Intel Cutting IT Staff
While large corporations routinely go through phases of expansion and lay-offs, it is usually something that the company announces before bloggers do it for them.
Sadly, that doesn't seem to be the case for Intel who had an upcoming downsizing of its IT department revealed in a blog that would seem to be from an inside source. The source even went on to detail the criteria for the lay-offs, which will based on a skills assesment:
"This is primarily [a] 'skills-based' redeployment, which means we are going through a skills assessment process for each employee, scoring them, comparing scores and then determining which skills we can most afford to lose from our individual groups," the blogger wrote. "It's unpleasant, painful work, and just not going well -- at least not for my team."
The blogger added that he thinks the skills assessment is "meant to ensure that we're legally defensible and identifying people objectively. And to the best of our ability, I think it has been objective. But the results are ugly. No matter how we slice it, we will have to redeploy good people to hit our numbers. We're past the point of trimming the fat -- we're now into the muscle of the organization."
Considering that Intel appears to be on top of the world these days, the cut seems a tad bit excessive and begs further speculation.
Perhaps its the focus on 'Pro' level features migrating to normal desktops that has led the IT staff to be cut, or perhaps moles within rival AMD have revealed some details about upcoming products that has Intel worried. We're open to other theories as well, so please feel to tell us yours.
Sadly, that doesn't seem to be the case for Intel who had an upcoming downsizing of its IT department revealed in a blog that would seem to be from an inside source. The source even went on to detail the criteria for the lay-offs, which will based on a skills assesment:
"This is primarily [a] 'skills-based' redeployment, which means we are going through a skills assessment process for each employee, scoring them, comparing scores and then determining which skills we can most afford to lose from our individual groups," the blogger wrote. "It's unpleasant, painful work, and just not going well -- at least not for my team."
The blogger added that he thinks the skills assessment is "meant to ensure that we're legally defensible and identifying people objectively. And to the best of our ability, I think it has been objective. But the results are ugly. No matter how we slice it, we will have to redeploy good people to hit our numbers. We're past the point of trimming the fat -- we're now into the muscle of the organization."
Considering that Intel appears to be on top of the world these days, the cut seems a tad bit excessive and begs further speculation.
Perhaps its the focus on 'Pro' level features migrating to normal desktops that has led the IT staff to be cut, or perhaps moles within rival AMD have revealed some details about upcoming products that has Intel worried. We're open to other theories as well, so please feel to tell us yours.
