Job Cuts—And Less Hybrid Work—Are Coming to Intel, CEO Says

Another big American employer expects to see more of its people around the office—and fewer people in total.

New Intel (INTC) CEO Lip-Bu Tan late Thursday said in a letter to employees—and published online—that hybrid employees should be on-site at least four days a week by Sept. 1, up from a policy of “approximately three,” to which he said people had been “uneven” in adhering.

“I strongly believe that our sites need to be vibrant hubs of collaboration that reflect our culture in action,” Tan’s letter read. It echoed statements from a swath of big American companies that have been rolling back hybrid- and remote-work programs established during the pandemic, with Amazon (AMZN) just one notable example.

The letter was published alongside quarterly financial results that included a downbeat forecast. It discussed other changes, including a “flatter management structure,” a rethinking of the size and number of meetings, and an effort to shed bureaucracy. And while it stopped short of announcing the layoffs that had been reported in recent days, it made clear that they were coming.

“There is no way around the fact that these critical changes will reduce the size of our workforce,” Tan wrote. “As I said when I joined, we need to make some very hard decisions to put our company on a solid footing for the future.”

That process, he said, will start in the second quarter. “We will move as quickly as possible over the next several months,” Tan wrote.

Intel had more than 100,000 employees worldwide as of the end of last year, according to its annual report.