MKWVentures
Moderator
Intel Chief of Staff might be a little different LOL
Intel to announce plans this week to cut more than 20% of staff
- Thread starter XYang2023
- Start date
Lip-Bu Tan: Our Path Forward
www.intc.com
tooLongInEDA
Moderator
Just read it. I think it's excellent. He seems to really understand the current situation and just what needs to be done.Lip-Bu Tan: Our Path Forward
A few interesting extracts:
We need to get back to our roots and empower our engineers. That’s why I elevated our core engineering functions to the ET. And many of the changes we will be driving are designed to make engineers more productive by removing burdensome workflows and processes that slow down the pace of innovation.
As we refocus on engineering, we will also remove organizational complexity. Many teams are eight or more layers deep, which creates unnecessary bureaucracy that slows us down.
I’ve been surprised to learn that, in recent years, the most important KPI for many managers at Intel has been the size of their teams. Going forward, this will not be the case. I’m a big believer in the philosophy that the best leaders get the most done with the fewest people.
There is no way around the fact that these critical changes will reduce the size of our workforce.
It has been eye-opening for me to see how much time and energy is spent on internal administrative work that does not move our business forward. We need to radically simplify this to maximize the time spent focusing on our customers.
Our existing policy is that our hybrid employees should spend approximately three days per week on site. Adherence to this policy has been uneven at best. I strongly believe that our sites need to be vibrant hubs of collaboration that reflect our culture in action.
... With that in mind, we will be updating our policy to require four days per week on site by Sept. 1.
Unlikely, except perhaps in process development. He doesn't appear to have the background to understand product group issues or solutions. Also, how is a senior director going to have the juice to have peer-level interactions with EVPs? Mostly academic background. Superficially seems like a really weird choice for CoS, in any company I've worked.
It was a rumor…. It was not true which is par for the course with Intel haters.
Some key remarks
From Lip-Bu:
1. Bringing back critical lost talent and recruiting new people
2. Mandating a four-day-per-week return-to-office policy, effective Q3 2025
3. Workload-driven design (such as optimizing for reasoning models, agentic AIs, and physical AIs)
4. Panther Lake / Intel 18A: One SKU by the end of the year; others in the first half of 2026
5. Collaborating with customers to define KPIs for Intel 14A
6. Exercising prudence in capital spending
7. Do NOT spin off Intel Capital; instead, monetize existing investments and be more selective with new ones
8. Strengthen the balance sheet
9. Flatten the organizational structure
10. Focus on killer products and meeting customer requirements
11. Prioritize meeting Intel Products' needs for 18A, followed by building trust with foundry customers
12. Regarding AI strategy: seeking industry leaders to design purpose-built silicon targeting AI workloads, along with software to optimize the platform. One example is a new architecture for edge applications that require low power (more details to come)
13. Dissect the AI roadmap into short-term and long-term products. For short-term products, adopt disruptive solutions by partnering with innovative companies to accelerate time-to-market and meet customer requirements
14. Establish metrics to evaluate turnaround efforts, such as product competitiveness—focusing on performance, power efficiency, and time-to-market
15. Strike a balance between serving Intel Products and external customers
16. View TSMC as a partner—Morris Chang and C.C. Wei are long-time friends; recently met with them to explore collaborative opportunities that create a win-win situation
17. Continue to drive efficiency and yield improvements for Intel 18A, and engage with customers on Intel 14A to maximize fab footprint utilization
18. Rack-scale AI products (XPUs—CPUs and GPUs) are critical, with the goal of delivering killing products
Added by MJ: IPUs (Infrastructure Processing Units) and optics are essential components of rack-scale solutions. IFS is the only foundry offering an optics option to customers. Open x86 (in the context of AI solutions) is gaining traction, with one design win already secured and more expected.
From Lip-Bu:
1. Bringing back critical lost talent and recruiting new people
2. Mandating a four-day-per-week return-to-office policy, effective Q3 2025
3. Workload-driven design (such as optimizing for reasoning models, agentic AIs, and physical AIs)
4. Panther Lake / Intel 18A: One SKU by the end of the year; others in the first half of 2026
5. Collaborating with customers to define KPIs for Intel 14A
6. Exercising prudence in capital spending
7. Do NOT spin off Intel Capital; instead, monetize existing investments and be more selective with new ones
8. Strengthen the balance sheet
9. Flatten the organizational structure
10. Focus on killer products and meeting customer requirements
11. Prioritize meeting Intel Products' needs for 18A, followed by building trust with foundry customers
12. Regarding AI strategy: seeking industry leaders to design purpose-built silicon targeting AI workloads, along with software to optimize the platform. One example is a new architecture for edge applications that require low power (more details to come)
13. Dissect the AI roadmap into short-term and long-term products. For short-term products, adopt disruptive solutions by partnering with innovative companies to accelerate time-to-market and meet customer requirements
14. Establish metrics to evaluate turnaround efforts, such as product competitiveness—focusing on performance, power efficiency, and time-to-market
15. Strike a balance between serving Intel Products and external customers
16. View TSMC as a partner—Morris Chang and C.C. Wei are long-time friends; recently met with them to explore collaborative opportunities that create a win-win situation
17. Continue to drive efficiency and yield improvements for Intel 18A, and engage with customers on Intel 14A to maximize fab footprint utilization
18. Rack-scale AI products (XPUs—CPUs and GPUs) are critical, with the goal of delivering killing products
Added by MJ: IPUs (Infrastructure Processing Units) and optics are essential components of rack-scale solutions. IFS is the only foundry offering an optics option to customers. Open x86 (in the context of AI solutions) is gaining traction, with one design win already secured and more expected.
Artificer60
Well-known member
I see option 1 as being especially challenging while conducting poorly defined layoffs. I mean seriously, would you take a job a Intel while this is going on if you had another option.
fansink
Well-known member
So far this ~all that has been said by Intel:
Lip-Bu Tan (in a memo to employees, published on Intel's website): "There is no way around the fact that these critical changes will reduce the size of our workforce."
David Zinsner (in an interview with CNBC's Kristina Partsinevelos): "The reduction in operating expenses would include job cuts, especially for managers, but that Intel hasn't yet finalized the number of cuts."
siliconbruh999
Well-known member
If the source is reuters then the rumors are always a true.
Same experience here - CoS's often build their personal network out of the position but I haven't seen any that had enough leadership to influence real change.
Morris Chang in a interview mentioned that TSMC and Intel have bee on the friendly ground forever until Pat take over. Pat's frenemy approach strained the relationship with others.
Keep your friends close, and your (fr)enemies closer...
A lot of companies have benefitted from Intels failure. They may publicly signal they're friends, and they may be on a personal level. But billion dollar business is war.
MKWVentures
Moderator
This is a good call to cancel products and projects.... but there will be 15-20K less people when this is done. it just will not be voluntary (last round had lots of involuntary as well)
MKWVentures
Moderator
everything you need to know about business and management can be learned from Godfather.Keep your friends close, and your (fr)enemies closer...
A lot of companies have benefitted from Intels failure. They may publicly signal they're friends, and they may be on a personal level. But billion dollar business is war.
"TSMC will make them an offer they cannot refuse"
Yes, some reductions in headcount are coming soon. The 20% number is purely rumor and seems to be pulled out of thin air. The company has said they are assessing and they don't even know the size of the reduction yet. Looking at the most recent numbers from INTC.com (the site where you can find their official financial details), they have 97.6k employees. In statements, Intel has said 95k.
Using ChatGPT and adding up headcounts from Fab, Packaging and assembly sites, it appears Intel Foundry and Manufacturing is about 45-50k. This means Intel Products is about 45-50k. How does this Intel Products number compare to their fabless peers? QCOM is about 49k, Nvidia is about 36k, AMD has about 38k. Taking the average of these we get 41k.
But remember, Intel has much more going on than any of those fabless companies menitoned. Intel has an automotive division (in addition to Mobileye), modem chips, an impressive photonics division, a huge quantum effort, and an R&D presence bigger than their peers with their Intel Labs division. They also have Intel Goverment Technologies division for working directly with DoD and the intelligence community.
Since shedding Mobileye, Altera, and NAND they appear to be similar in size to their peers, especially similar to QCOM. Seems to me the reduction will likely be in the 5k range (~ 5-6%). But this is just my educated guess. If Lip Bu Tan wants to rid the company of these other things that Intel has, yes, they could trim down the products side to the size of AMD (38k). But even that would only be a 10-12k drop.... not 20%. It seems unlikely Intel would want to give up on all those things.
Using ChatGPT and adding up headcounts from Fab, Packaging and assembly sites, it appears Intel Foundry and Manufacturing is about 45-50k. This means Intel Products is about 45-50k. How does this Intel Products number compare to their fabless peers? QCOM is about 49k, Nvidia is about 36k, AMD has about 38k. Taking the average of these we get 41k.
But remember, Intel has much more going on than any of those fabless companies menitoned. Intel has an automotive division (in addition to Mobileye), modem chips, an impressive photonics division, a huge quantum effort, and an R&D presence bigger than their peers with their Intel Labs division. They also have Intel Goverment Technologies division for working directly with DoD and the intelligence community.
Since shedding Mobileye, Altera, and NAND they appear to be similar in size to their peers, especially similar to QCOM. Seems to me the reduction will likely be in the 5k range (~ 5-6%). But this is just my educated guess. If Lip Bu Tan wants to rid the company of these other things that Intel has, yes, they could trim down the products side to the size of AMD (38k). But even that would only be a 10-12k drop.... not 20%. It seems unlikely Intel would want to give up on all those things.
Why wait until Q3,2025?
To give people time to adjust schedules and family time? It could be a significant change for some. Five months seems fair if we are talking about the start of Q3 2025 versus by the end of Q3.
"In addition, we are mandating a four day per week return to office policy, effective Q3 2025. I know firsthand the power of teamwork and this action is necessary to re-instill a more collaborative working environment, improving efficiency and boost innovation."