Thread regarding Intel Corp. layoffs

Fake news.

Fake Economy.

.. and...

Fake jobs (jobs which don't exist and there will be no hiring for - get posted, resumes collected and false interviews held). Intel is not the only company fake hiring.

@4qcg Hardly a surprise when your average FLM is there because his arranged wife is friends with the SLM's arranged wife.

No doubt the Local is a complete joke. You know the system is fixed when your own manager cannot summarize his employees accomplishments, strengths and weaknesses after meeting with each one on one every week! This is the sign of a pretty poor manager if they do not know what you do over the course of a year, even after meeting for updates every week. It's a dereliction of their duty that they don't know a depend on the employee to write the focal each year. Obviously it gives the employee every opportunity to lie and tell falsehoods about their accomplishments.

@ikd lots of current PEs have no thoughts and ideas. Their thoughts and ideas are stealing from others, most cases from lower grade engineers. Since lower grade engineers are busy to do actual work and come up with ideas they are blocked to some key meetings. it is perfect for these PEs to present the ideas as theirs own and been labeled as technical leader.

Ahahahaha I was told I needed to demonstrate technical leadership and take TLP classes just to get to gr9. Whole thing was just a cover for shunting the focal budget to the brown noses.

I finally woke up and left and couldn't be happier.

@1ljo - re: Interim CEO and CFO BS - his job is not to set strategy to improve the company - his job is to manage the money flow and financial resources in a way that makes the books look good and plan for future expansion and/or investments. Like him or not, he's done a good job. He is NOT Intel CEO material, and he knows it. That said, my guess is he got a nice financial bump for this interim gig.

@2oax This is true. My last group at intel was full of grade 6's who operated at mid/high gr7 but have been stuck at gr6 for years. The ones who get gr7 play the favoritism game and they get it fast, no spreadsheet queue. The company is corrupt at all levels.

@1lzc Grade 8 is the new Grade 10, brah.

Principle Engineers are just the chief PowerPoint boys. They work at the hands of their Sr PEs and VPs just to place a bunch of gobbledygook into a pretty presentations. As long as they can successfully achieve these results, they are golden.

Newsflash- almost all jobs grade 9 and over are totally gamed

Sticky this thread.

Anyone who is delusional enough to think that PE promo has anything to do with technical merit needs to read this.

At Intel, brown nosing leads to visibility which masquerades as technical achievements.

Apply this case to the current phony CFO masquerading as "interim CEO". He doesn't want the CEO position cause he knows he can't do the job. Knows nothing about the tech industry and has done nothing to improve Intel's financial position. He just reports numbers given to him by his staff to spout. No vision of how to improve the company. Just quietly hides in his office nervously shaking until BoD makes CEO decision. Will probably scare him to death if he actually has to make a decision. Just let everything ride until some other bozo can take the reigns. Swan is just there for the money, bonuses and golden parachutes, not to actually improve the business.

Staab's also good at complaining and finding faults inemployees who do not report to him. How was he allowed to lay off someone who does not even report to him.

@cgy

Also recently hired men got promoted in less than 1 year...

If you are engineer you will never make PE with such shoddy logic....but you can be a cabinet seceratry for Trump or goto jail for Trump

@1qie This, so much this. I have seen the excel list of potentates, it destroyed what little faith I had left in focal.

Meanwhile in 2016, recently hired women were promoted to PE within 8-10 months of being at Intel. Proponent for this initiative were Lisa Davis & Brian Staab who celebrated it with a wonderful Intel paid lunch event.

All those TLP courses and mentoring sessions are for the lesser mortals. The PE promotion system works as follows.

1. PE allocation process is owned by architecture directors and in each group.

2. These guys maintain a list of so-called candidates in the pipeline.

3. The list is secretive. Only people in the list are told about their prospects.

4. The list is carefully culled by the Sr PEs from their favorites.

5. Once you made to the "A" list, the Sr PEs and the respective managers start framing their candidates for the PE nomination. This will take many visible forms of tweaking the indicators: you will be no.inated for all visible plum projects with all buzzwords, important customer engagements and executive visibility. You will be presented with a DRA plaque for every one of your minor deliverables. Your assignments will require frequent interaction with other PEs and SR PE and fellows in other BGs.

6. What first level managers never tell about PE nominations is this. Unlike promotions up till grade 9, the number of PEs is limited by the revenue of the BG. The benchmark figure is, a BG can have one PE for every $100M of revenue, a Sr PE for every $200M of revenue, and a fellow for every $1B if revenue. So, when your manager teases you with a PE promotion, first check how much influence he he has over the PE process. Second, check how your group revenue stacks versus the incumbent PE pen in your group.

7. When you combine the above two facts, here is how the system works: whenever there us a revenue uptick in the BG, the so called PE process owners flood their favorites through the process gates. This is where the lists and prestaging of the A list candidates is,extremely useful.

8. I must have sat through umpteen PE training classes, and mentoring sessions where they tel you that, for one to become PE materiak, one needs to have moved mountIns, influenced major product directions, filed 50 patents, spoke in industry conferences, chaired 20 standards, and presented like Colbert. Honestly, I know a bunch of them who can not engage a 5 minute conversation without embarrassing themselves, nor have done anything besides brown nosing their Sr PE bosses. Mentoring is another laughable checkmark for PE promotions. I have rarely known any PE who truly mentors.

9. The probability of becoming a PE without reporting to a Sr PE is less than 10%.

10. The probability of becoming a PE without reporting in an architecturev team is leads than 10%.

9.The probability of being promoted to a senior PE after vegetating in the same PE role for a minimum of 4 years is 100%. Sometimes even faster., if the group revenue surges.

1. Once a PE, always a PE. The rule of meritocracy ad 10% mandatory IR does not apply to PEs. These are the holy cows.

2. Nearly all PEs are power point warriors. They do not develop, they do not code, they do not design, they do not test. They spend 70% time outside the company in planes, conferences and customer meetings. The other 30% in internal meetings. Like VPs, that is the privilege they have earned by ingratiating themselves to their Gr 11 and 12 bosses.

If you aspire to become a PE, first find a Sr PE boss who has a seat in the PE process. The process of brown nosing him or her starts very early - starting from Gr 8.

So, the original meme here - "Its not what you know, but whom you blow" - is worth its weight in gold, when it comes to the PE process. No manager, TLP instructor, nor mentor will tell you this.

Go take a look at technical leadership description, it clearly interpreters that as PE you should be able to sale your idea to upper managers. it does not matter if it is doable or not. Not all the PEs are technically incompetent, but some really does not know how to. Lower grade engineers can not depend on them in technical work since they have no clue. This is why Intel spend so much money but losing. Sad part is real innovative engineers are leaving or have left and more 'don't know how's are been promoted into PE.

@nim

I was in the same program. Submission of resume, interviews and selection to the program all required. 1-1/2 year accelerated development plan and successful completion on schedule. The carrot was a grade increase and the pay that came with it.

Six months later I'm told "No promotions or pay raises this year. Here's a $50 goodie drawer award." The following year I'm told that this program isn't in effect anymore.

Too many people just don't seem to realize how many people have been screwed over badly by management with no conscience about it. Even going back to the SET and the "Thousand Manager March." Those thousand managers had done exactly what they were told to do to get to that position, and then they were tossed to the street because senior management couldn't do their job worth a c-ap. I know GOOD engineers who went that route and got tossed to the street and told they could not apply for a job at Intel.

I should have seen the light then, but it took getting it up my own end to make me look elsewhere. My life is much better outside of Intel, and I hear the same from folks who have left since I did.

And guess what , Brah. It's a cool story AND it's true.

@osr It is a sad fact of life at Intel. That is the reason the company lost focus and along with it, technology leadership. It is rather inevitable since most of the brahmans got their position by talking, not by technical and business expertise. This practice is a killer for morale, since it discourages honest detailed work that is absolutely necessary for technical leadership.

You should visit TSMC and see how thing are properly done there. It is the culture, stupid!

Face it, most of you aren't smart enough to invest a new type of transistor, so if you want to rise to PE, you have to be able to also sell your ideas, make compelling arguments, get others to follow your lead, and that may require a network to pull off. So try to dress more like an adult when you leave the house, try socializing a little bit, it won't hurt you (too much), and if you aspire to become GD10 or higher, you have to start thinking like a leader, and not a nerd sitting in his cube angry at the world.

@nim Yes, as a PE, you need a network, or else you are useless.

Also, as a PE, you need to be able to express your thoughts and ideas intelligibly in English. Apparently, that is a skill you lack.

Within SMG this was certainly true. There were plenty of hard working, upstanding people. There were also those who had zero technical knowledge and schmoozed their way (or worse) up the ladder.

I agree with the post. I had a similar case as well. In 2007 or 2008 I was in a group PDG and this group is not there anymore it was in DEG group that also gone. Anyway, I was grade 8, and the PDG group had a program for Grade 8 to be mentored by principal engineers in the division to help get promoted to PE. The mentor-ship went on for a 1.5years, had several meetings with the assigned PE, he asked me to take classes, things like Technical ladder path class, and couple more. after the 1.5years, the PE had a meeting were he stated that I would not be able to get promoted to PE without getting to know people, influenced people specifically, and he does not see that our group had some of those. From that point, I asked to stop the mentor since it was a waste of time

Perfect summary!

True story.