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Intel Businesses

Intel To Cut 16,000 Jobs To Save Costs 58

Posted by msmash from the brutal dept.
Intel has announced plans for a substantial workforce reduction, surpassing initial expectations, as part of a comprehensive strategy to bolster its financial position and streamline operations. The company intends to lay off over 16,000 employees, representing more than 15% of its global workforce, with the majority of these cuts slated for completion by the end of 2024, according to the firm's second-quarter earnings report released on Thursday.

Concurrent with the workforce reductions, Intel has outlined plans to significantly curtail its capital expenditures, projecting a decrease of over 20% to a range of $25 to $27 billion in 2024, with further reductions anticipated in 2025. This shift in focus towards capital efficiency comes as the company achieves its goal of developing five process nodes in four years, signaling a recalibration of investment levels to align with market demands. As part of its financial restructuring, Intel has also made the decision to suspend its quarterly dividend starting in the fourth quarter of 2024, prioritizing liquidity to support strategic investments. The cumulative effect of these cost-saving initiatives is expected to yield over $10 billion in savings by 2025.
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Intel To Cut 16,000 Jobs To Save Costs More

Intel To Cut 16,000 Jobs To Save Costs

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  • Starting with the CEO (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Any time a company announces that they are eliminating this many people, the CEO should immediately be fired. If you hired 16,000 people who you don't need, you are incompetent.

    • Any time a company announces that they are eliminating this many people, the CEO should immediately be fired. If you hired 16,000 people who you don't need, you are incompetent.

      Most CEO's just blame their predecessor for hiring too many people, and they are making the tough decisions now.

      • ...if they stop the free coffee.

    • Exactly. If the CEO and executive management did their job, this wouldn't happen. The honorable thing, if not the legal thing, to do is resign. There has to be a price for toying with people's lives.

  • You can bet your ass that'll includes support for older CPUs. Stuff like the 12 and 13th gen microprocessors. And you can also bet your ass that warranty support, which was already some of the worst in the industry or frankly any industry, is going to get a lot worse.

    This is Intel telling the world not to buy their CPUs for at least the next 3 to 5 years. This kind of short-term desperate pump and dump stock bullshit is why we can't have nice things.

    Also you can kiss their GPUs goodbye. I'm sure the

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Indeed. Intel will have to reinvent themselves in order to still be a major player in 10 years. I doubt they are capable of that.

    • What makes you think they are cutting staff from the CPU division? Do you have any idea how many products Intel makes? FPGAs, ASICs, every kind of networking hardware, AI accelerators, graphics chips, GPUs, and chips for so many specialized verticals you can't count them. They still technically build and support Optane and SSDs, though they are winding those down. They still make those expensive 3D webcams, and are working on LiDAR. They'll design custom chips for you, as well.

      Intel could probably loose 30,

      • But their CPU division is the one that will be in deep shit. They had oxidation issues that they silently fixed and never told their business partners about those, they have rejected RMAs on those, too. And now they have had a design flaw that quietly burns your silicon, and all of the top tier products from the last two gens seem to be affected: servers, desktops and laptops. And apparently they have the same flaw in their 15th gen, and based on what I'm piecing the puzzle together, they possibly did this
        • Their CPU issues only impact 13900K and 14900K. a few 14700K, and a tiny sliver of K chips otherwise. Pretty much only i9 and a sliver of i7. NO i5.

          The lions share of their sales is not enthusiast overclocking cpus. 14900 non-k is not effected for example.

          If intel RMA'd all of their K sku's i doubt they'd see more than a 1% drop in total profits for the company. Its such a small niche business for them compared to their bread and butter stuff, xeons and i5.

          • Unfortunately the microcode bug is not only on high end CPUs, but all 13/14 gen desktop processors. The damage is gradual but permanent, so even if the CPU is fine now it might break sooner than it should.

            The oxidation issue is on specific CPUs and has already been fixed.

    • Re:Stopping all non-essential work (Score:5, Insightful)

      by willy_me ( 212994 ) on Thursday August 01, 2024 @06:57PM (#64674030)

      Intel will not shut down their GPU division. They might stop releasing external GPUs but even that is unlikely. Intel requires a good GPU for future APUs and laptop solutions. Shutting down their GPU division is akin to committing suicide. A performing GPU and associated driver stack is essential to their future health.

      I predict that Intel could avoid releasing large external GPUs that consume excessive silicon. Smaller GPUs for niche markets are still on the table. And those larger GPUs are possible once silicon production increases to the point where allocating silicon to GPUs does not cannibalize profits that could have been derived from using that silicon for other products. Silicon might still be limited but this should change in the coming years with things like the CHIPS act becoming a reality.

      Intel GPUs, or more specifically their driver support, were starting to look good. I liked how support for SR-IOV was developing. Perhaps not the best for gamers, but loosing Intel GPUs would still be a great loss.

      • Intel tied the noose around their neck and kicked the chair out a couple of years ago, its just taken them this long to realise the only thing holding them up is the rope around their neck. They committed to a massively ambitious factory and infrastructure build in an overly hyped market, I imagine all that dept is with zero ROI is weighing them down.

  • 1.6 million employees? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by PantyChewer ( 557598 ) on Thursday August 01, 2024 @05:59PM (#64673854)
    what? If they have that many employees, they probably need to cut WAY more than that.
    • There was a typo in the quote. This represents more than 15% of their workforce.

    • Mass layoffs are cruel and destabilize society, we must require that the CEO and a chunk of exec management resign to deter people from experimenting with lives.

      • The shareholders probably should yes, but they are a chicken shit bunch of folks scared to destabilize the company and not looking for social justice.

      • Mass layoffs are cruel and destabilize society, we must require that the CEO and a chunk of exec management resign to deter people from experimenting with lives.

        Forcing an executive into their golden parachute and shove them out the door to float away with millions in severance, doesn’t exactly sound like sweet justice to those who will be driving home on their last day wondering if they’ve got enough gas money to make it.

        Believe me I’ve been preaching your concern for a while now, but the Disease of Greed isn’t something we humans have found a cure for yet, and likely never will. There is a strong chance we will damn near extinct ourselves

        • I am easily confused... Cut jobs of the people that you need because they actually produce the products you need to sell, rather than cutting jobs at the top where people don't actually produce the products you need to sell as a way to 'save money???'

      • CEOs and management should have employee counts directly impact their pay!

        They can handle having to keep owners happy while also trying to make more money themselves. Let them balance that one out; they are supposed to earn that high pay doing something hard.

        Right now automation and productivity only benefits the owners and CEOs who *only* ever hire who they must - they would have zero employees if it was possible. The system we have requires people to have jobs and the amount of gainful employment was alr

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by necro81 ( 917438 )
      Underling: "Excuse me, sir. The Council is worried about the economy heating up. They wondered if it would be possible to fire 500,000. I thought maybe from one of the smaller companies where no one would notice. Like one of the cab companies?"

      Zorg: "Fire one million."

      Underling: "But five hundred...thousand..."

      Zorg: [glare]

      Underling: "One million. Fine, sir. Sorry to have disturbed you." [runs away]

  • Been there? (Score:3)

    by CaptainDork ( 3678879 ) on Thursday August 01, 2024 @06:01PM (#64673868)

    To understand the failure to march to the new drummer as in switching to AI and smartphone chips, those who remember this can relate:

    BlackBerry was a dominant player in the mobile phone market during the early 2000s, known for its secure email services and physical QWERTY keyboards. However, the company failed to anticipate and adapt to the shift towards touchscreen smartphones and app ecosystems initiated by Apple's iPhone and Google's Android platform.

    Despite its initial popularity, BlackBerry's reluctance to innovate and its slow response to changing consumer preferences resulted in a significant loss of market share. By the time they attempted to catch up, it was too late, and they were unable to regain their former position in the market.

    This may be the plot line for Intel.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Possibly. It has to be said that when BlackBerry finally go there, their platform was really good. But it was too late.

      However AI chips may be the wrong strategy now. This AI hype may only keep for another year or two. The more and more ridiculous "applications" we are seeing are a testament to that, as are the major players hemorrhaging money on it. The only ones making good money are hardware vendors, for the time being. For just "better search" and "better bullshit", the effort to keep it going is far t

    • Re:Been there? (Score:4)

      by Seven Spirals ( 4924941 ) on Thursday August 01, 2024 @06:51PM (#64674010)
      My (very nice touchscreen) Blackberry Passport BB10-based phone was by far the best phone I ever owned for my purposes. I'd still be using it if Blackberry hadn't shut down all the infrastructure for it and ran off after other shiny objects. Not saying Blackberry was perfect or didn't make mistakes, but I am saying fuck people's preferences. They have shitty taste.
    • Many of us oldsters hatehatehate the touchscreens on smartphones. Touchscreens of every stripe are non-intuitive in-the-extreme. After two months I can barely make a telephone call ... even with friends helping. As I remember decades ago my dumbfone worked right out-of-the-box. Wonder how many hated on touchscreens when they first came out ? How many hate them now! Something other than function is in play here ... and I bet the bill$ reflecting that "something" go directly into APPLE

  • Would that be the ones that are currently self-destructing?

  • PHB-to-English: "We're doing sucky, we have to trim."

  • Circa 1999 I remember a paper press report from
    then ATT CEO Robert Allen and he said "people are
    contingent."

  • Or Boing is the new Intel.

    Take your pick,

  • Intel could come roaring back.. but only if they keep the workforce (engineers) and not the wokeforce (everyone that does anything other than enable engineers.) I do not predict Intel doing this. Instead, they will be more like IBM, AMD will get a sizeable lead, and Intel will spend its efforts getting taxpayer money to invest in it.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Found the butt hurt racist!

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      The current source of their woes seems to be the engineers. Their current and previous generation CPUs have a flaw where excessive voltage causes permanent damage to them. The liabilities are huge, something like 25% of all those CPUs with defects.

      It's not just a nightmare for Intel either. Retailers are getting a lot of refund requests and warranty claims. They in turn have to pass them on to their suppliers, who will try to pass them to Intel. For OEMs making computers, it will be the entire computer comi

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mjwx ( 966435 )

        The current source of their woes seems to be the engineers. Their current and previous generation CPUs have a flaw where excessive voltage causes permanent damage to them. The liabilities are huge, something like 25% of all those CPUs with defects.

        It's not just a nightmare for Intel either. Retailers are getting a lot of refund requests and warranty claims. They in turn have to pass them on to their suppliers, who will try to pass them to Intel. For OEMs making computers, it will be the entire computer coming back to them.

        And then you have motherboard manufacturers. People who bought defective Intel CPUs usually don't have spare motherboards to test with, so determining where the fault is can be difficult. And some percentage of those people will want to return the motherboard even if it is working properly, because they bought it was a bundle with the CPU and are switching to AMD.

        People laughed when I bought a laptop with a Ryzen CPU... who's laughing now.

        Well I always was because it was a laptop for light gaming on the go, the Ryzen 5 was really the best processor at the £600 price point with a RTX GPU. I'd already accepted the battery life would be less than stellar but I'm rarely using the laptop on battery for long.

    • Not well modded, though it triggers some memories... If you were joking you needed a sarcasm tag. However your sig indicates no Funny there, so maybe the moderators are mocking you. But I've worked for too many of these wannabe corporate cancers?

      I'm actually sort of worried about saying too much, but... In my last role before retiring the emphasis was on efficient onboarding and offboarding. Mostly that meant relatively cheap (chopped?) Chinese programmers mostly recruited from a particular Chinese city wit

  • Corporatespeak-to-English translation (Score:3)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Thursday August 01, 2024 @07:33PM (#64674134)

    From TFA:

    "Intel is now shifting its focus toward capital efficiency and investment levels aligned to market requirements," the company's earnings report reads.

    That's a PR euphemism for "We've lost so much market share we're forced to pinch pennies and scale down":

  • I've been shopping for a new computer. I've been reading about the issues with the latest intel processors, the voltage tends to go to high and fry them. They think it can be fixed with a software update.
    I thought it was so weird that people are like "Yeah it's cool, just buy a computer and underclock it until they come out with a fix"
    and I think... do people not remember the last big intel cpu fiasco? Sceptre/Meltdown? The fix cost performance, didn't it?
    So I asked AI, give me a list of major intel CPU iss

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by noshellswill ( 598066 )
      You want  a two-letter phrase explaining the incompetence of large, post-modern American company? Try AFFIRMATIVE ACTION. For a longer explanation you could include all USA illegal alien migration,  trade policy, CMYK/social entitlement and Wall Street memes.  Let's pray that THEDONALD gets a chance to apply a sledge-hammer to those  trash policies. 
      • Ok, grampa, let's get you a pudding pop and a chair outside so you can yell at the clouds. You're starting to scare the nurses, again.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        There is no evidence that any of that affected their CPUs. It's hardly a modern phenomenon either, e.g. the FDIV bug back in the 90s.

    • They used the same voltage rail for the power hungry parts that can take a beating and the more delicate ringbus (that basically handles the core-to-core communication). The only software "fix" is lowering the voltage to the lowest common denominator, which will surely affect the performance. If they meet in the halfway, the performance doesn't tank as much, but the chip longevity will be compromised. And the "fix" will only help in preventing more future damage, it will not do anything to the damage accumu

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hogleg ( 1147911 )

      In the end it is hubris.
      Some of these American companies have been at the top for so long that they have become complacent.
      For the longest time Intel had no real competition and they skated along.
      The little guys, AMD in particular, barely alive. Then came Ryzen. Then TSMC with its foundry making cutting edge processors for Apple, then Broadcom, then Nvidia. The landscape has changed over the past 10 years but Intel didn't keep up.
      They thought their position was unassailable, to be challenged in any way by t

  • I was (happily?) surprised that they also eliminated their dividend. I'm not up on their current financials, but that tells me they're in a world of hurt and this will definitely hurt their share price, but it is good to see some of the pain spread around.

  • They build chips, do R&D, source materials, and sell chips OEM. I guess they make drivers too and some wifi and chipsets. How do you get 16,000 out of that? How many even work there total? That's insane. No wonder they're so top heavy. They obviously don't need much of a sales and marketing department so maybe that's who they fired.
  • savings of 1 million per person! lets divide it by 2, for all sort of benefits and computers electricity etc(right...). And we have average dude get 500 000 a year in Intel!
  • all you need are factory workers rnd engineers and sales ppl

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