News Intel allegedly planning more Oregon layoffs — new report says retreating operation could become a liability to the state

[BigNTall]

Unless Intel finds a new Andy Grove - they're in a very bad shape. Pat G. was a joke - he's been referred to as an engineer - but he's nothing more than c*y loser.

 

[jubileetwist]

Let's not forget the green badges. All the numbers being thrown around are blue. The contract employees, contingent workers, third party logistics teams, vendors, suppliers,... The construction folks and trades people. All the green badge PMs, PCs, CCs,... This is a lot more than just the stated "Intel" cuts.

 

[Root Canal]

Pointing at other companies who are more profitable and using that as an excuse for culling employees is hilariously mercenary. Intel has been below both in employees since Gelsinger's last round of layoffs and the gap has only gotten larger.

That Gelsinger round of layoffs was following by significant hiring, no? I saw a chart of Intel headcount somewhere.

 

[thestryker]

That Gelsinger round of layoffs was following by significant hiring, no?

No, there was no notable hiring after the layoffs in 2024. You might be thinking of the first round of layoffs under Gelsinger:

Spoiler: Tech/Foundry headcounts

Source: https://morethanmoore.substack.com/p/intel-2025-q1-financials

 

[blppt]

Doesn't IBM still have a large mainframe presence in the big corporate world?

I guess the point he was trying to make was that IBM is nowhere near the dominant force that they used to be in their heyday, even if they are technically doing "OK" at the moment. It could be an example of how to transform from a near-monopolistic megacompany to a smaller, still successful business.

 

[Tanakoi]

Such is the life of "publicly owned" corporations. "shareholder value" takes precedence over everything.

As it should -- and does, by law. That's implicit in the term fiduciary responsibility . When you hire someone to run your business or manage your investments, do you want them to focus on increasing your investment, or would you prefer they instead push their own social or political agendas ... with your own money, no less.

 

[systemBuilder_49]

Paul Otellini (2002 - 2013) was the last good CEO that Intel had. The company suffered greatly as AMD Athlon processors leapfrogged intel in the early 2000's, leading them to BREAK THE LAW MANY TIMES by paying bribes to keep AMD products out of laptops, but then AMD decided to build the excavator (stupid) architecture (only 1 pipeline but multiple functional units) which hardly worked.

Under Paul Otellini, Intel developed Haswell (4000-series chips) and that righted the ship. Then starting in 2013 there was a series of utterly useless marketing people with almost no college degrees who took over the company and turned it into a marketing & PR firm, not investing successfully in VLSI, not attempting to succeed as a foundry (Intel's ONLY prayer to survive the 2020s), and simpling renaming the same warmed-over stale chip designs almost 7 years running! Yep! Intel 5000-series and 10,000-series chips were almost the same thing!

The useless marketing people took intel from 5 years ahead of the industry to 2 years behind! In a field like microprocessors, 2 years behind is a death sentence over the next decade - it almost killed AMD !!
Intel's formula was always, "3 years ahead in VLSI and discount CPU designers because we're all a bunch of chemists running the company" but this doesn't work in today's market where everyone is designing using the same TSMC process - discount chip designers won't cut it Intel! Time to separate the foundry (low margin) from the CPU design (high margin) and get rid of these overpaid chemists!

It's not widely recognized that Intel loses money on EVERY B580 GPU THAT IS SELLS! They pre-paid for those TSMC factory wafers but the designs came in POOR. The chip and VLSI process is IDENTICAL to the NVidia Rx4070 but the performance is Rx4060 and it's 2 years late! That means FOUR YEARS BEHIND! Also it means a BOM of $300+ on a $250 card. Intel HAS TO sell these cards at a loss because they paid for the wafers 2 years ago! Many people don't realize how poorly Intel is executing right now - they are forced to sell GPUs at a loss just to recover the money wasted (sunk costs) when they prepaid for the wafers 2 years ago!

Intel tried to right itself by hiring AMD luminaries like Raj Koduri (Exec VP of GPUs) and Jim Keller (AMD Ryzen architect) , but the toxic culture pushed both of them away !!

Intel, RIP.

 

[thestryker]

Paul Otellini (2002 - 2013) was the last good CEO that Intel had.

He was actually the start of the path to Intel ruin so very much going to have to disagree on this one (2005 was the start of his run). The first non-engineer at the helm may have overseen good times, but those were already in motion before he took over.

 

[trica]

"Oregon actually modified the tax code to favor Intel’s business, to retain and attract increased investment. That seems to have paid off, until now."

Oh wait, then they have a bargaining chip don't they?

"Keep the jobs or we adjust the tax cuts so we receive the same amount of tax"

Mamdani, is that you?

 

[trica]

The bloodbath in tech hasn't even gotten up to walking speed yet. We saw the highest raw numbers of tech workers that will ever be employed sometime last year, from here on out it's ALL downhill. Time for the big brains to revisit the old social contract, and figure out what comes next; capitalism doesn't work so great when half of the population is unemployed and unemployable.

 

[Tanakoi]

capitalism doesn't work so great when half of the population is unemployed and unemployable.

To paraphrase Winston Churchill, capitalism is the worst possible system -- except for everything else we've ever tried.

 

[PCWarrior]

Layoffs are sad for the people who are affected and for the society. But I don’t think they will affect Intel. Not its core business at least. A lot of these jobs are lost to automation anyway. Newer more automated fabs combined with the retiring of the previous ones means less people required to be working in Intel’s fabs. Most importantly though is that AI is already very good at various engineering and software development tasks. And it’s getting better every day. A team of 20 engineers/developers can now be reduced to a team of 8 and even be superior to what the twenty-people team used to be without AI. Sad but true.