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Not a Great Place to Work

Hardware Engineer
Former Employee
Worked at Intel for less than 1 year
July 6, 2016
Hillsboro, Oregon
1.0
Doesn't RecommendNegative OutlookDoesn't Approve of CEO
Pros

Intel has very competitive pay and benefits. It's how they retain their employees in the slave-like environment.

Cons

Intel has a military-type culture. Employees compete with each other as part of the "ranking and rating system" that is closely enforced by Intel HR and is pleasant neither for the employees nor the managers. This encourages a company culture of secrecy, competition rather than collaboration, and an overall atmosphere of fear and bad morale. Especially with the recent round of layoffs, morale is really bad. Employees feel like they have to compete with each other to earn the "Outstanding" and "Exceeds" ratings, which can be given to 10% of the employee population on any given year, otherwise they may be at risk for being laid off.

I was part of the recent layoffs in April. I was sat down in a meeting with my manager and HR, told I was being laid off, told I had a few hours to get any personal files off of my company laptop, and was not allowed to go back to my desk to collect my personal things. After 20+ years of service, that is how Intel Corporation treats employees. Not what I call a "Great Place to Work". The pay is competitive, but the price is your sanity.

Advice to Management

There is more to attracting and maintaining employees than paying big salaries. People actually do care about how they and their peers are treated by management. Your recent round of layoffs was a really bad example of how to treat people. And it was really obvious that the people laid off did not really need to be laid off, as evidenced by all of the Intel job openings on LinkedIn.

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