Intel To Slash Over 20% of Workforce in Major Restructuring Move (bloomberg.com) 80
Intel plans to cut more than 20% of its workforce this week, marking the first major restructuring under new CEO Lip-Bu Tan, according to Bloomberg. The cuts aim to eliminate bureaucracy and restore an engineering-centric culture at the struggling chipmaker. This follows last year's reduction of approximately 15,000 positions, with Intel's headcount already down to 108,900 employees from 124,800 a year earlier.
The Santa Clara-based company has suffered three consecutive years of declining sales while losing technological ground to competitors, particularly Nvidia in the AI computing sector. Tan, who took over last month, has already begun divesting non-core assets, recently selling a 51% stake in Intel's programmable chips unit Altera to Silver Lake.
The Santa Clara-based company has suffered three consecutive years of declining sales while losing technological ground to competitors, particularly Nvidia in the AI computing sector. Tan, who took over last month, has already begun divesting non-core assets, recently selling a 51% stake in Intel's programmable chips unit Altera to Silver Lake.
How does a company even function (Score:5, Insightful)
Something's going to give. I'm guessing the first thing is drivers and other necessary software are going to get cut. I'm not buying that they have that much bureaucracy. That means the quality of their products is going to go down at a time when they need to be improving them.
It also means they're probably going to piss away the lucrative GPU market when they were just starting to make really good headway.
Pennywise, pound foolish but I'm sure the CEO will make out like a bandit. Meanwhile indulging in all these layoffs is going to create massive disruptions in people's lives or worse. This is why we need a federal jobs guarantee.
Re: How does a company even function (Score:1, Troll)
How many product lines besides CPUs does Intel have? At one point they were making mini PCs and motherboards. A guy I used to work with worked out of their Hudson, MA office writing sound card drivers.
You can cut 30% if you're not interested in wasting office space and admin staff supporting engineers working on stuff that isn't your core business that you should either be buying from someone whose core business it is or just not touching it with a ten foot pole.
If it's something specialized that you need f
Re: (Score:2)
Can you try actually posting about Intel in an Intel discussion? You didn't even bother to establish which psychopath was responsible for Intel's problems (there are many to choose from), you apparently have no idea to which extent private capital is involved in Intel, and you completely dismissed the vicious assholes that lead Intel to market dominance decades ago.
Re: (Score:2)
You sound like you are projecting your own issues to others. Calling everyone a psychopath and attacking people without using a solid argument isn't a way to get people to agree with you or even support you.
Re: How does a company even function (Score:5, Informative)
I guess you've never heard of the Intel AC 97 and HD Audio standards, that's probably why your buddy was writing audio drivers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2)
I have an Intel Ethernet to parallel port printer adapter in a junk bin.
Intel also made a line of Ethernet cards at one point. They occasionally dabble in other things than CPUs.
Given their current state maybe they shouldn't be. Their new video cards need some feature only available on 10th generation and newer CPUs Great for driving sales of new PCs, not great for people with older PCs looking for a modest upgrade.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: How does a company even function (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
A lot of code in well written software handles inputs or scenarios that are not necessarily common. With poor testing, it appears that the software is functional. However, eventually the less common scenarios arise, and the software fails.
Similarly, well run companies have lots of people that handle uncommon scenarios or perhaps work on results that won't be apparent for a while. To a superficially looking executive, cutting these people may appear to have no negative effect, but eventually the less common
Re: How does a company even function (Score:5, Insightful)
Look at twitter Musk cut 80% and rehired back 10-20% and it seems to be operating just fine.
If by "operating fine" you mean far less profitable, hemorrhaging users, and very nearly shut down in the UK due to forgetting to file taxes.
Musk was just forced to bail Twitter out (Score:5, Informative)
Re: How does a company even function (Score:4, Insightful)
Musk cut the people who tried to police Twitter, turning it into a Nazi hellscape. It went from being the public commons to the public cesspool and a Musk soapbox. Sure, there are still people on there, but it's a shadow of what it used to be.
Re: (Score:1)
Musk cut the people who tried to police Twitter, turning it into a Nazi hellscape.
Sounds more like anarchy than fascism to be honest.
Re: (Score:2)
Oh, no. They purposefully cutback views of anti-Trump and anti-Musk posters. It's fascism. Anarchy would be a free-for-all, and it is in no way that.
Re: (Score:2)
There are poorly run companies, and there are companies run by people who understand how to do it. Generally, the companies run by executives who have never done anything other than being a manager are run horribly. These people with a MBA but no real experience doing non-management work don't seem to have a very good grasp on how the employees can actually be productive. It's all about theory to them, because almost all of them have no practical experience.
I saw layoffs like this in 2008. (Score:2)
Now thanks to market consolidation big companies seldom go out of business but in the semiconductor industry it can happen. It's too easy to switch out to a competitor.
Re: (Score:2)
"It's too easy to switch out to a competitor."
Really? I would think vendor lock-in would be pervasive in the semiconductor industry.
Re: How does a company even function (Score:5, Insightful)
I've lived through it too, it's the old management consultant philosophy of "cut the org till it breaks, then you know the real minimum and you can hire back to fix operations." Theres an implicit cost calculation that whatever damage you do with the layoff will cost less than the salaries of the fired people. Which probably works in a call center, but is pretty stupid elsewhere.
What inevitably happens is you lose half the department, and everyone has to jettison things that aren't immediately critical. Documentation. Cross-training. Secondary reviews of work products. And yeah, you can function like that, potentially for quite a while. But inevitably things get missed, people leave, or a new edge case comes up, and the whole thing begins to fall apart. I watched mission critical projections get hosed up within 3 months, and the result was nearly a 100 million dollar financial oopsie. That was on only a single one of about 20 impacted teams. I'm sure there are other legal or regulatory time bombs waiting to go off. The one mistake alone could have kept every job that was reduced for at least 5 years, and that assumes the laid off people were literally zero value add. If they were worth even half their salaries/overhead then result is even dumber.
Competent management doesn't do mass layoffs, aside from shutting down whole product lines or something. If you think an org is bloated the first lever to pull is attrition. Perhaps a very light pass of layoffs to give management cover to get rid of known underperformers. Then you regroup, let the dust settle, and decide if more is necessary. Taking a scythe to the workforce is an act of desperation or foolishness.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Federal jobs guarantee? Fuck no. It's all well and good to have generous layoff terms in your contract (especially for low level workers that are typically the worst off in layoffs), but making job guarantees a matter of law turns you into Niger.
Re: (Score:2)
Elon cut 80% of Twitter and it's still functioning and profitable. Overrun with Nazis and right wing nutcases, but it's doing well. Apparently hateful tribalism is more profitable than doing what's best for all of humanity.
Re:How does a company even function (Score:5, Insightful)
Twitter is still profitable but far less profitable than pre-Musk. Revenue is far lower. The valuation of Twitter also far lower. The only reason Twitter isn't a more obvious failure post-Musk is that it's no longer a public company, so that opacity with being private hides the true extent of the mess that Twitter is.
Re: How does a company even function (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
What the hell world do you think this is? (Score:4, Interesting)
Musk rolling in with a sledgehammer and firing all the mods chased off the advertisers because the platform is now chock a block full of Nazis. I mean it worked out for musk because he's basically president now and he was able to shift all the losses to shareholders of another company he owns and get away with it because he's basically in charge of the government so the SEC can't come down on him...
But make no mistake Twitter is not profitable. It wasn't profitable before he took on 1.6 billion dollars in interest payments alone per year. And it lost 80% of its revenue.
Twitter in its current state appears to be worth about 5 to 6 billion. It was worth about 12 to 15 one musk bought it for 46. That's and the cybertruck is all you need to know about musk's business acumen. Although to be fair at the cybertruck was a pump and dump scheme timed to go off when he got his 55 billion dollar pay package and that just got shot down by a lawsuit...
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Your reading comprehension is bad. They were losing 221 million on 5 billion. Trimming the fat without slaughtering the company would have made that profitable. But cutting most of the workforce will just make everything unstable.
Re: (Score:2)
Taking over the US government and then extracting advertising dollars from fearful companies does help the bottom line.
In the next election, Disney will take over.
Re: (Score:2)
Since X is no longer a publicly traded company, but privately held, there's no sure way of knowing.
Re: (Score:2)
It is pure desperation. They are predending to "do something" in the only way bean-counters can. When they should be trying to hire the best engineers available and let them make the decisions, they are cutting people and continue to make the mistakes that brought them to where they are.
Same for Boeing. Probably (earlier stage) same for Google. And maybe we can finally get rid of Microsoft because their products are getting worse and worse as well.
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
Every company has staff that can easily be let go in an engineering firm without harming productivity:
- GenZ Boss and a Mini
- Itty Bitties and a Bob
- 5'3 and an Attitude
- Try not to cringe: impossible
- all others who TikTok on the job, no matter if they're posting or just watching
- "I'm a People Person" persons
- DEI officers and their commissars
- DEI hires
In short: anyone who is proudly wasting company time and resources and / or is hired / kept because of reasons unrelated to the core function of the busin
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Every company has staff that can easily be let go in an engineering firm without harming productivity:
- GenZ Boss and a Mini - Itty Bitties and a Bob - 5'3 and an Attitude - Try not to cringe: impossible - all others who TikTok on the job, no matter if they're posting or just watching - "I'm a People Person" persons - DEI officers and their commissars - DEI hires
A fair number of TikTokers are getting fired. There is this weird thing of female workers bitching about their jobs, sometimes while they are at their workplace, sometimes outside it. They get caught, and they are let go.
GenZ. Sigh. So many have been problematic, they are getting a reputation. Not many employers want to have pro-hamas demonstrations in the office, or whatever is bothering the GenZ kids at the moment, plus most want to start at the top both position and pay-wise.
DEI - what sounded like a g
Re: (Score:1)
And then there is the sexual harassment thing. Males in workplaces have found that it is pretty problematic working with young females who are likely to have a very expanded idea of what is considered sexual harassment
How about this, do your job. Don't make comments to people about how they look, how they sound, don't ask them out, don't lean into them while they're sitting down, and keep your hands off them.
Apparently the so-called men you're talking about are unable to do their jobs when women are about, but sure, blame the woman.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
So much incel bullshit. Hard to believe you're able to type all that without spit filling your keyboard. I think this is my favorite:
Why do people like you get so upset and enraged when a person simply states facts? The rage you are projecting is in the mirror of your mind.
And calling a person an "incel" is so passé' It's a useless term, but does show that a person is triggered.
Isn't it weird though, your suggestions are exactly what men have done. Kept to themselves, avoided doing anything that would upset women, avoid any actions that would be construed as sexual harassment. it completely avoids bothering women in the wor
Re: (Score:2)
That person is asking people to hide any hint of sexual emotion for 8 hours a day every day forever. And then judge them for not having sex.
Only a feminist woman could argue like that: sex is their unit of value and only they would be so moronic to ask someone to not be sexual and then insult them for not having sex.
Re: (Score:2)
"Do your job" means: no TikToks on the job. No forced DEILGBTQIAAAP+ seminars and no person hired or kept for anything but their performance and importance for the work focus.
"Don't make comments to people about anything that makes them human. Do not act like a human to other humans in the workplace": not going to happen. F you and your bullshit forever. We are all humans. We are not machines and we will never be turned into cogs in the machine. We are demanding everyone to act professionally and FOCUS on w
Re: (Score:2)
Cutting 30% of its workforce? Especially in 2025.
If it consists mostly of executives and managers the company will work even better than before.
Re: (Score:2)
The entire American economy was already in a slow decline, then we got these 2 parties conspiring to hasten the demise. This is inevitable. American companies simply can't be competitive any more.
From "Intel inside" (Score:1)
To outside Intel.
Mind boggling (Score:3)
It boggles my mind how a company such as Intel, and Boeing for that fact, can go from the top of their game to absolute shit in such as short period of time. My guess is the engineers in both instances lost out to the bean counters, I would cite HP in this observation as well but we all saw the Carly effect in real time tearing that one down. That was gruesome.
Re: Mind boggling (Score:1, Troll)
It wasn't overnight. It was over three decades. Just long enough for the mid-career and senior people who got them to the top to retire out and be replaced by a generation who didn't build it.
A culture-wide de-emphasis on rigor and standards and promotion of a kinder gentler workplace that doesn't stress you out the way workin for The Man used to probably made it easier for dumbasses to bubble up to where they could do damage in a way that used to be less frequent when bosses could gatekeep without fear of
Re: Mind boggling (Score:2)
So it's failing like the USA itself.
Re: Mind boggling (Score:5, Insightful)
*smacks head* "how amazing that my theory of downfall of companies lines up exactly with my culture war political beliefs? what are the chances?!"
whats that? 30 years of deregulation, erosion of the tax code, decades of pro-business conservative astroturfing and takeover of radio and tv news where a slavish desire to maximize profits, consolidate industries and destroy labor organizing combined with manufacturing consent to turn the public against the welfare state at their own expense?
nah, thats all woke shit!
Re: (Score:1)
Yeah, that's the problem with the news, it's all over run with conservative voices. LOL. Not the failure to adapt to the change in digital vs traditional media, it was the conservatives. That sure as fuck is a +5 insightful post if ever there was one. Damn KosDot just when I think you can't get any more delusional, you post something like this and give it +5. Yikes.
Re:Mind boggling (Score:4, Insightful)
They know the world is changing and they're planning for the change. They just can't speak it out loud because that'd be defeatist.
For semiconductors, China is targeting 2030 for when it'll converge with the world's best tech stack but with the IP owned 100% by Chinese companies. 1.4 billion people quickly moving up the wealth ladder, with India, Africa, South America and the rest of Eurasia all on the same trajectory. Guess who those price sensitive markets will be buying from if they have any choice? It won't be Intel.
Re: (Score:2)
Optane was profitable?
Re: (Score:2)
Engineering failures certainly play a big role in the Intel's predicament. There was Itanic, then the inability to transition smoothly and timely to the 10nm and 7nm nodes, which made Intel fall behind TSMC and its customers... I don't think bean counters caused these (although I have no love lost for bean counters).
Intel grew complacent while AMD was struggling for survival, and now we're witnessing the sad result.
Re: (Score:2)
Engineering failure comes from
a) management making engineering decisions (that never works out well) or
b) engineering done by engineers that do not have it
The first one is the bean-counters, the second one is who the bean-counters decided to hire, keep or fail to hire. Both come from the bean-counters thinking they are the important decision makers and everybody else serves them.
Re: (Score:2)
You might have a point, I admit.
Re: (Score:2)
Thanks. Bean-counters and, more generally bureaucrats, are a cancer that spreads and kills everything in the long run.
Re: (Score:2)
Engineering failure comes from a) management making engineering decisions (that never works out well) or b) engineering done by engineers that do not have it
The first one is the bean-counters, the second one is who the bean-counters decided to hire, keep or fail to hire. Both come from the bean-counters thinking they are the important decision makers and everybody else serves them.
I've seen bean counters ending up with the rest of the company serving them.
Even where I retired from, we went from three bean counters, to them being the largest group in the place, even planting bean counters in each subgroup. And boy cold they suck up money and overhead. The Director did as the bean counters said. And the cardinal rule - as per the bean counters - we always needed more bean counters.
In irony, I did all of the reconciliations and group credit cards for my group. So those bean counter
Re: (Score:2)
I would like to add Google. They are in an earlier stage, but I think they are dying as well and from the same causes. Maybe Microsoft, because their engineering failures are getting worse and worse and the requirements rise.
Re: (Score:2)
It boggles my mind how a company such as Intel, and Boeing for that fact, can go from the top of their game to absolute shit in such as short period of time. My guess is the engineers in both instances lost out to the bean counters, I would cite HP in this observation as well but we all saw the Carly effect in real time tearing that one down. That was gruesome.
I agree - when bean counters went from regular employees to the top of commodity, with powers often exceeding the CEO, they forgot that there is more to a company than the next quarter profits. After Boeing bought McDonnell Douglass who was bankrupt because of incompetence, They were essentially taken over by McDonnell Douglas. And the people whose business was to keep the airplanes flying and safe were suddenly at the same level as the custodial staff.
We see this weirdness in other places, like Sears b
Re: (Score:2)
My guess is the engineers in both instances lost out to the bean counters
In Boeing's case that happened practically overnight. Boeing had good engineers and the engineers ran the show. McDonnell Douglas were good at being corporate and getting government contracts. The merger replaced Boeing's leadership with MD's.
With Intel, they were basically in the lead for so long, they decided to just rely on name recognition rather than innovate. Which would have worked for longer if TSMC wasn't able to churn out chips for so many companies.
Re: (Score:1)
Channels (Score:5, Informative)
If they spent a hundred thousand a year to plant a sales rep in our neighborhood of a national capitol, they would have access to $billions of IT budgets. My project which I work on has a $5 billion a year budget. Intel doesn't want any of it.
We have a two hundred million dollar budget for AI accelerators. AMD, NVidia and GraphCore are practically sleeping in tents at our door. We can't even get Intel to pick up the phone.
I offered to evaluate Intel network adapters for a 5000 node supercomputer. They said "we'll call you"... They didn't.
They apparently prefer to spend their time and money complaining that no one wants to buy their stuff.
Re: Channels (Score:1)
"Capitol" needs to be capitalized, but it's likely you meant "capital" in any case.
Re: (Score:2)
Intel won't even send one salesperson to us.
Perhaps all the Intel salespeople were optimized... okay, downsized, laid off, terminated, fired.
Re: (Score:3)
Management arrogance. They think they are so important that obviously people have to come to them and they can ignore anybody they do not want to deal with. They act the same towards their own enginers and that is why the good ones are leaving or have already left. Obviously, Intel will not recover from this. Also think Boeing and probably Google. In 20 years these will be history or some small, irrelevant remnants.
I'm Out (Score:5, Informative)
I took the offer and left Intel a few months ago. I had been there 21 years.
Intel used to be a nice company to work at. You could do good work, travel, accomplish stuff, put your designs on the most advanced silicon processes and feel happy that you were having an impact on the world.
Then, year after year, with penny pinching, bureaucracy and a long sequence of shifting management, they slowly sucked all the fun out of working there. So I had no qualms about choosing to leave. I had decided to wait until the next generous "please leave with this pot of cash" and take it. The offer came with the recent voluntary layoffs, so I took it.
The management very much lost the plot on how to enable engineers to do their job.
Re: I'm Out (Score:1)
How much was the offer? Can you go for years at minimum lifestyle without working? Are you looking or retiring?
Re: (Score:2)
The offer was a function of years of service. I ended up getting about a year of pay. Technically I 'retired from Intel' in the sense that I met the retirement criteria. So I left with the full pension intact and access to the retiree services. It's a few years before that comes online though.
I've been living off that pot of money since. It's a hefty sum, so it's enough to effectively day trade. I do a bit of trading on the stock market most mornings and I've kept the pot of money maintained and even up a l
Re: I'm Out (Score:1)
Thanks for the answer!
Re: (Score:3)
The management very much lost the plot on how to enable engineers to do their job.
Yes, that one is terminal for any engineering outfit. Managers thinking they call the shots and they are the most important people at an engineering company will not work and cannot work.
It takes a while, but when you forget how to get good engineering done, that is not something you can realistically recover from. Reminds me of Boeing. (Incidentally, also reminds me if Google, although they are in an earlier state of this process ...) They are dead. These companies can be kept in a zombie-state for a while
Re: (Score:1)
I left intel 10 years ago when the "penny pinching, bureaucracy and a long sequence of shifting management," started showing up heavily... in a 6 week period, i had 5 new bosses... basically they each lasted only a week before being reassigned... the last boss, refused to approve an expense report when i used parking at the airport instead of using remote parking for a two day trip. i put in my notice the same day...
Re: (Score:2)
This is not just limited to Intel. It has happened at countless other large tech companies as well. It used to be that people were given more latitude when pursuing the company goals, but now, its more like you are placed on a set of railroad tracks where no deviation is tolerated. You are essentially told what to do, how to do it, when it is due, and you have to do it according to rigid processes. You are always told to "follow the process".
When this happens you don't get groundbreaking inventions anymore
They are dead (Score:2)
They just do not know it yet. Maybe they will survive as a minor foundry services provider or as a patent-troll.
BMG... (Score:2)
Poor Blue Man Group [blueman.com] will be or are already laid off. :P
Re: (Score:2)
I don't get the reference but Blue Man group is awesome! I've seen them in Chicago and Vegas. My wife was the female selection for onstage in Chicago (the photo vacuum).
A lot time ago...
Re: (Score:2)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] ;)
Most companies have 3-6 lvls of bureaucracy (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
No Aerosmith (Score:2)
Leave Saul Hudson [wikipedia.org] out of this.