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Comment by twobitshifter | Hacker News Reader

Intel just received money from the US government and they swiftly started laying off American workers. The money is supposed to be for the new Ohio plant and 3000 jobs, but now we’re losing thousands of jobs up front?

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Uh, yeah, you didn't realise it was a scam when all the politicians trying to get that bill passed had investments in the companies getting the money?

They are using that money to build a chip plant not to subsidize 3000 workers.

That chip plant will be the factory of the future. However:

“The factory of the future will have only two employees, a man and a dog. The man will be there to feed the dog. The dog will be there to keep the man from touching the equipment” – Warren G. Bennis.

The US Govt regularly robs the tax paying people to give kickbacks to their corporate allies. It's just business as usual

The US needs a chip fabrication factory. The money is being used to build it. This has no relevance to the the 3000 workers who were laid off

Then they can build one for the people by the people. Nothing says they need to give money to private orgs to secure fundamental national technology.

With all the things we book under the "National Security" banner a much needed next gen chip factory should be one of them.

This is a terrible idea. Imagine if the same people who bring you the DMV try to make a chip plant

20% is in sales and marketing. How would you feel if taxpayer money was going yo marketing? Hopefully the money is going toward equipment and research. Maybe they don’t need the people.

It is not 20% of the Job Cuts are in Sales and Marketing, which is what your sentence could implied. But up to 20% of Sales and Marketing department being cut, which represent majority of the 1000s of job cuts.

I am pretty sure there are lots of bloats at Intel that requires trimming down.

what about the other 80%? presumably the comment holds for that?

20% of sales and marketing is getting cut. Some other departments may also see losses.

Same as always. I'm pretty sure Ford did something similar several years ago. They got money for jobs, then closed the plant like a year later or something.

What should they have done if they aren’t manufacturing enough cars to keep the factory at capacity?

I seem to remember them moving the production out of the country. So I'm not sure if the numbers were down or not.

Probably a sweet stock buyback as a side effect.

Looking at the chart, would it not be a good time - especially with USD losing 8% of its value on a yearly basis? After all, you can only invest so much into capital projects and who knows what will be left of the US after Biden's tenure, so you want to be cautious.

Also Intel never had a hyper-inflated share price like most other semis. It's actually quite comical just how much the share price has dropped because its previously meagre dividend yield is now 10% due to denominator effects.

The buy back would similarly help ex-employees with stock or options, and I'm sure the package on the way out from Intel will be quite good.

See: https://www.tradingview.com/chart/?symbol=INTC 50% down YTD.

Intel suspended stock buybacks in Q2 2021 and hasnt done any since: https://www.intc.com/stock-info/dividends-and-buybacks

They had also suspended dividends and after getting the money immediately reinstated them.

huh… its been so long since I’ve found this kind of thing controversial

Just had a little flashback to 2008 me

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