On 11/12/13 I reported to a conference room on the 3rd floor of the RR5 building at the Intel Rio Rancho, New Mexico site. All technicians were to report at their designated time to find out their employment status. My manager stated he had to read from the script and the only part I remember from that script was that “my skills were found to be less than my peers”, or something to that effect. I was notified by my manager that I was “redeployed”, Intel’s term for people that are being laid off. I was told that I would still be employed until 1/15/2014 but that I did not need to come in unless I wanted to.
Intel had announced a few months before that this layoff was going to happen. While I had been mentally preparing myself for it and thinking about what would happen if I did get laid off I wasn’t really expecting to be let go. I had talked to my manger the day before and he didn’t indicate that he was expecting me to be let go. Of course he wouldn’t have any way to know for sure. He wasn’t involved in the decision making process other than to fill out a “skills matrix” of some kind on me. I don’t have any reason to believe that he wrote something like “this guy has no skillz!”. In fact my performance review for the previous year was quite good and my manager was discussing a promotion for me in the next year or two. He was also encouraging me to go to school to finish my degree. Things seemed pretty positive from my point of view.
If I was missing some sort of skills or I was supposed to know something, at least as far as my manger and I was concerned, I think I would have known. This layoff wasn’t supposed to have anything to do with performance anyway. It was supposed to be all skills based. It’s mystery to my exactly what caused me to be on HR’s shit list, but I’m not believing that this layoff was completely skills based.
Intel did a number of things to make this process go easy on the employees. I effectively got a 2 month paid vacation, they waited until the beginning of the year before I was terminated allowing me to get bonuses and other benefits and I get a severance. They could have given no notice and just terminated my employment immediately.
I have moved on and accepted what has happen. It wasn’t easy especially with 18 years at Intel, it hurt. Feelings of rejection and “why me” had a much bigger impact on me than I expected and its hard not to hold a little resentment over how it all went down. But I was better prepared for this layoff financially than the last one in 2006. I am already taking classes to start a career in another industry. Hopefully New Mexico provides jobs in that industry or I may be moving out of state.
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