Intel commences mass layoffs with over 100 Californian employees, including around 45 engineers in efforts to shed $500 million in operating costs this year

For most of this year we've been hearing murmurs of Intel's plans to drastically reduce its workforce. As of today we're starting to see what the true scope of Intel's downsizing will be, with around 107 employees set to lose their jobs in California. These planned firings have been an ongoing story for Intel, having already cut 5% of its workforce back in 2024.

According to CRN, last Wednesday Intel provided the notice required by Californian law alerting employees to their imminent doom. The employees affected are all connected to the Santa Clara headquarters, and are all a part of Intel's plans to reduce operating expenses by $500 million over this year, with the goal to drop another $1 billion in 2026.

“As we announced earlier this year, we are taking steps to become a leaner, faster and more efficient company. Removing organizational complexity and empowering our engineers will enable us to better serve the needs of our customers and strengthen our execution,” said an Intel spokesperson.

They also reiterated the 20% figure we've heard before about how many employees Intel is planning to layoff. This is after Intel had claimed that those numbers were an exaggeration.

Thanks to California’s Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, a large layoff like this in a short amount of time requires proper warning and transparency. The notice states layoffs will commence on July 15, and those let go will have either 60 days notice in advance, or receive a four-week notice with nine-weeks of pay and benefits for the trouble. Hopefully this is enough to give these employees a fair chance at landing on their feet.

What's a little surprising is the roles that have been noted in this mass layoff. Previous Intel has implied it would be cutting out middle-men to focus on engineering talent, but among the roles are plenty of engineering jobs.

CRN provide a list of these jobs, which include "22 physical design engineers, three physical design engineering managers, three system-on-chip logic design engineers, three product development engineers, four design-for-test design engineers, six cloud software architects, four cloud software engineering managers and two cloud software development engineers."

That's just a tad under 50% of the total number, just in engineering roles.

Though there were also a fair few manager roles among the casualties, including an AI systems and solutions engineering manager, engineering project manager, silicon design engineering manager, and a bunch of others. With Intel's recent choice to outsource marketing to a consultancy firm using AI, it's likely there's another channel of jobs set to go on the cutting block there too.

This is all in line with the company's new CEO, Lip-Bu Tan's plan, to meet those goals of cutting operation expenses as much as possible. Sadly, I think we're going to have to wait and watch to see how close Intel gets to that 20% quota.