Intel plans thousands of job cuts in face of PC slowdown • Hacker News Board

Re: Intel plans thousands of job cuts in face of PC slowdown

#261

Post by ghaff » Wed, Oct 12, 2022, 10:36 PM UTC

dont__panic wrote: post #253

ghaff wrote: post #246

PCs? Gamers (and non-Mac high-end desktop performance users) would seem to be a pretty small slice of the pie these days. I have a high-end current M1 laptop but I do a lot of my work on a couple of 7 year old Intel-based desktop/laptop machines which are perfectly fine although they're about to go out of OS support. (Though I'll probably use them for a few more years anyway.) I remember when you wanted a new PC with…

It's worth noting that Intel has been stuck at a single tick in the processor cycle for... 7-8 years now? Interestingly, Mac sales are up 40% recently. So I guess a lot of people actually do care -- they just want in on the best laptop processors out there, which are decidedly not offered by Intel. With no good Windows support for ARM, I'm curious what trends we'll see over the next few years for PCs. Will they langu…

The Mac number is still relatively small though and it sort of makes the point that the people who really care about their laptops are disproportionately going with Macs (relatively speaking). While the basic corporate box is mostly don't care.

>Will some manufacturers switch to ARM + Linux solutions to offer battery life and heat generation competitive with the Mac?

I don't know. You already have Chromebooks but those aren't really mainstream outside of education even though they're all a lot of people need. And Google exited as basically one of the most high-end hardware makers there.

Re: Intel plans thousands of job cuts in face of PC slowdown

#262

Post by Zigurd » Wed, Oct 12, 2022, 10:38 PM UTC

keepquestioning wrote: post #42

spamizbad wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Might make sense: If you're selling mostly to mobile OEMs and data centers you need a completely different sales/marketing strategy that's more focused on whale hunting than building "brand awareness" to a broad consumer market.

"Intel Inside" worked..

"Intel Inside" worked to build awareness of the Intel brand. The campaign validated the idea that, for a certain amount of ad spending, one can build brand awareness, even for a CPU chip. But, compared to Qualcomm, for example, do people need to be aware of a brand in order for that brand to be dominant?

With the rise of mobile gaming, the fact that people don't know what chip is in their phone casts even more doubt on the value of brand awareness. Intel got dominant by always having a design and/or fab dominance over rivals. A "one-two punch." Who among PC buyers understood that?

On top of that, if Gelsinger is serious about building a contract fab business, that has sales and marketing needs way outside of anything Intel does today.

Re: Intel plans thousands of job cuts in face of PC slowdown

#263

Post by ghaff » Wed, Oct 12, 2022, 10:38 PM UTC

UncleOxidant wrote: post #250

ghaff wrote: post #246

PCs? Gamers (and non-Mac high-end desktop performance users) would seem to be a pretty small slice of the pie these days. I have a high-end current M1 laptop but I do a lot of my work on a couple of 7 year old Intel-based desktop/laptop machines which are perfectly fine although they're about to go out of OS support. (Though I'll probably use them for a few more years anyway.) I remember when you wanted a new PC with…

Can't recall where I heard this recently, a podcast I think, there was a CS professor talking about undergrad introductory programming classes. He said that about 5 years back his students stopped coming in with experience using a PC because they'd only been using phones/tablets. So the prof said it was kind of like going back ~25 years when not a lot of incoming students had PC experience either.

Was talking to someone at work and their kid didn't want a laptop because they were fine with doing papers on their phone. Blows my mind (and that of others) but I guess that's where we are.

Interesting situation. I never touched a PC until after college. But, yeah, there was at least a period where basic "computer literacy" was expected. Maybe things have shifted again.

Re: Intel plans thousands of job cuts in face of PC slowdown

#264

Post by brewdad » Wed, Oct 12, 2022, 10:39 PM UTC

px1999 wrote: post #170

coryfklein wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> everything I've heard over the last couple of years indicated that AMD was absolutely crushing Intel. AMD market cap: $93B Intel market cap: $104B And now you will no longer be able to say that everything you've heard indicates that AMD is "absolutely crushing Intel".

Given their respective revenue, AMD's market cap does indicate they're crushing it. Their multiplier means that the market thinks highly of their ability to continue to grow.

Given that AMD shares are down more than 61% YTD (vs 52% for INTC), I'd say neither company is setting positive expectations for the future.

*edit added YTD for clarity

Re: Intel plans thousands of job cuts in face of PC slowdown

#265

Post by throwaway821909 » Wed, Oct 12, 2022, 10:45 PM UTC

UncleOxidant wrote: post #220

BobbyJo wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's bad for a company to go bad. Hard disagree, so I wonder what your basis for this bullet is. Agree on the other two though.

I can think of another aspect of the badness: It's bad for geographical regions that have become dependent on the company. Intel is Oregon's largest private employer, for example, and most of this employment is in the Portland metro area. If Intel were to go away next year this area would be hit very hard economically. That's not going to happen, of course, but one can imagine a long slow decline. Tektronix used to b…

It's an example of the general problem, it would be better if Intel (and some "competitors" to keep prices low) could always perfectly adapt to new technologies etc, and retrain people.

When they can't it's good companies come and go, or Kodak would still be blocking digital cameras (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-kodak-bankruptcy-idUSTRE8...) but the price we pay is things like wasted effort on re-implementing everything that didn't need to change at the new place, good people can't always move to it as you mention, etc.

Different countries at different times adopt different positions on the scale between inefficient (?) state-linked monopolies with jobs for life and letting the market do its thing. I'm not sure what factor means that sometimes we end up with Samsung and other times British Leyland.

That itself is an example of capitalism as the least worst option... similarly how much effort goes into trading currencies or commodities or whatever just so people get a fair price and aren't screwed over by whoever is the only person selling at the moment they need something. But we're self-interested, biased, and this is the workaround (or the system that emerges from our nature - self-interest is turned into the energy behind it all and "greed is good").

Re: Intel plans thousands of job cuts in face of PC slowdown

#266

Post by jcadam » Wed, Oct 12, 2022, 10:45 PM UTC

jcadam wrote: post #112

I just got laid off by my employer last week. Just remember, we're not in a recession.

That was sarcasm, downvoter.

Re: Intel plans thousands of job cuts in face of PC slowdown

#267

Post by ekianjo » Wed, Oct 12, 2022, 10:45 PM UTC

indymike wrote: post #247

JoshTriplett wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Who bought a laptop because it had an Intel CPU? If you're a Linux user, Intel integrated graphics have always been the most compatible and most well-supported option.

> If you're a Linux user, Intel integrated graphics have always been the most compatible and most well-supported option. You forgot to add, "worst performing by a mile" to the feature list.

Compared to other integrated graphics?

Re: Intel plans thousands of job cuts in face of PC slowdown

#268

Post by brewdad » Wed, Oct 12, 2022, 10:47 PM UTC

aprdm wrote: post #191

briandear wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oracle is/was laying off thousands as of August. Within the past 12 months: Peloton laid off over 4000. Snap 1280 (which is 20% of the company,) Shopify 1000 (10%.) Groupon laid off 15%. Salesforce, 1000. Microsoft 1800. Carvana (while not "big established" it's still a lot of people) laid off 2500. Tencent laying off 5500. Alibaba: 9500, ByteDance: 1000, Zillow 2300. This definitely isn't really the first major layo…

Where you saw microsoft / alibaba?

Here's 200 plus the article references the earlier announcement of about 1800.

https://www.theverge.com/2022/8/10/23299499/microsoft-layoff...

Re: Intel plans thousands of job cuts in face of PC slowdown

#269

Post by anotherman554 » Wed, Oct 12, 2022, 10:48 PM UTC

pantulis wrote: post #78

jrockway wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think it's great that they are essentially "recycled" when new, better companies come along and eat their lunch. Don't you have on the order of tens of thousands of dollars invested in Intel through retirement savings, though? When S&P 500 companies fail, your retirement savings become worthless. (Apple is really the one you want to watch out for, though!)

Not a US citizen, but aren't the retirement funds managed by someone who should be held responsible for not diversifying?

In the US usually the employee usually has a choice of several funds in their 401 (k) retirement account, including international funds.

It seems the person upthread owns a target date fund and this means they probably are diversified. Their post doesn't make a lick of sense.

Re: Intel plans thousands of job cuts in face of PC slowdown

#270

Post by sct202 » Wed, Oct 12, 2022, 10:49 PM UTC

pedrocr wrote: post #234

hedgehog wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fab business is very sensitive to scale, with enough money and discipline you can mostly make your own luck. TSMC does way more volume than Intel and they have a very aggressive customer (Apple) that can help work out early quirks and guarantee orders on new nodes before they're economical for anyone else. I don't know what a turn around might look like but it's a tough problem.

> TSMC does way more volume than Intel Do you have a source for this? The only one I found says Intel is 2x TSMC: https://www.statista.com/statistics/883715/microprocessor-ma...

That is revenue based, and not based who makes the chips. In the chart Nvidia, Broadcom and Qualcomm are all fabless (outsourced production) and their chips are made by TSMC, Samsung, or other foundries.

By wafers produced (including memory), TSMC is 2nd and Intel is 6th. TSMC is 2x the 5th placed company on the table, so Intel is even smaller than that. https://www.eetimes.com/chipmakers-increase-share-of-global-...