If you are a manager or supervisor, good or bad, long term, short term. Please answer this question honestly. Throughout the years and all the layoffs, why is there still dead weight, low performing individuals still around? No matter what group or level, there is alot of people that always seem to get swept under the rug and are still employed. We lose good talented people hardworking or even mediocre.. BUT WHY ARE THERE STILL cancers around? Please explain, managers/ sups who don't get rid of these people are apart of the issue as well.
35 replies (most recent on top)
I miss the excitement of working there in such a dynamic competitive environment. I'd turn all these talking points into achievments. Ate that stuff up...
Cockroach will out live us all….
Oh great, another post and self replies by the Manager Troll.
As if any managers hang out on this site.
STOP sending monthly status report to show what are you doing and gain fake visibility. Some PM - we know you guys are suc** king intel blood.
Fire PMs and give that work to manager so they are more busy and not doing weekly 1:1s to show their calendar busy
I'm a manager, and I can tell there is a strong incentive for everyone in the management chain to have larger and larger teams, as it is essentially the only way to get promotions. Thus, from the manager perspective it is always better to hire someone else and leave the dead weight there, so that the team gets larger. Of course, the second level manager could question the decision, but the incentives are the same, and everyone pretends there is the need for more and more people.
I don't think there would be any significant real legal risks. I've been in better managed companies where people get fired all the time for performance and nothing happens. I believe this is mostly an excuse to keep the dead weight and grow teams.
Best honest string of posts ever
Thanks for reading MJ and LBT
Anyone working there knows the problem, Intel managers and workers are there to keep the machine running. It has very little to do with making customers happy and building great products people want to buy.
The managers and individual contributors are just perpetuating the Borg.
Intel is full of people doing stuff that doesn't matter... from TPS reports to duplicate departments all claiming they are responsible. More checkers checking the checkers and no real hard core engineering feats being achieved.
This is the result of terrible culture, managers hoarding power and information but not making anything anyone wants to buy.
These efforts to cut are too little, too late. The problem is quite intractible.
The real problem is cheap pay so you get what you pay for and managers well understand that. They want to manage cheap id--ts rather smart people that don’t want to listen to their clueless or useless talks.
And don't forget about the Performance Improvement Plan... you can waste all your time managing someone you want to wax, but legal and hr want to minimize liability risk...
All this dies is minimize and chance of the company surviving.
@bg
Can understand HR works for company and VP. HR keep troubling managers for poor performance. HR torcher managers and ask lot of Q. At end they make manager bad.
But same HR is poor guy in front of VP. They abuse HR like anything and HR shut their mouth.
fellow , sr fellow abuse ppl specially use F** word in front of many ppl in meetings for male and female but HR says we can’t do
HR works for company not for employee
As a manager with over 20 years…
As said below, HR was impossible. It wasn’t even they wouldn’t support the action, you had to fill out 8 forms, get 10 permissions, and have 3 meetings to write a written warning for performance.
Add that to a lot of young operation managers who are afraid of the confrontation and then put a scoop of ‘I won’t be able to replace this person, so some work is better than no work.’ mentality.
The open door process is broken, and if someone contests it ( for whatever reason) add 10 more meetings and the chance of getting written up yourself, or HR coming back to tie manager telling them that you have poor performance management skills.
I could list 10 more things. Just easier to keep and ignore poor performers. Young manager with no coach, mentor, etc. is the biggest problem. Especially young engineers they throw into OM roles to get them some management experience, and they e never managed anyone ever.
@ax I'm surprised this topic went this much hours without an ignorant comment like this
Sorry but the truth is only the id--ts left at a broken system and corporation.
Aside the general no accountability, in almost every org, there are clique or groups or gangs of people who look out for each other. Just like politics, when these gangs have critical mass, they weed out other people and keep their own, competent or not. These groups could be based on religion, nepotism, common culture, school ties, or just buddy-buddies. If you aren't in, you aren't protected. That doesn't mean you can't get ahead or will get fired... but it just makes it harder to get ahead (since they'll promote their folks first, or get the largest raises regardless of performance).
@am nail on the head, 0 accountability.
a3+1jx0snxd8 us correct, Intel absolutely is afraid of lawsuits.
As my very first trainer told me back in 1998, "Intel only builds logic, we don't use it"
@ak 9 Current manager here, bain of my existence even low % rewards is hard to get by HR
If reduction of 10 or 20% in reality is usually 1 to 2 heads per shift, with volunteers and those who want it and likely deserve it for the positive, Best interest to try and honour that. And yes unfortunately that usually means the bad apples remain. They are the ones that talk bad and bring everyone down but won't walk away as they actually enjoy the attention and of course happy to coast for money. Not always the case as sometimes a really bad apple can be shown that door.
Recently retired employee and former officer in the USMC. From all the years that I have personally experienced at Intel in the civilian sector, I can chalk up alot of issues from one important thing that we take serious in the military: ACCOUNTABILITY! There is none. From the tech who abuses breaks and takes 8 hour lunches, to the supervisor who bats a blind eye, from the engineer who after 3 years of training still doesn't know their responsibility, to the non present manager, there is no repercussions and no accountability. Nothing changes if nothing changes. At every level
HR prevented any attempts to fire slackers. Any attempt by a manager to fire a slacker resulted in HR escalation to several levels, and as a result, the manager himself suffered. He was accused of poor management and inability to work with people. HR officially prohibited direct managers from giving negative feedback to their employees, demanding escalation to the next level. As a result, instead of firing, managers began to practice quiet transfers of slackers to other groups (often newly formed) or departments.
Appreciate the replies! As a keep your head down continuing to work hard employee, this topic is very frustrating to come to work everyday seeing the ship sink and bad workers still on the ship
Very Simple , VPs, CVP needs their own support system and same culture goes down ..
Just check the Folsom lady LP announced the org but all old ppl in her org not laid off any SrFellow or PE or VP, sr directors…
All still there so basically FLM, SLM, Engineers are on lay off list
You have to do something egregious to be let go, like a3 said lawsuits dictate that. Your ducks need to be lined up with HR, you and them have to be on the same page and that takes a lot of man hours to do and not so easy. It’s definitely not like it used to be, verbal warning, written warning next warning you are gone. Past layoffs kind of took care of the problem employees but we will see how this coming layoff goes.
As a former Intel manager there was only one layoff I recall that based the decision on the managers assessment and that was in 2009 otherwise they have been handled via mainly voluntary action or some combo of review calculation. So if you do mostly voluntary layoffs with decent payouts you are more likely to lose good talent at a higher rate. Also Intel kept adding managers and management layers coupled with poor market decision making and no clear goals. Hopefully that improves I am rooting for an Intel comeback!
Former Intel manager (left intel in 2022). Performance management at Intel is discouraged, it is extremely difficult (or was) to get rid of low performers. While I agree that several management layers are dead weight, a lot of IC's play the system, do absolutely nothing and are still there.
I'm not a manager, but I think the answer is obvious. The objective has been empire building and a lot of managers don't like confrontation and holding people accountable or seeing negative reviews on manager feedback. A lot of managers also don't really know how long it takes for employees to do their jobs...there is a huge variance in productivity and work ethic among employees.
Management is the Cancer.
You’re asking the wrong people. 8 layers of management IS THE PROBLEM.
Intel. Where only the narcissistic survive.
Terrible people are all that are left because because they are better at back stabbing and Stealing others accomplishments.
And now, with this massive cut coming, performance doesn’t matter. Always exceeding? Cut. Promoted? Cut. But if you’re useless with the right job title, Critical Talent.
I ASKED MY MANAGER THIS ONCE FEW YEARS BACK, LONG STORY SHORT INTEL IS AFRAID OF LEGAL ISSUES. THEYD RATHER PAY A LOST CAUSE ANNUAL SALARY THEN GET SUED 😫 ONE OF THE MANY REASONS WHY INTEL IS IN THIS CURRENT PREDICAMENT AND WHY I LEFT. GOOD LUCK
The skills matrix for involuntary the last time around let a lot of dead weight stick around - someone new in the group but clearly bad? They got a pass. The company is irrationally afraid of any legal action, so many DEI folks got a pass too. Folks with talent leave, and those who know this is as good as it gets for them find a way to stay.