Forced Attrition

Lately you’ve seen a new approach to the layoff at Intel. It’s a reaction to what HR has learned from the ACT 2016 bungled layoffs. There were lots of press leaks, months and months of unanswered questions and a complete implosion of morale. The morale has never recovered. This then led to good performers leaving since then one by one. You now see it at all levels of the company.

In summer 2017 you saw NTG, Maker and other groups completely cancelled, but where were the layoff notices? There were/are hundreds in California and Oregon who suddenly have no jobs. Maybe more than a thousand.

A friend in HR who recently left Intel told me their new approach. Let’s call it Forced Attrition.

Once a group is cancelled, employees are told that they have no role but get 2 months to find a role internally. This used to be ‘the redeployment pool’ but that concept is never mentioned anymore.

All the internal jobs don’t work out. You look and look, waste time looking for jobs at Intel, browsing the web and competing with your team to apply for WorkDay Intel jobs. Your time comes up, HR calls you in and gives you 1 week for every year of service and $4k for cobra insurance and goodbye. If you are eligible for retirement you get a tiny bit more for cobra but that's it. Forget your APB that you worked hard for all year if your exit date is before 12/31.

See how it’s your fault for not finding a role internally? Maybe you’re not good enough anymore? See how they don’t have to announce layoffs to the newspaper? The employee dates are scattered so that the layoffs don't happen on the same day.

THE TAKEAWAY: These two months to find a job internally ARE YOUR SEVERANCE. I would recommend you use it spending 2 hrs a week inside and all the rest of your hours looking outside. This is all you get. The ACT type of packages are gone - this is intentional and devised by HR.

There are more and more project, group cancellations and ZBB’s coming. They won’t stop. Intel is bloated and will string it out just to avoid another mass layoff. The Intel leadership is implying that this is the new normal. Listen to them. If you get 2 months to find a job, use it wisely.

You’ve been warned. Information is power."

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21 replies (most recent on top)

Last ACT Intel was following the rules announcing layoffs and packages were better. This round of layoffs is trying to game the rules by multitude of tricks such as allowing shady unilateral Focal where employee is not part of and managers game criteria to let go least liked ones and keep most liked very often against objective rules. This way company records and miss represents layoff as focal performance related, saving on package as well as avoiding to follow any report by law. On top of this there are number of other shady or borderline shady or just plain unfair and immoral practices going on.

This all should be published to other forums for all to know. This information is good for all current employees and future candidates as well as laid off people or their lawyers.

This is TRUE, confirmed on few cases known to me, just the difference is that they are not told about two months and instead just told to start looking

Only look to the credentials of the leaders at Samsung, TSMC, Apple and others compared to the clowns at Intel and is it any surprise the Titanic has hit the iceberg and th sinking is a certainty, lot of SOL sadly

Our new CFO, a force behind the recent layoffs, still thinks he joined Waste Management with the hypothesis that the market will reward a technology company with a high PE by achieving a an arbitrary ratio of expense over revenue while showing no compelling growth path, where Bob's crowning $25M T-Comp insight is to divide one number by the other and declare we need to hit 30% to raise our PE, even if that disagrees with all evidence as compared to Amazon, Nvidia, TSMC, and others - while offering zero insight on the future of compute, zero insight on new compute usages, paradigms, shifts or interest on where the market is headed, and what the growth opportunities might be. Does Intel HR have other $25M T-Comp jobs available where all one has to do is divide revenue by G&A + R&D expenses to be considered successful?

"the BK follies", Don't want to see that show.

You know it is happening and more bigger ACTs are a certainty

1) x86 client growth is one time bump and will drop and continue to decline.

2) Servers are missing growth targets

3) 10nm ramp will bust margins as output is low and costs crazy

4). AI, autonomous driving and other growth initiatives will not contribute any meaningful profit nor margins as require huge investments for the BK follies

Only thing to do to protect margins is more ACTs, duh!

OP, your supposed HR friend is a clueless idiot. Forced attrition has been an Intel strategy for many years. Nothing new about it.

Seems to match my experience. I wonder if my kindly HR person was helping behind the scenes to make sure I didn't match any job openings.

This flavor of stealth layoffs have been happening since at least April this year. Literally thousands of job positions have been eliminated across all sites.

@dwh- since you are a poser and a Qualcomm troll you wont know the differnce between your butt or elbow.

Literally anyone working inside Intel knows this is true, bruh

This is definitely happening. BK said last years packages were better than what would happen going forward didn't he?

"Individual skill set assessment of each employee in alignment to project needs are used to identify folks targeted for forced attrition."

This would require some understanding of 1) that your manager(s) and/or HR understand employee skills and proficiency at those skills and 2) that there are clear project priorities. In my experience, neither of these are true.

This also seems to assess employee value entirely against present term projects, which is the definition of short-sighted-ness. Get rid of 20-year employees because your manager perceives that you're poorly suited for your present project... Right.

Individual skill set assessment of each employee in alignment to project needs are used to identify folks targeted for forced attrition. Op is correct in much of the details.

More bs from the fake news troll

This is happening and is true information

HR has multiple "lists" based on need for certain levels of numbers.

You are safest if you are on critical program, URM, and have O/E and L1/L2. You don't have all those you will be on various lists.

Those older, long in grade, not protected group and no outstanding reviews and lastly over staffed or canceled programs.....

Hasta la vista, baby

This is how it's done at some older industrial companies.. GE/Honeywell..

Mr IceCreamBar CFO is behind this...

This is indeed what is going on inside Intel.

100% agreed. They have cancelled thousands of job positions already using this method, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future (at least 2-3 years) in order to meet cost targets.

its a disgrace how andy bryant has allowed pso to start, and bk to completely trash a formerly great company.

Thread regarding Intel Corp. layoffs

Forced Attrition

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