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Intel Confirms Major Layoff: 12,000 Worldwide, 11 Percent of Workforce (ieee.org)
Tekla Perry writes: It's all about the cloud and the Internet of Things, says Intel explaining the planned layoffs, which will affect some 12,000 employees. Intel CEO Brian Krzanich promises in an email today to employees, that the "transition" will be handled with the "utmost dignity and respect." According to IEEE Spectrum, "Intel Corp. today announced that it would cut some 12,000 jobs -- that's 11 percent of its total workforce -- by mid-2017, with the majority of those affected getting the bad news within the next two months. In a press release, the company said the 'restructuring initiative' would 'accelerate its evolution from a PC company to one that powers the cloud and the billions of smart, connected computing devices,' and that the company would be increasing its investments in 'data center, IoT memory, and connectivity businesses.'"
I never really understood what it is, but I knew it was up to no good.
We can't say we weren't warned.
It's odd that as Intel and AMD have shed workers -- they put the "Silicon" in Valley after all -- absolutely useless companies like LinkedIn are sprawling all over Sunnyvale. I understand why a company needs a large workforce to make microprocessors with nanometer thick wires, but I have no idea why you need thousands of people to run a website.
Maybe investors are just dumb....?
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
Cloud = Their core market (desktop+server CPUs) is in a deep consolidation phase where future purchases will be made by a relatively few number of large cloud players and total unit volumes will be drastically lower.
Internet of Things = Intel is being forced to chase razor-thin margins just to have a new market to soak up their excess semiconductor production capacity.
$300 Million because Diversity(TM) http://fortune.com/2015/01/12/...
"Now, I doubt any of you would prefer a rolled up newspaper as a weapon against a dictator or a criminal intruder."
12,000 jobs is a lot. I know we want to blame somebody. Anybody. Who is responsible? Liberals? Conservatives? Trump? Sanders? Obama? At the end of the day, people are not buying as many PCs as they used to. What now? Who can we blame for that? Steve Jobs? He's dead. We gotta find somebody to blame, damn it. There may be some blame deserved by Intel leadership for not seeing this coming, many years ago and doing something constructive about it. It is a good thing this did not happen during the recession years. Or these people would have a harder time finding jobs. As it is, the economy and the job market is doing reasonably well. So there is hope that these Intel engineers will be able to find new places of employment soon.
I can see it if it's the team and support making their stupid Atom CPUs. They've utterly failed as a line to do anything like break into the phone business, meanwhile their main "Core" CPU line has been squeezed down enough with the Y series to get into fanless tablets. Meaning there's neither rhyme nor reason to keep the Atom line around at all.
Intel has to restructure. It's too bad that they couldn't move some of those employees over to the growing parts of the business. Intel's business is kind of a niche one. Where will those laid off employees go? AMD? Motorola? And that's assuming that they need people.
And when Yahoo! starts their fire sale, there will be re-orgs there as well as layoffs and it will flood the market with even more tech people.
There are some bad times coming to Silicon Valley.
It's not that we want people to lose their jobs, but maybe what Silicon Valley really needs is another DotCom-type crash.
I mean, what positive things have Silicon Valley as a whole really accomplished over the past 10 years?
Well, they've managed to make advertising and the collection of personal data far more invasive and pervasive than it was before.
They've given us "social media", which is really just another way of delivering targeted, inane advertising, and harvesting personal info.
Anything new showing some potential, like virtual reality, is quickly being hijacked as yet another method to, you guessed it, deliver advertisements and collect personal data!
The programming languages they've created, like Go and especially Rust, are nothing impressive. We're still using C and/or C++ for any and all real work, and will be for some time.
Databases have taken a big step backward with all of the NoSQL hype they generated in Silicon Valley.
Web browsers today are worse than they were a decade ago. Just look at how badly Firefox has regressed. Its UI went from being really usable to being awkward to use thanks to Australis, lots of good functionality was removed, lots of dumb functionality was added in, and its performance still causes problems for lots of people. Chrome isn't impressive either.
The price of everything, and especially of housing and rent, has been distorted beyond belief in San Francisco and the surrounding areas, causing untold headaches for long-time residents.
Silicon Valley has a lot of potential, but so much of it has been wasted these past 10 to 15 years. Maybe another economic reset is just what that region, and the technology industry in general, needs.
Mac sales are still going up, so Apple is actually the only bright spot in Intel's future (even though through the constant work on Arm they are also the cause of the demise).
I think Arm would have had similar success without Apple though, as the rise of mobile computing was inevitable - Apple just hastened it a bit.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Yay SPARC!
fucking shareholders
RISC WINS! Yay SPARC!
RISC already won, long ago. X86 has been RISC for a while. Legacy x86 instructions are translated into core RISC instruction and the later is (re)scheduled and run. No direct access to the RISC core is available, developers have to use the x86 facade.
How much you want to bet that when they hire for cloud and IoT stuff, they hire
overseas workers or H1B people.
No it isn't. Decimation means to fire 90% and leave only 10.
with fewer people? Sounds more like failed acquisitions & contraction to me.
No, the opposite: kill 10% of the soldiers to set an example for the rest.
Not only that, but they are lobbying for more H1B's while hiring ~2000/year
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Decimation was the ancient Roman method of putting down a revolt.
If a city-state rose up in a revolt against the regional governor or broke out in a riot or even just had persistent legal and judicial problems, and the Roman central government heard about it, they would "decimate" the population.
They would first send a legion or two to quell the unrest.
They would line up every man, woman, and child. Rich, poor, old, young, everyone. The soldiers would go down the line and count to ten. They would kill that person and start over at 1.
Then the legions would leave, having killed one-in-ten residents. The latin for ten is "decem" (pronounced "day-kehm"). Hence, decimation.
1 in 10 is equal to 10 in 100. The English word "percent" comes from the latin "per centum". "per" means "by", "through", or "from". "centum" means 100. So 10% is literally an English/Latin mashup meaning "ten from a hundred". So decimation is exactly 10%. Always.
... and yet I'm still getting calls to recruit me for contractor positions at Intel in Hillsboro... strange.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Internet of Turds?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
it's because companies like LinkedIn need very few employees relative to the amount of paying users. That's what scale really means. It means the investors can make a shitload of money without all those pesky employees ruining it for them. Investors have been living high off the massive productivity gains they've squeezed out of the work force, but they're kinda hitting the limits of that until automation kicks in. They're a little nervous about full blown automation because if they're not careful they'll end up with socialism when people notice there aren't any jobs anymore. So they're moving at a snails pace and using companies like LinkedIn to realize the profits they demand.
Once companies like that dry up be afraid. These folks run the economy and have a boundless desire for wealth. I'm not sure what they're going to do but if you're a member of the working class instead of the ruling one it's not going to be pretty...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
not after we repealed Glass-Steagall and let the investment bankers get buddy buddy with the Mortgage bankers. See, we used to keep the risky wallstreet stuff separate from the stable Mortgage, car and Student Loan stuff. We don't do that anymore. So a Stock market crash doesn't just devalue the paper money of the 1%ers, it wrecks the whole economy. That's sorta why we separated them in the first place...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
-- John Gage of Sun Microsystems
Just an observation from the peanut gallery.
In my view, PC sales are in decline because prices have been going up, not staying the same or getting cheaper.
Years ago, I bought a new PC with an i7 920 in it, along with a monitor, and they threw in a netbook for free. Factoring out the other items, I paid less than $600 for the PC - a price/performance ratio that I could not touch when it came time to upgrade. (I tried every avenue to actually upgrade my old machine, but every time it added up to more than buying a new PC). The new PC is only about 30% faster than the old - a far cry from my usual 100% increase.
I have kept my eye on the market as people have been talking about the decline of the PC, and the situation has not changed. We are not, and cannot get our money's worth out of new PCs, so we are not buying them. Ergo, fewer PCs are being sold. Increase the value proposition, and watch PC sales skyrocket - we still need our gaming fix, and we will still buy fast PCs - if we can get a deal.
Oh, and one more thing... Microsoft hasn't helped with their Windows offerings - the braindead stupid interface changes in 8 and up, and now being strongarmed into upgrading to the data-stealing Windows 10. You can't sell me a PC with that OS on it. So yeah, PCs are in decline. Give us a decent deal, and get Microsoft to stick to the better side of it's nature, and maybe that will change.
It's worse. They've been elevencimated! Nigel Tufnel would be proud! :D
and it's not entirely impossible we could do something about it. Trump, believe it or not, is the working class trying to do something. You're laughing, but he at least supports Tariffs and other pro-worker policies. Sanders is another example of the trend. The bad part is you'll notice the trend only happens on the national level. If you look at most good things (end of Separate but Equal, getting Lead out of gas, the EPA) they come from the national government. That's because State gov'ts are too small. They get picked apart by robber barons and mega corps. You will note that those same Robber Barons spent the better half of the 80s, 90s and '00s convincing the working class that gov't was the problem, not the solution. But I've yet to hear of a convincing alternative that can stand up to those same barons. And I don't see the barons cutting their share of the gov't pie. Just ours.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
No reason to make it more gruesome. This punishment was for deserters, it was handed down to Roman soldiers, not civilians as you imply.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
and maybe they will do fine. So long as none of them gets sick. Or bets on the wrong horse in the real estate market. Or gets out maneuver by an actual member of the ruling class and has their company get pulled out from under them.
It's also not that difficult if you have the wherewithal to become a highly paid engineer at Intel. Not a lot of people do. Take those kids in Flint, MI. None of them are going to be engineers now. That's not how lead poisoning works. Yeah, that's an unpleasant thing to say, but also true.
Basically, you've got a few engineers who are one illness or financial mistake away from ruin and a massive population (66% last I checked) living paycheck to paycheck. That sucks. We're America. We can do better.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Thank you AC for stating what should be painfully obvious.
Intel ate IBM's lunch. The tribe of IBM had to fire hundreds of thousands of their tribesmen.
Now ARM eats Intel's lunch. [you know what to fill in here]
On the contrary Thaine Creitz wants to increase investments in India and recruit more in India.
http://thetechportal.in/2016/0...
OJ definitely did it.
Ezekiel 23:20
And it already hates you.
Ezekiel 23:20
So basically the load average of their production is going way up. Instead of having billions of underutilised PCs, you have millions of servers running at nearly full potential, and lots of low-powered devices (think phones, tablets, thin clients) also running fairly hot.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
Trying to sneak it through in smaller bites doesn't help.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Only if they're able to afford what is available
Unless you're a far-removed economist, trying to justify it against the technically capable subset of the workforce (much smaller than even the 170m) is a stretch.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Well deserters as in the entire army (or particular Cohorts probably), not the individual.
Considering the alternative was to destroy the entire army (which takes effort and loss), or banish them (at which point you then have a rogue army to worry about, or at the very least a banditry problem), the solution, while gruesome was a form of severe punishment, that fairly (more less with lots) acted as a deterrent for future such behavior, while at the same time preserving 90% of your fighting force for that particular legion/cohort. I'm sure having their colleagues met out the punishment themselves really drives home the point.
Yes, ruthless yet effective. Pretty much sums up the Romans in their heydays.
I would posit that Intel rode the comfortable model it had, bigger, badder, hotter processors every year to feed the market. They have been snookered by the fact that people now love portable, battery operated devices for most of what they consider to be computer use. Intel has not really got an energy efficient, capable processor to match what ARM implementors have on offer. An Intel processor needs a wall plug very close at hand, or a big, laptop sized battery (with a wall plug close at hand). The architecture is likely provably much more energy inefficient (too lazy to look for studies on this) than many of the alternatives. It's a normal part of business, but it sucks for the people being laid off. I think I have a 4004 and 8008 lying around somewhere. My father and I experimented with these when I was a child.
I have a life-long friend who has been at Intel for 15+ years, he works in the fabs and is a ME manager. Intel has always treated him very well. He's thought about leaving on occasion, but he just couldn't do it. Every 7 years - paid 3 month sabbatical on top of vacation. I don't know his salary, but he was doing very well. During the financial downturn, while i was being told I was lucky to have a job and not getting a raise, he was getting double-digit % raises and strong 5-digit bonuses. He gets stock options worth about half my salary. He didn't have any easy job and he was good at it. He had to travel some, but mostly just worked his 40/week and loved it. I never heard anything but good things about working at Intel. He said their philosophy was to hire good people and take care of them, and during down times take care of them even better. I had many conversations with him over beers when AMD was kicking Intel's ass in processors. He said their leadership's message was that it was one of the best things to happen to Intel because it shook them awake. They had become complacent, but would get back on top because they had the engineering ability to do so. Nothing smarmy, no whining.
As with large companies, I am sure that there were flipsides to his story. Maybe it was because he was in engineering, or because of what he did. I was always somewhat jealous of his love for his company, I wish any of my employers would have had half of that dedication and attitude towards their employees.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
I tried several times and I keep getting 10.333739068902037589%.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Are not clouds powered by vapor? Embrace the vaporware.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
The age old battle of Sun versus Cloud. Sometimes the Cloud blocks the sun, and sometimes the Sun burns off the clouds. The age old battle between thin clients and local iron ebbs and flows as the earth rotates.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I bet those LGA sockets sprigy wires start wearing out in a couple of years.
Why do you think Intel is going to only BGA (soldered in CPU's ) in near the future?
Thus you may have no choice. Hint, I've been noticing my older Intel LGA based PC's no longer bios post.
You don't decimate deserters, since deserters are individuals. You decimate a legion you're very unhappy with ... very rarely, though, since it was as much a punishment for the legion as an act of severe self-harm for the whole of the Roman military.
Ezekiel 23:20
Actually, more like nonamated. Elevencimation would fire approximately nine percent of the workforce.
Ezekiel 23:20
It's a sad thing if you don't see the problem with "might" and "president" sharing the same bed, with "might" on top.