The news came as a shock to everyone, especially the employees… What news? That Intel would be laying off 10,500 employees.
Hind sight is 20/20 of course, but here’s what the average employee should seriously consider doing if there’s any chance of a lay off.
Usually we think that layoffs are somebody else’s problem until we’re 2 paychecks away from bankruptcy.
So what can be done to protect against such a nightmare?
Pamela Slim’s Escape from Cubicle Nation Blog has the following suggestions…
The power of denial is very strong in many of us (myself included sometimes!). Until you actually receive notice that you are losing your job, you rarely do anything to prepare for it. So if you don’t want to find yourself in the same place as some of those poor souls today, please do the following:
* Get your financial house in order. If you get stuck or overwhelmed, call a professional.
* Get out of your comfortable circle and meet some new people. Go to an interesting conference where there are people from all kinds of companies and industries. Take a night class at your local university, volunteer in a professional business association or check out some new online forums.
* Start working on a side gig. I think that the way the world and the economy are going, we ALL are going to have to know how to generate income from more than one primary source. You can start small - do one consulting project. Sell a piece of your artwork. Get a paid gig with your garage band. Invest in a rental property. You need to start experimenting with different ways to make money so that you don’t paint yourself in a corner if your job goes away.
* Take your training and learning seriously. This is not the time to slack off at your job, it is the time to drink great mouthfuls of the fire hose of information spraying at you. Don’t be the smart-ass student in your communication skills class, be the teacher’s pet. Take on new and different projects that develop new skill sets. Complete certifications, take advantage of tuition reimbursement and attend all relevant in-house training that you can.
* Spend time thinking about your next career move. If it is your own business, start working on it.
Please don’t fall victim to the “I didn’t see it coming” syndrome. A pink slip (especially with a severance check stapled to the back) can be a great blessing if you are prepared.
Good luck soon-to-be-former Intel’ers! I hope your transition is better than I imagine.
Josh Bancroft on September 8th, 2006 at 10:35 pm
Good tips, but the news didn’t “come as a shock” to anyone. Paul Otellini and company have been planning this “restructuring” for about 6 months now, and have been very transparent about providing updates. The only real “news” is the 10,500 number, and that’s not even the number of people to be laid off. It’s the total number of reductions from several actions, including the sale of some business groups (2000+ people), the layoff of 1000 managers, and expected attrition. All in all, there are only about 5000 cuts to be made, which will happen between now and sometime in 2007.
You can read the details in the press release here:
http://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/releases/20060905corp.htm
We’ve seen this coming for a long, long, time, and I hope the smart people have been preparing themselves.
Again, thanks for the good info in your post - I hope lots of Intel people read it.
Chuck on September 9th, 2006 at 5:56 pm
You know Josh, I’ve counseled literally hundreds of laid off workers in my time. Even though they “knew” it was coming, it still hit them like a ton of bricks. Like the stages of any grief, the denial was something many hardly ever got over. It was always someone else who was going to get “hit”.
So I hope they were prepared too… but it rarely seems to happen, even with “notice”.
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[...] While we hope they were planning ahead it’s quite likely few really believed in the dangers of these layoffs enough to prepare in advance. [...]