fewer degrees of separation between themselves and the highly visible people who really ARE making the key decisions. And that doesn't make that sight any less anxiety-provoking.

To not recognize this is just willful blindness and the psychology of victimhood: the need to define anything that upsets you as some sort of simple Us vs. Them. Yes, you've likely had some highly irritating managers. They definitely exist - and they drive their fellow managers as crazy as they drive you. But some of you aren't anything to write home about either.

I realize that attaining a realistic perspective about what's happening at Intel isn't as satisfying for one's inner child, but it'd be so nice if more people would at least pay lip service to the word "INNER."

"...Intel employees come to expect brutality and bureaucratic stupidity." This is so true and so very tragic. And if we, as employees, conform to the bureaucratic stupidity then it can damage and dull our own projects or abilities. That's why smart people find ways to circumvent or exploit the system. It makes you feel like a bad person when you don't follow the rules but when the rules don't make logical sense, it's hard to get behind them. And the brutality, well we just learn to live with it.

Seriously, blaming employee base is really a bad move on the part of the leadership. What does an employee do? Just accepts orders from the managers and leadership and tries to innovate and accomplish what needs to be done.

Instead of accepting that yes, we made a mistake and the situation is sad, BK says this is how a meritocracy works.

All in all, karma sure is a bitch and will come back to bite the faulty people in their ass

No class action lawsuit? I heard that's what these poor ISO, erp, vsp folks signed away to get the full separation package. It was a generous package as mentioned by that dodo dot head in BKs last open forum.

If Intel doesn't hit it's marks and falls below 55B, BK, Murthy, and Stacey will all be shown the road. Companies do this stuff all the time. It's how our society works. But it will be the shareholders, not the Board (ran by an incompetent Andy Bryant) who will show the leadership the door. Right now the leadership is blaming it's employee base. What's odd is they are making up the criteria to get rid of people as they go. I'm actually surprised there isn't a class action law suit against Intel yet in the way they are selecting who gets laid off yet. You are successful in your focal review, but because we decided to say you were successful, never once wrote you up or verbally counselled you on performance issues, gave you lesser stocks....YOU ARE PERFORMANCE ISSUE! HERE'S THE DOOR YOU LOW LIFE PERFORMANCE ISSUE PIECE OF sh-- WE NEVER ONCE TOLD THAT TOO....

Or perhaps the lawsuit is coming? We'll see.

Why do you think people at Intel don't revolt?

It is to be expected. At the startup, the CEO knows each and every employee. When they make decisions they feel responsible at a personal level. If they were to treat laid off employees the same way INTC treated ISP's (for example) there would be a revolt and the company might fail.

After a while, Intel employees come to expect brutality and bureaucratic stupidity. It might be a surprise to an RCG the first couple of times they experience it, but in time you grow numb. Management doesn't feel any personal accountability, and employees become cynical and apathetic.

I believe that it being such a small company, we really couldn't expect very generous severance packages. Intel's severance for some one who is just a year or two at the company isn't astounding either.

Regarding the selection based on tenure. Yep, don't know how they came to that.

I agree the overall approach at the startup was much better.

Two nits though

1. The selection based on tenure seems arbitrary

2. Intel's severance was obviously much better