Intel

Intel drives you hard. You're really pushed to do things you wouldn't ordinarily do, maybe think out of the box. Intel may be credited with making you a better engineer. The company rates workers every year through a rigorous process it calls Focal.

Employees complain that this summer's layoffs, which cost more than 1,100 people their jobs across the country, undermined that culture by changing the rules in the middle of the game.

Intel tried unsuccessfully to keep the layoff secret. Then it altered the way it selects workers for job cuts, moving away from the way it had handled previous layoffs. The cuts fell disproportionately on older workers, too, and a newly applied rule bars laid-off workers from ever being rehired. This upsets us and the people who are left, adversely affecting morale.

In a letter to laid-off employees, Intel said it was letting them go because they came up short in Intel's internal performance metrics, which is simply not true.

Intel should be upfront about the business case and should not try to mask layoffs as a performance-based job cut using shifting criteria.