[HN Gopher] Intel CEO Letter to Employees
___________________________________________________________________
Intel CEO Letter to Employees
Author : fancy_pantser
Score : 100 points
Date : 2025-07-24 20:52 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (morethanmoore.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (morethanmoore.substack.com)
| java-man wrote:
| I have instituted a policy where every major chip design is
| reviewed and approved by me
|
| A surefire path to success!
| viraptor wrote:
| But also somehow
|
| > We will become a faster, more agile and more vibrant company.
| We will eliminate bureaucracy and empower engineers to innovate
| with greater speed and focus.
|
| It really is a weird PR piece rather than serious
| communication.
| samrus wrote:
| Chatgpt thought it fit
| wmf wrote:
| Apple worked that way; maybe it still does. If a product wasn't
| important enough for Steve Jobs to review it then they simply
| didn't develop that product.
| I-M-S wrote:
| Apple was built around Steve Jobs - he didn't parachute in
| the company like your average bean-counting CEO does
| scarface_74 wrote:
| I can assure you that Tim Cook doesn't review every product.
| I seriously doubt he even knows what's going on with half of
| them. There is absolutely no way that he used the butterfly
| keyboards and said they were acceptable.
|
| Compare that to Jobs who after he announced the iPhone and
| started using it, saw how much the screen scratched and went
| back to the drawing board and had then re-engineer it before
| it shipped six months later. He even announced they were
| doing it.
|
| Better yet, the infamous "what does Mobile Me suppose to
| do?...Then why the f%%% doesn't it do that?".
|
| You noticed that Cook didn't wear the Vision Pro once during
| the introduction? Compare that to Jobs introductions of the
| iPhone and the iPad.
|
| Rumors are, that Cook doesn't even use a Mac day to day.
|
| On the other hand, Jobs didn't use a Mac after his return
| until OS X was released. He was also definitely not a fan of
| the Motorola phone with built in iTunes that he introduced on
| stage.
|
| Can you imagine Cook writing an open letter on Apple.com like
| "Thoughts on Music" or "Thoughts on Flash"?
| samrus wrote:
| > Rumors are, that Cook doesn't even use a Mac day to day.
|
| This has to be false. Your telling me the CEO of apple is
| using windows 11? With ads in the start menu? Thatd be
| hilarious
| wmf wrote:
| Obviously he uses his iPhone for everything.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| I think the true part of the rumor is that people
| misinterpreted a reporter reporting that the reporter did
| not use an apple mouse.
|
| https://www.macrumors.com/2024/11/17/tim-cook-didnt-say-
| that...
| scarface_74 wrote:
| An iPad.
|
| But the CEO of Google did use a BlackBerry years after
| Android was introduced.
| samrus wrote:
| Yeah but there arent alot of people like steve jobs out
| there. Despite what these CEOs think
| cyberax wrote:
| The current CEO is an MBA empty suit. His greatest
| accomplishment on Wikipedia is "being the most connected
| CEO".
| _verandaguy wrote:
| We're surely no more than 18 months away from the world's first
| 4nm micromanagement processor!
| wnevets wrote:
| Is that something a CEO of a massive company like Intel
| actually has the time to do in an impactful way? I'm no chip
| designer but a major chip design sounds incredibly complex and
| would require a tremendous amount of time & effort to review
| meaningfully.
| jiggawatts wrote:
| I consult for large bureaucracies where this kind of thing is
| occasionally enforced.
|
| There's nothing more fun than a carefully thought out
| cohesive design that takes into account all business and
| technical constraints being randomly "improved" by a too-busy
| senior manager who's been "off the tools" for decades.
|
| "You should switch to NoSQL." -- a nearly verbatim quote from
| a meeting just last week. No justification or elaboration,
| just... abandon a relational database platform with two
| decades of built up business value on a whim.
|
| _"Rejoice! For you have been managed!"_
| mattkevan wrote:
| I used to work for a chief exec like that. They'd see
| something on someone's screen and demand changes,
| destroying months of carefully planned work with a single
| comment.
|
| In the end, we'd build in 'breakpoints' - things that we
| knew they'd pick up on and want to change so they felt like
| they'd had some input without damaging anything important.
| This worked very well.
| fsloth wrote:
| Strong Jensen Huang cosplay vibes here but I see some missing
| elements for this approach to be very effective.
| wmf wrote:
| It sounds more like "Why are we making this chip? If you
| don't have a good answer, it's canceled."
| stefan_ wrote:
| This guy gave up his engineering degree for business
| administration. Actually that sounds like what Intel is.
| kgeist wrote:
| A friend of mine recently quit his job because the CEO insisted
| on personally reviewing and approving designs. The thing is, as
| a CEO, he was super busy with other CEO stuff, so my friend
| could only get small time slots, like 5 to 15 minutes every few
| days.
|
| Each time, the CEO would give tons of small, random
| suggestions, then disappear for several days before reviewing
| again (he didn't have time before that). He'd request more
| tweaks, then repeat the cycle. Because of all this back and
| forth, even simple tasks that should've taken a couple of days
| ended up dragging on for a month.
|
| In the end, my friend got so frustrated with the whole process
| that he just quit.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| "Major" feels like a weasel word allowing for any level of
| review.
|
| Given the number of "major" chips Intel produces-weren't they
| already being presented to the C-Suite? What stealth chips were
| being sold without high level involvement?
| samrus wrote:
| Agentic AI? How exactly does a chip manufacturer focus on agentic
| AI? Thats software. How does riding that hype bubble help them
| male better chips?
| wickedsight wrote:
| For the same reason Kodak presented KodakCoin... The stock
| price boost of joining the herd.
| ZiiS wrote:
| Wanting to be Nvidia is fairly understandable.
| zahllos wrote:
| And Intel do make GPUs.
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| I am not sure whether NVidia's luck will continue to last as
| it is currently.
| einrealist wrote:
| Will be answered by the ASI - soon. /s
|
| But to be serious: Intel creates software too (compilers for
| example). Nvidia does provide software too. Its also nice to
| sell licenses.
| wmf wrote:
| This sounds like reassurance that they aren't chasing last
| year's trends. On a technical level I don't know of any
| difference between inference and agentic inference.
| samrus wrote:
| There is none. Thats what im saying. There is literally no
| difference to the gpu between running a nueral network for a
| normal LLM and for agentic AI.
| curious_cat_163 wrote:
| Oh, I don't know. Maybe build chips that do things 10x more
| efficiently and sell them a lower cost to compete?
|
| It _is_ a hype bubble but it is also an S-curve. Intel has
| missed the AI boat so far, if they are trying to catch up, I
| would encourage them to try. Building marginally better x86
| chips might not cut it anymore.
| samrus wrote:
| Thats fine. Great even. But thats just normal nueral net
| inference. Why mention agentic AI over just AI? The gpu
| doesnt care if the inference is being done for object
| detection or chain of thought. Intel can only make gpus,
| their products dont care about the software at the app level.
|
| Maybe they mean the more vram needed for agentic AI? but then
| the sane thing to say would be that theyll offer more compute
| for AI.
|
| its just an unhinged thing for a chip manufacturer to say.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| Are you suggesting that agentic AI is only used to write
| software?
| samrus wrote:
| No im saying that agnetic AI itself is software. The parts
| that require hardware is just the neural network. The agentic
| part is all in software. So how does intel focus on agentic
| AI beyond just making better datacenter gpus? That like a
| farmer saying they're gonna focus on wedding cakes; they make
| wheat, the wehat will get used for whatever demand exists
| down the line, they can only focus on making the best wheat
| they can?
|
| Is this just marketing?
| xt00 wrote:
| Inference / Agentic AI implies "running models performantly
| using CPU cores" most likely (maybe with some optimizations /
| special AVX512 stuff) -- so essentially "welp, no sense in
| trying to build GPU's, we are too far behind nvidia to catch
| up".
| lbrito wrote:
| Isn't hardware software-designed though?
| wrs wrote:
| Intel makes a lot of software. In addition to internal tools,
| they try to make things go faster on their chips (e.g. the
| Intel C++ compiler), and try to accelerate new areas of
| software so people will need more chips (this focus varies over
| time, of course).
| pydanny wrote:
| Return to office so you can join zoom meetings!
| kazinator wrote:
| The other day I came to the office to join a Google Meet
| meeting. Another person near me was also in it, with their
| laptop speaker on. I'm hearing my headphones and their speaker,
| plus also them acoustically when it's their turn to speak. So I
| picked up my laptop and buggered off to a small meeting room
| where I closed the door and sat alone.
| LtWorf wrote:
| Ah well at least you got a laptop. At the office I have a
| desktop so I can't do that.
| Insanity wrote:
| If one would be skeptical about leadership, one might assume
| that this is a forcing function for people to quit ahead of the
| layoffs.. :)
| IshKebab wrote:
| Yeah make the best people who can easily get a job elsewhere
| quit. Great strategy Intel.
| tayo42 wrote:
| What companies are you all going to then?
|
| There's like 10 that pay alot, actually hiring, and have
| remote work available.
| __s wrote:
| If you're good, the people you've worked with who've left
| before will make headcount for you where they are now
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| My favorite part about working hybrid is that no matter what,
| nobody meets in person, except the managers once a week,
| everything else is a Teams meeting at your desk.
| konfusinomicon wrote:
| it's called collaboration, and thanks to those sets of
| complementary off brand noise canceling headphones that
| welcomed you back to a desk, it's clearly increasing!
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| I find it such a darn waste. I spend anywhere from one to
| two hours commuting on what some consider one of the
| deadliest highways here, not sure how I-4 fares against the
| rest of the country though. Accidents every single day it
| feels like.
| LtWorf wrote:
| Mine aren't even noise cancelling, and are so terribly
| designed that my skull gets painful after just 5 minutes of
| wearing them.
|
| But I can (at least for now) wfh for the most part.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| Ha! They took away my desk, hotelling space for everyone.
| At least when the layoffs come, easier to pack.
| stevenAthompson wrote:
| Has anyone backtested a stock bot that just shorts every
| company doing RTO? It's clearly a leading indicator for company
| collapse.
| generic92034 wrote:
| > It's clearly a leading indicator for company collapse.
|
| So, Amazon, Apple, ... are close to collapse?
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Creatively? Yes, definitely, at least for Amazon. IMHO, for
| that company there is an internal battle what they want to
| be: a webshop filled with garbage or a cloud hyperscaler?
| The way the web shop is degrading, I strongly assume that
| Amazon will attempt to exit that business sooner or later.
|
| As for Apple, I do love their hardware, but the software
| side has seen better days.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| TBF it can also be Google Meet and MS Team ones...
| wtf2025 wrote:
| I've not ever had to experience that particular management
| style, but I think it's the one where they don't give a rat's
| ass about their employees or unique thought.
|
| I'd also hoped that some major semiconductor company would NOT
| embrace AI, just so they could differentiate themselves: "Our
| shit may be too slow for the Terminator to use, but it was
| designed by and for humans to use as air-gapped spreadsheet
| running machines with USB-key sneakernet email."
|
| Given that there is a growing backlash towards LLMs by the
| general public (not just one writers' guild), that might sell
| some stock.
| mandevil wrote:
| I feel like one of the under-appreciated problems with modern
| society (1) is the sheer quantity of lies we are surrounded
| with. RTO is just the current most blatant example ('this will
| make you more productive/more efficient/more creative'
| whatever) in the American economy of people saying lies knowing
| that they will never be held to account for those lies. All of
| these lies together are corrupting and destroying civil
| society, destroying the sense of trust necessary for people to
| work together, to respect and trust institutions, and to build
| a better world.
|
| As the excellent series Chernobyl put it (in the words crafted
| by a writer, not an actual scientist) "Every lie we tell incurs
| a debt to the truth" and at some point someone is going to have
| to pay all of those debts.
|
| 1: Here I'm focusing on Anglosphere/largely US and UK
| societies, as a monolingual American that's all I can
| effectively comment on.
| hibikir wrote:
| I know a place doing RTO where most teams are at least 50%
| contractors from Central and South America. You can imagine how
| productive the office might be for those people, given that
| everyone is on zoom all day, and there's a whole 4 meeting
| rooms in a floor with 50 people.
| bearcobra wrote:
| In the context of the the lack of confidence investors seem to
| have in Intels long term vision this makes sense but it really
| doesn't feel like a good sign for their future
| enraged_camel wrote:
| Intel is circling the drain. At this point I'm of the opinion
| that the sooner it dies the better. Its death will probably
| result in a lot of spin-offs and startups, which might be what
| the US chip industry needs.
| duped wrote:
| The federal government won't let Intel fail.
| Mistletoe wrote:
| Maybe this is why they and Boeing are such a mess. The rich
| kid that can't fail usually is a total screwup.
| rwmj wrote:
| The failson theory of business. Someone should write a
| book.
| scheeseman486 wrote:
| They may let them get bought, though.
| sshtml wrote:
| They've already spun off their RealSense camera/sensor product
| line.
| mullingitover wrote:
| It'll never happen. It's the standard US playbook:
|
| - Allow industry to consolidate to a tiny group of winners, or
| just one winner
|
| - Turn a blind eye to anticompetitive behavior in the
| marketplace
|
| - Protect the uncompetitive winner from innovative global
| competitors
|
| - Bail it out because national security depends on it
|
| It's funny because we don't have socialism, government doesn't
| 'own' heavy industries, but at the same time the major firms
| will obviously never be allowed to fail on national security
| grounds.
| curious_cat_163 wrote:
| That's an interesting way to look at it.
|
| Aren't layoffs a version of that? Are we seeing any evidence
| that folks who have been let go from Intel have resulted in
| spin-offs and startups?
|
| I know at least one person who went to work at Nvidia from
| Intel but that is neither of those things.
| baq wrote:
| already started happening in Oregon, which will probably be hit
| the hardest.
| akmarinov wrote:
| > 15% headcount reduction to 75,000
|
| > Return to office in September
|
| So 15% reduction now and another stealth reduction in September
| hn8726 wrote:
| The letter says
|
| > we plan to end the year with a global workforce of about
| 75,000 employees as a result of workforce reductions and
| attrition
|
| so it looks like the explicit reduction might be lower, but
| accounting for people leaving on their own, the final amount of
| employees should be ~75k
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| "attrition" is in the plan :)
| rwmj wrote:
| And if we get them to resign, we save money on redundancies.
| spwa4 wrote:
| TLDR: "we've gotten ourselves into deep shit by saving money for
| shareholders. That caused a financial disaster so we'll fire 15%
| of you and save some more money. What could go wrong?"
|
| Some mutterings were heard about the definition of insanity ...
| Tuna-Fish wrote:
| That's not really what got Intel into deep shit. They got where
| they are now by ignoring the main business, and spending giga$
| on every trend they could stumble headfirst onto. The money
| returned to the shareholders was reasonable, all the written
| down acquisitions and failed product lines were not.
|
| So far as the firings concentrate on all the ancillary stuff
| that Intel shouldn't have gotten into in the first place, it's
| positive.
| atleastoptimal wrote:
| Intel is in freefall. This seems to happen to most American
| companies that fail to reinvent themselves.
| rvba wrote:
| Jack Welch thought strikes again
| deelowe wrote:
| I've worked under their leadership. Toxic does not begin to
| describe it. I'm not surprised at all they are in this state.
| dlivingston wrote:
| Anything juicy you can share?
| computegabe wrote:
| > 2. Revitalize the Intel x86 Ecosystem
|
| Extremely sad. What's the justification for ignoring ARM /
| RISC-V?
| tomrod wrote:
| $$$+patents
| Tuna-Fish wrote:
| What competitive advantage does Intel have with either of
| those? ARM winning would be a catastrophe for Intel, and RISC-V
| would only be slightly better.
|
| But the main reason to focus on x86 is that it has 47 years of
| existing software built for it, and with the high end mostly
| still on it, more gets made every day.
| samrus wrote:
| Thats like saying why should kodak focus on digital cameras.
| Intel could throw its muscle behind RISC-V and beat the other
| big boys there
| Panzer04 wrote:
| There's no fundamental difference between risc, arm and
| x86. It looks like when all else is equal (fab, die size)
| the chips tend to have about the same performance
| characteristics - so why mess with what's working?
| dom96 wrote:
| If there is no fundamental difference, then why aren't
| there more x86 mobile phones out there?
| trynumber9 wrote:
| Likewise, why are there more x86 mobile phones (e.g.
| anything with Z3580) made than RISC-V mobile phones?
| trynumber9 wrote:
| AMD is making money on x86 servers. Is anyone making money
| doing commodity (i.e. not captive) ARM / R5 server chips for
| sale? Ampere is losing money and hoping for acquisition.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| "We're mad about NVidia and we're taking it out on you"
| poszlem wrote:
| "Streamline" must be one of the most weaselly buzzwords floating
| around today's corporate jargon, and, for some inexplicable
| reason, LLMs seem particularly fond of it too.
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| No love lost for Intel if it goes away, other than that their
| Linux support has historically been great.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| I wouldn't be thrilled about AMD having a de facto monopoly on
| x86 production through.
|
| Granted, ISA is less crucial than it used to be, but there's
| still a lot of x86 binaries in the world.
| heraldgeezer wrote:
| >Granted, ISA is less crucial than it used to be
|
| Depends on what you do.
|
| Gaming PC = x86
|
| Work laptop = x86
|
| So AMD or Intel. "Switch to Mac" means ripping out the whole
| MS management stack. Or keep/move to 365 and Intune but tune
| it to Mac. Or keep 365 but move management to Jamf. Can be
| done ofc, but it's a process.
|
| That's how I still see it. Maybe I'm out of touch :)
| TechDebtDevin wrote:
| Its happening, the CEO's are using ChatGPT to write the letters
| they use to lay off people with. What an awesome future!
| meepmorp wrote:
| I for one would welcome our new AI overlords a bit more if
| C-suite jobs were the get first ones LLM'd into obsolescence.
| cherryteastain wrote:
| > we have decided not to move forward with previously planned
| projects in Germany and Poland
|
| Did they end up getting any German/EU money to build that cutting
| edge foundry? EU's chip strategy seems to be in shambles, and
| they took their eyes off the ball since the end of the Covid chip
| crisis.
| mgol94 wrote:
| They were planning to receive $1.8bn of aid from Poland[0], not
| sure how much they actually received
|
| [0] https://www.gov.pl/web/cyfryzacja/inwestycja-intela-w-
| polsce...
| whatever1 wrote:
| So cut headcount and pray that things will get better! Inspiring
| vision! It will definitely work !
| stevenAthompson wrote:
| You're missing the point. Sure, they're going to just keep
| doing what they've always done, but this time they're going to
| do it HARDER and with 15% fewer people!
| javier2 wrote:
| So just like the plan they executed in 2023 and 2024! It must
| start working at some point right?
| ryandrake wrote:
| It wouldn't be the first time an Intel CEO resorted to
| prayer[1] as their business implodes.
|
| 1: https://www.threads.com/@masiosare/post/C-SoS6qJbU6?hl=en
| combinator_y wrote:
| lol I forgot about this one, Intel have a very big collection
| of weirdo execs I guess.
| givemeethekeys wrote:
| The beatings will continue until morale improves. Layoffs and
| Return to Office!
|
| Imagine doing what all your competitors are doing while being
| one of the least desirable big tech companies to work for.
|
| What could possibly go wrong? /s
| gishglish wrote:
| > Imagine doing what all your competitors are doing while
| being one of the least desirable big tech companies to work
| for.
|
| Good thing you have very few of them because your industry is
| way too capital intensive to start a competitor now.
|
| I am generally curious what capitalisms proposed solution to
| this problem is.
| tumidpandora wrote:
| what does "50% streamlining of management layers" mean?
| shawabawa3 wrote:
| My understanding is that say the average employee had 6 levels
| of management up to CEO before, now they have 4
| lnkl wrote:
| Nothing, really
| rwmj wrote:
| I'm assuming they look at the org chart, measure the max depth
| from the CEO to the lowliest employee, and cut that number by
| half. It's actually the least worse thing in this letter.
| hibikir wrote:
| Depending on which layers they cut. I know of a company that
| last year cut the bottom layer of management, giving managers
| an average of 20 reports. Maximum disruption
| wmf wrote:
| Four layers instead of eight? A large company could easily have
| IC -> manager -> senior manager -> director -> VP -> SVP ->
| CxO. Maybe Intel was even worse.
| fullstackwife wrote:
| Practically it is more than eight, because when multiple
| branches of managerial deposits cross on the project you are
| working on, all of sudden your work depends on decisions of
| dozens of people and their management chains.
|
| Cutting this to four may give compound effect, but IMO this
| is focusing on the symptoms instead of the real causes like
| for example people being territorial or obsessed about their
| promo package. Convoluted managerial chain is often just a
| weapon to achieve your hidden agenda.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Including CEO, I have eight people in my management chain.
| belval wrote:
| You should see Amazon, some are CEO (Jassy) -> AWS CEO -> SVP
| -> VP -> VP -> Director -> Sr Manager -> Sr Manager -> Sr
| Manager -> Manager -> IC
| rvz wrote:
| For those employed, the word "streamlining" is never good.
| generationP wrote:
| When I get fired, the news better come in an email titled "Steps
| in the Right Direction".
| rybosworld wrote:
| Rant:
|
| There are too many companies out there that started with a good
| product/service - and then bureaucrats took over. Smart companies
| minimize layers of management, and manager headcount. Bad
| companies don't - and they eventually are unable to
| grow/innovate. A shockingly high percentage of corporate America
| is parasitic management.
|
| Intel happens to be in an industry that moves so fast that this
| doesn't work for long, relatively.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| About 70 years ago, C Northcote Parkinson (of Parkinson's Law
| fame) wrote an essay on "injellitance" that you might enjoy.
| wslh wrote:
| More here, Forbes 1989 article:
| https://adamsmitheconomics.wordpress.com/2010/05/02/how-
| do-y...
|
| It seems like the author of this article requires another
| reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Brimelow
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| It is not the layers of management that is the problem, it is
| the quality of management. While great engineers mind their own
| business and deliver great products, the people that are not
| great engineers manage their way into management. They are more
| and more incompetent and corrupt and this is killing the
| companies, slowly or not that slow. So it is incompetent and
| corrupt management, not too much management.
| javier2 wrote:
| Either way, Intel needs to get their new fabs sorted out and
| improve their products. There will be money to be made if Intel
| can get back the energy efficiency crown. The GPU division are
| starting to actually enter the lower market segment, but
| drivers leave a lot to be desired. Reducing work force even
| more just tells me they have no clue how to fix these issues
| and are grasping hard.
| donmcronald wrote:
| It's not just drivers. I'd line up to buy a a couple 24GB
| B580s to play around with local AI, but they're only going to
| be available in workstation systems. When it gets to the
| point where you're losing, but still won't sell people things
| they want, I think it's a good indicator that management is
| just plain dumb.
| LtWorf wrote:
| My company is increasing the manager headcount greatly! I
| suspect it's related to changing to a CTO from USA instead of
| one from EU.
|
| I don't even know who my boss actually is now.
| mlsu wrote:
| Another flipflop. Canceling the Germany fab, bringing SMT back.
|
| > Looking further ahead, we're developing Intel 14A as a foundry
| node from the ground up in close partnership with large external
| customers. This is essential to designing a process that meets
| specific customer requirements and enables us to address a
| broader segment of the market. Going forward, our investment in
| Intel 14A will be based on confirmed customer commitments. There
| are no more blank checks. Every investment must make economic
| sense. We will build what our customers need, when they need it,
| and earn their trust through consistent execution.
|
| are these large external customers in the room with us right now?
| wbeckler wrote:
| I hope that pun is intentional.
| F0UKYOU-HN wrote:
| Just the CEO giving 'Lip' service...
| papichulo2023 wrote:
| The most of interesting part for me is the acked that dropping
| SMT was a mistake. I wonder if this means the end of E and P
| cores.
| jeffbee wrote:
| They are saying SMT for data center. There are no heterogeneous
| Intel CPUs for that market, right?
| rvz wrote:
| I see lots of doomers in here talking about Intel failing. Well,
| the truth is the government will just bail them out again.
|
| But instead let's discuss some turnaround suggestions, starting
| with: (1) Acquiring at least one or two AI chip
| technology startups. (Lightmatter, Cerebrus, etc) (2)
| Assembling an AI hardware research team focused on efficient AI +
| software compatibility with existing AI accelerator libraries.
| (3) Investing heavily in the PyTorch team at Intel.
|
| (1) is the most important and urgent action that Intel can do to
| sort out their issues.
| johngalt wrote:
| The strangest part to me about the current trends: why do all
| these business leaders all do the same things at the same time?
| E.g. Layoffs + micromanagement + cost focus etc... Is this truly
| about macroeconomic forces that every business is responding to?
| Or is it just following the latest fad?
|
| There seems to be significant opportunity to zig as others zag.
| Imagine the Intel letter saying "we are going to take advantage
| of the current hiring environment to scoop up talent, and push
| forward on initiatives."
| Lammy wrote:
| Same as it ever was except they learned not to write it down
| lol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-
| Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...
| ryandrake wrote:
| It's almost as if CEOs aren't really that smart or creative,
| got to their position through mostly politics, and look
| externally for clues about what to do.
| thbb123 wrote:
| CEOs like to brag about how AI is going to replace skilled
| workers. Yet, it should be obvious to anyone having
| experience in LLMs that top executives are the jobs that are
| most likely replaceable by AI.
|
| Just keep smooth talking everyone into cost reductions and
| make arbitrary decisions to make it feel like you're actually
| in charge.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Wouldn't that be funny to see an AI bot replace the CEO of
| something like Boeing, and then see the company turn around
| in positive moves? Feed an LLM all of the business data
| that a CEO would have and then ask it to make the same
| decisions the CEO would be expected to make. Since layoffs
| would be the trend online for LLMs to train on, would they
| come up with slop that looks like they too follow the
| trends? If companies are willing to replace dev with AI,
| why are boards not looking at all of the C-suite offices
| with the same mindset?
| DaveZale wrote:
| Same with the Federal Reserve. Why not continuously
| adjust interest rates, instead of all of Wall Street
| agonizing over each decision made?
| dylan604 wrote:
| How would not adjusting vs always adjusting be any
| different? Is it not a made decision to leave it alone
| and not change it?
| 90s_dev wrote:
| It seems to me that a large percentage of jobs exist just
| to exist, and that they use their continued existence to
| justify their continued existence. I wonder how much the
| world would keep spinning if 90% of people were laid off.
| Maybe we'll find out if AI is adopted widely enough...
| meindnoch wrote:
| You can't put an LLM in charge of a company. You need an
| actual human to take legal responsib- oh, wait a
| second...
| andsoitis wrote:
| > anyone having experience in LLMs that top executives are
| the jobs that are most likely replaceable by AI.
|
| That's not my assessment. Why do you say that?
| DaveZale wrote:
| same with directors. BODs are incestuous, inbred.
|
| The letter seemed contradictory: be a factory, but innovate
| on AI. Is AI actually smart? Human brains use the power of a
| dim incandescent light bulb, why does AI require so much
| power, that the processing chips overheat?
|
| Sure, selected tasks can be done orders of magnitude faster,
| but do we, for example, really need that kind of output, like
| pi to a trillion digits? Or AI controlling stock market
| trading? How much liquidity is necessary for traders other
| than huge funds?
| jrk wrote:
| Intel's situation in 2025 is not comparable to the rest of big
| tech. They have lost technical leadership, bled market share,
| and started losing a ton of money in a hugely capital-intensive
| business. They are actually in need of major triage to survive,
| not just hopping on a belt-tightening trend among still-
| massively-profitable software companies.
| mbac32768 wrote:
| Yes this. Intel is in deep shit. This is exactly the thing
| you'd expect their new CEO to say right now.
| vchere wrote:
| The reason is always a secret coalition with a cool hand sign
| like the Illuminati.
|
| But speaking of combining forces, Microsoft will be more likely
| to pick them up in a fire sale now, which I think would be best
| for all involved. Then you're a couple of M&As away with first
| Dell and then Oracle.
|
| Then they will select a champion to fight the Pentavirate at
| The Meadows!!
| slefsacrifice wrote:
| > the Pentavirate at The Meadows!!
|
| Nice "So I Married an Axe Murderer" reference!
|
| It appears that Lip-Bu used an LLM to help write this memo.
| Also: 15% of staff with an arbitrary 50% management? Boy, he
| must have been up all night working on that one! Maybe
| everyone can have an ice cream social when they return- bring
| your own.
| cyberax wrote:
| > The strangest part to me about the current trends: why do all
| these business leaders all do the same things at the same time?
|
| Because they all studied the same MBA programs.
| inetknght wrote:
| > _why do all these business leaders all do the same things at
| the same time? E.g. Layoffs + micromanagement + cost focus
| etc... Is this truly about macroeconomic forces that every
| business is responding to? Or is it just following the latest
| fad?_
|
| I thought about this a lot over the years.
|
| I saw something that piqued my interest last year though, and
| kind've helped connect the dots. I was on a cruise, and most of
| the ship was available to guests. One day, one room was
| cordoned off to an invite-only meeting. The windows weren't
| blocked, but on the screen was a presentation about AI
| investments, number of jobs saved (reduced), and etc.
|
| I found one of the attendants later during the voyage and
| chatted her up. She was head of HR in some big company, and the
| meeting was supposed to be private. But it contained _a lot_
| more than just spreadsheets about AI investments. There was
| homework and whatnot, but the attendees weren 't all from a
| single company. It was "direction setting". I don't think it
| was Intel (topic under discussion) but certainly some loosely
| related tech industry.
|
| I'm convinced that it was nothing less than business collusion.
|
| So, back to your question:
|
| > _why do all these business leaders all do the same things at
| the same time?_
|
| Because they're told to.
| mathgeek wrote:
| > I'm convinced that it was nothing less than business
| collusion.
|
| Wonder if it's "not illegal" if it's done in international
| waters.
| inetknght wrote:
| > _Wonder if it's "not illegal" if it's done in
| international waters._
|
| I didn't ask. As I understand it, it's less about legality
| and more about plausible deniability; on a "party boat"
| with plenty of other public people to make it cheaper than
| renting a whole boat, plus the week for the cruise and time
| to relax -- seems plausible that these people "just
| happened" to book the same boat at the same time at peak
| tourist season and decide to throw a "private party". I
| should have asked more questions, but there were plenty of
| other people to chat up.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Heaven forbid the workers within or across any of these
| companies also consider coordinating on anything
| markus_zhang wrote:
| The elites definitely unite first.
| lbrito wrote:
| That would be (gasp) _communism_!
| cebert wrote:
| Unionization isn't necessarily communism.
| DragonStrength wrote:
| The Capital Order lays out an argument that austerity
| measures are ultimately labor suppression, not necessary. Of
| course, that's true of many pieces of policy wisdom: they
| start from an assumed good. In this case, the assumed good is
| the current winners should remain the winners despite, well,
| losing.
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Capital-Order-Economists-Invented-
| Aus...
| saubeidl wrote:
| The capitalist class has always conspired to keep labor down.
|
| Meanwhile, a lot of laborers in our profession have fallen
| for their propaganda of markets and so-called meritocracy,
| not realizing they have more in common with the fruit picker
| than their common exploiter.
|
| Class warfare is real. It's time tech workers wake up to that
| fact and start fighting back instead of letting oligarchs
| walk over them.
| Alupis wrote:
| Many times it's a "watershed" moment.
|
| Most of these businesses are feeling the same pressures and
| experiencing the same problems... in silence. Eventually one of
| their competitors breaks (because they are forced to due to
| economic realities, etc) and starts making necessary moves
| (layoffs, efficiency improvements, etc). The rest follow-suit,
| breathing a collective sigh of relief that they weren't the
| first to make all the headlines.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| There are CEOs and there are CEOs. My hunch is, most of them
| are just managers pushed out by investors, who have interests
| in multiple companies, maybe even multiple industries. That's
| why they coordinated so easily.
|
| But there are CEOs who define an industry. Those are not easily
| swayed by big capital.
| kindkang2024 wrote:
| > _why do all these business leaders all do the same_
|
| Simple. These companies need enough 'fitness' in order to
| survive and thrive. No one has the power to fight against
| Nature's Wille--survival of the fittest, especially when
| standing in the face of life-and-death competition.
| DebtDeflation wrote:
| He will announce they're selling the foundry business within the
| next 12-18 months. I'm certain of it.
| cubefox wrote:
| To Nvidia?
| donmcronald wrote:
| That would suck.
|
| I bought INTC to hold for 10-20 years based on the promise of
| long term investment in domestic manufacturing. I didn't care
| if they took a decade to battle back. Seeing them sell of the
| foundry business would be enough for me to cut my losses before
| the titanic hits the ocean floor. They'd be a walking corpse at
| that point IMO.
| heraldgeezer wrote:
| Hyberbipeline is back :DDDDDD
|
| https://imgur.com/a/dvUSgA3
|
| Honestly, good. AMD is amazing for laptop/desktop and server now,
| but may flop like Intel did. Always good with competition. But I
| need a new CPU and right now AMD is king.
|
| Phone only plebs need not apply.
| lynguist wrote:
| Intel headcount in 2022 was 131,900. Intel's projected headcount
| for 2025 is 75,000. Intel fired 43% of its staff over the course
| of 3 years (when approximating natural retirements at zero and
| assuming a stop in new employments).
| tibbar wrote:
| It's honestly impressive. Even during the major tech cuts of
| 2022-2023, I think many companies ended up about the same size
| or a even little larger over the course of a year, due to all
| the other hiring happening and the fact that the cuts may have
| partially overlapped with existing performance management
| anyway. 43% an incredible shrinkage for any company in such a
| short timescale.
| iamleppert wrote:
| You can tell from the tone of this letter and the bizarre
| reference to agenetic AI he is completely clueless. Compare this
| to someone like Jensen, a nerd's nerd who gets up on stage with
| the latest GPU, can talk about new CUDA API's and goes deep on
| specs like memory bandwidth. He knows exactly who his customer
| is, and what kinds of workloads they run for AI.
|
| It's just such a massive difference. You can tell Lip-Bu spends
| his weekends playing golf while Jensen is checking out the latest
| model from Huggingface.
|
| You can't buy passion or genuine interest in what you're doing.
| fossuser wrote:
| It's one reason why founders matter so much and why founder led
| companies often have better outcomes.
|
| Intel is in trouble, it's not clear how or if they'll be able
| to get out of the hole they're in. Their only saving grace is
| natsec concerns and even that may not be enough to save them. I
| was hoping Gelsinger would be able to do it, but it was too
| late.
| combinator_y wrote:
| An excellent MBA bs soup summary from the retard in chief :
|
| - "50% streamlining of management layers" : fire 50% and make the
| others do 200% ? or send some the lower level/tech roles ?
|
| - "Return to office in September" : yeah good luck with that,
| people will comply, your efficiency will go down at least for the
| upcoming 2Q.
|
| - "projects in Germany/Poland halted" : cheaper labor than the US
| with same talent depth.
|
| - "Refocus AI strategy to inference and agentic AI" : holly F,
| how can he be as retarded as this, they should go all in on
| inference and get better at IT, after all this their domain (i.e
| hardware). Agentic AI means inference and shit tone of AI/ML
| domain specific stuff, which they don't have and it's too late to
| catch unless they acquire a big player.
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