Live data from Hacker News

Intel to Cut 12,000 Jobs, Forecast Misses Amid PC Blight

bloomberg.com

51–60 of 531 posts

Re: Intel to Cut 12,000 Jobs, Forecast Misses Amid PC Blight

#51
post #2

Right now, the only content in this article is "Developing...".

I saw that as well, refreshed a few times (thinking it was failing to pull in content via some over-complicated API call) and then saw the article appear.

I gather this was just a stub to help the site's SEO rankings, sort of like how support teams that are measured on "time to first response" will quickly reply to any new ticket with something like "Thanks for getting in touch. We'll look at your ticket and get back to you shortly." It may take them 24 hours to get back to you, but they've stopped the clock. Maybe Google News gives extra juice to sites that are first to break a story.

Re: Intel to Cut 12,000 Jobs, Forecast Misses Amid PC Blight

#52
post #10
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am actually curious. Did everyone who upvoted the title post not click on the link at all?

clearly, no.

HN's scoring algorithm should ignore or discount upvotes if the user did not click on the article link before voting. For extra credit, HN could also watch for page visibility changes that would indicate that the user, in addition to opening the article, also switched to that the article tab. :)

Re: Intel to Cut 12,000 Jobs, Forecast Misses Amid PC Blight

#53

One must understand that this is re-structuring. Intel is probably letting go of some divisions it no longer intends to pursue. In the not-so-distant past, Microsoft did an internal re-structuring when Satya Nadella became the CEO. It isn't as bad as it is portrayed to be as most people end up getting re-hired in other groups or take the severance and join a new company.

News like this out of the blue is strange. I was pretty sure that the post-PC era was a sham. It still is, right?

This isn't at all out of the blue. As the article states, Intel revenues have been declining for over half a decade now. A few years after the first iPhone hit the market.

Re: Intel to Cut 12,000 Jobs, Forecast Misses Amid PC Blight

#54
post #39

So Intel is cutting 11% of its workforce, Goldman Sachs just reported a 56% drop in profits, Morgan Stanley had a 50% drop in profits, Netflix missed subscriber growth estimates etc... yet, the Dow just hit a 9-Month high, and the S&P500 is now above 2100. The whole market is overvalued, not just the tech unicorns.

If you pick and choose stocks, you can tell any story you want. Intel cutting its workforce is more of a reflection on the state of the PC market rather than the US economy as a whole.

I'm not saying the market is overvalued or not, but this is in no way indicative of that.

Re: Intel to Cut 12,000 Jobs, Forecast Misses Amid PC Blight

#55
post #27
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just a guess, but tech companies are occasionally release % of their workers to clean its workforce, boost productivity and make space for new, young and experienced engineers. Stagnation and idea depletion is dangerous for tech companies, fresh employees bring fresh ideas and boost competitiveness between workers.

Perhaps some people believe that is what happens. But if I were a talented employee, I'd see an 11% staff reduction as a sign to stop ignoring those recruiter emails.

We had layoffs/firings here and that is what happened for a lot of people. There is no point in sticking around when the same moronic manager is kept around while talented, productive people are forced out. Many of us are only here until our shares vest. Our stock price has taken a huge hit as result.

Re: Intel to Cut 12,000 Jobs, Forecast Misses Amid PC Blight

#56
post #36

Does anyone working within Intel know the reasoning ? It seems skylake is doing really well. Is it mostly electrical engineers working on the processors or sales and marketing people ?

I don't know about other people, but my next Intel CPU will have AVX-512, which Skylake doesn't have. I'm expecting AVX-512 to (up to) double integer/FPU vector computation capacity. I also want to see some proof future Intel processors (especially 10nm and smaller) have not lost durability due to electromigration [1] (or some other durability issues small feature size can cause). There's already some indication this…

You might be surprised to learn that AVX-512 is not available in Skylake - it will only be in the Xeon line. It also won't give you anywhere near double performance, since a lot of AVX2 code is memory bandwidth bound anyway (which is probably one of the reasons it's not in the desktop chips.) I would've bought a Skylake so that I can test code on an AV-512 machine. Now I'll keep my money and wait and see.

Re: Intel to Cut 12,000 Jobs, Forecast Misses Amid PC Blight

#57

One must understand that this is re-structuring. Intel is probably letting go of some divisions it no longer intends to pursue. In the not-so-distant past, Microsoft did an internal re-structuring when Satya Nadella became the CEO. It isn't as bad as it is portrayed to be as most people end up getting re-hired in other groups or take the severance and join a new company.

News like this out of the blue is strange. I was pretty sure that the post-PC era was a sham. It still is, right?

It's probably possible for PC sales to decline while PCs remain dominant in computing. If so, Intel probably doesn't need to restructure; they just need to get smaller.

Re: Intel to Cut 12,000 Jobs, Forecast Misses Amid PC Blight

#58
post #28

Holy bloodbath.. From CNBC: > Shares of Intel were halted after the bell Tuesday as Intel announced it would cut 12,000 jobs, or 11 percent of its workforce > The technology company also said the CFO would step down

That is odd, because they also reported an 18% increase in profits.

quote from zerohedge:

  Instead of using the same tax rate as a year ago, when it had an effective 
  tax rate of 25.5%, this quarter the tax rate was down 7.1% to just 18.4%. 
  Had INTC used the historical tax rate, it would have, surprise, missed.
  
  Worse, INTC just cut its outlook, predicting revenue of $13.5 billion, 
  plus or minus $500 million, for the Q2, about $700MM below consensus estimates.

Re: Intel to Cut 12,000 Jobs, Forecast Misses Amid PC Blight

#59
post #35
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> boost competitiveness between workers. I do not think that this is a good thing...you want collaboration, not politics and back stabbing.

Its corporation. Morals are not really the top priority. The results are.

I don't think levemi is saying anything about morals -- rather, that results will be better if employees are cooperating with one another rather than playing zero-sum games in the hope of missing the next round of layoffs.

Re: Intel to Cut 12,000 Jobs, Forecast Misses Amid PC Blight

#60

I really hope this is not going to affect their already ever lagging release schedule. If I'm not getting Kaby Lake Q3 this year as promised I will be severely disappointed.

> I will be severely disappointed.

"I'm not angry, just terribly, terribly hurt", as Marvin the Martian famously put it.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cwxc_zLH560 if you insist, it's only 72 seconds. Also featuring the line "there's a growing tendency to think of Man as a rational thinking being, which is absurd! There is simply no evidence [...]". Scriptwriter on a roll there.)

Post reply on HN