Intel’s mass layoffs amped up considerably Friday evening with word that the company plans to lay off nearly 2,400 Oregon workers — nearly five times as many as it had reported earlier in the week.
https://www.oregonlive.com/silicon-forest/2025/07/intel-bombshell-chipmaker-will-lay-off-2400-oregon-workers.html
@bv "How did they look at the x86 technical deficiencies of power vs performance and think an x86 phone would ever be competitive?"
Here's what I think happened:
Somewhere, some Intel engineer reached the correct conclusion that x86 phone can't be competitive.
He created a presentation and sent it to his manager, and asked the manager to share it up the management chain.
His manager, well-indoctrinated by the Emperor's New Clothes culture, realized that he's holding a ticking bo-b in his hands. He had to defuse it. And then he realized the simple way to do it: He opened the last slide which held the conclusion sentence, "x86 phone would never be competitive", and changed the font color of that sentence to green.
That's all it took.
He sent the modified presentation up the management chain. Each manager patted himself on the back, and sent it to the next manager up the chain.
THE END
More in upcoming weeks. Bet that the numbers stay flat or go up?
So sad.
Ultimately old timer managers will stay and the real workers will be canned. Intel way.
@bf funny that you still think the "news" reports accurately
@c1 you take that back, they are a carefully cultured garden of inbreed clowns operating entirely in their own self interests.
Most of your Execs are a bunch of clowns unable to see beyond their noses. One missed opportunity after another
@bv
"the notion that Atom was going to work at all seems the height of monopolistic thinking"
bingo
They thought they could ki-l ARM the same way they ki-led Alpha. Made a good run at it too before they sold the DEC processors to Marvell at a loss. As usual.
The idea wasn't to make a competitive product, it was to remove the competitor. As usual.
Maybe they never really understood the IP licensing strategy that is ARM.
@by this is just rude be sympathetic to your fellow co-worker especially your CVP/VP/Director who didn’t get impacted and now they will have to work harder at positioning themselves for greatness.
I’ll pay .75 cents on the dollar for those needing to unload their Oregon home today
@bw For the fabs it isn't so much about geos.
TD and Oregon fabs have been grossly overstaffed for..ever, and it got remarkably worse in the race to 18A.
AZ is a similar situation.
The majority of the WSPW is on 10nm and 7nm, with far less demand for anything produce by the newer fabs. So the IS and IR sites got less reduction.
They are the very sites that are most likely to be sold as soon as LBT can find a buyer, because they do not have EUV and the roadmap is getting old.
Either sell them now or be stuck with shuttered fabs later.
@bm Oregon will have higher than 10-15%
Need to impact high cost geos more for cost savings.
@bn I always wondered about the strategy to use x86 for phones.
How did they look at the x86 technical deficiencies of power vs performance and think an x86 phone would ever be competitive?
The x86 designs now have become far more competitive, but the notion that Atom was going to work at all seems the height of monopolistic thinking.
Add to that the fact that the phones vendors didn't want to be locked into an architecture, having seen how Intel took something like 80% of the PC profits. It was so lopsided that Intel often had to do motherboard and other R&D because none of the box makers could afford it.
The company to this day is still of the mindset that it can do nothing which will eat away at x86 profits. Until that changes the company is most likely going to just keeping smaller and smaller until it is unable to fund the capital needs. If so, then it has no choice but to breakup and sell the parts.
It has been unable to fund TD and IFS (from x86 profits) for several years now, and needs external customer volumes to make that work sustainably.
The capital cycle (turning cash flow into the next R&D need) is such that once it is broken it is very hard to restart.
@b3 I've often wondered if Otellini thought he could ki-l the iphone by withholding chips from Jobs. That sort of thing was SOP in those days.
My guess is that the first WARN in Oregon was incomplete. The marching orders were to layoff between 10-15% company wide. The 2400 is more in-line with those percentages given that Intel has about 20,000 employees in Oregon.
I saw the AMs gleefully preparing the termination paperwork. Smirking, knowing they get to keep collecting that big fat check compared to the rest of the peons. Let’s hope karma is real.
@bf do you really work at Intel. Intel didn't increase numbers. It was the same planned amount all along. News outlets prematurely report the incomplete numbers. Now that the data is coming into WARN, news outlets make it seem like Intel decided to 5x the layoffs. There maybe more numbers coming in. By next Friday you should get the most accurate head count.
Do you all see how news media controls how you see things. Report stuff that is not accurate. I wonder how much cr@p I have seen the news growing up that was twisted in facts.
@b3 spot on
Intel has been a dead man walking since PSO reorg and layoff of 2006
destroyed the culture and set the stage for BK. All water under the bridge but it is amazing that it lingered for 20 years to get to this point.
In 4 decades of employment, never have I seen such a sh*t show of a layoff in my life. I was told earlier this week that I was safe from the layoff. Some were let go. Now on Friday, they changed their story and made the layoff 5x of what they first told us. That would indicate several more techs from each shift are gone. And working and waiting until Tuesday to know who. Does their left hand have any clue what their right hand is doing? No!!! Biggest bunch of incompetent a-holes, dragging it out some more and making people work another dreaded week to find out if they are tapped AGAIN. If you think everyone stuck working yet another week and not knowing their fate, isn't hating on Intel, then you're a mo--n. These cowardly soulless cretins ALREADY KNOW who's getting canned. Why extend the date another week and torture us all? Are they sadists? Who DOES that? They should expect no loyalty from employees they're deliberately taunting needlessly. These are people's lives they're callously toying with. An absolute sh-t show and I hope the company falls on it's stupid face. Done with Intel, they are the worst!!!
@b5 That's because employees have no rights in America. This isn't Europe where workers are protected by law. Corporations own America.
too little, too late
So which campuses are getting sold? RA parking lot is complete empty these days
@b0 stfu
@OP Intel must have not exhausted their legal budget yet. Not enough employee lawsuits and such. Intel employees are mostly pushovers and don’t fight back. So more layoffs means more wiggle room likely due to the limited financial impact of pusssssy employees not demanding severance negotiations or filing lawsuits were applicable.
@b3 nope
@b1 I think you could go back further to PSO, who got the job (instead of Pat) based on what proved to be an illegal marketing scheme to prevent PC makers from using AMD.
He then went on to make a series of technology mistakes, maybe most importantly was to sell the ARM development group. That was based on a notion that x86 phones could ever compete with ARM.
He also turned down the offer to build iPhone chips, but that was likely not a serious offer from Jobs. Jobs just liked to pit people against each other. Not entirely clear Intel at that point could even make those chips, with factories & PDK highly optimized for x86.
But yeah, BK took it all a step further by letting Sohail convince him that all the EUV development which Intel had done was not somehow better than the ridiculous patterning scheme they had for 10nm. D'oh!
Pat may have been a better choice than PSO, but not sure the company was in a position during the BK years to make the product shifts that Pat would have wanted. Also, AI and GPU were not much of a thing back then, so not clear Pat would have pushed for those new markets.
The reality is that every CEO since Andy was merely a monopolist. None of them had the vision and certainty needed to enable the company to deal with the loss of market dominance, or even to keep it going.
The original sin was to stop ARM development, even though it risked taking sales from x86. That is all PSO.
No sheet! That was about the predicted original amount in the first place but d-mb a$s news feeds started reporting using the initial OR Warn data that was not complete.
@b0 gonna keep saying it. Pat is the guy we needed when BK came on. That was the right vision then. He has just brought on too late.
Eh....people blowing this way out of proportion.
It's tragic no doubt for these folks from a job market perspective. Absolutely soul crushing to be sending out resumes in 2025 for months on end and hearing crickets.
But from Intels perspective, this was a long overdue house cleaning. Pat spent money he didnt have like a drunk sailor on products no one wants to buy. What did you expect ? I was there in 21/22 and the number of reqs they opened for IFS in particular was insane! Interviews every week with offers being sent out every other week. Wtf ? Something to be said for the megalomaniacal American entrepreneurial spirit - Pat saw himself as the next Carnegie or Rockefeller, but failed miserably at it.
Classic example of what happens when you read only the success stories. For every one you read, there were 10 others who didn't make it and Pat falls in that category. Whether 18A products will actually make a dent or not remains to be seen. But with zero external customer interest in IFS offerings, this was inevitable and much needed.
@ax 20k worldwide in this round.
Another round in Q4/Q1 guess another 10k min. If sales not good this quarter expect acceleration on next round.
The article claims the total layoff is about 4000 in the US.
See if the entire reduction across the company is any more than 10k.
Fearmongers peddling 20k are delulu.
Just the beginning more to come next week and more
These are just all the notices people got this week. Warn didn’t update until all messages delivered.
@ac Its not leaked. Its only leaked if you dont work at Intel. They emailed every employee with the current target in June. It wasn't 20% by the way. If you work at Intel you can go look at the email. ITLt very specific.
Feel badly for so many getting tossed into a horrible labor market. Going to be very tough for many of them.
Working at shittel is basically a su----e pact. The axe is coming down HARD. No escape.
Bonbshell? Huh? It’ll be more than this by simple math of the leaked 20% target.