Major job jitters hit Intel staff

STAFF from inside Intel tell us there's a mood of gloom in the hive as rumours spread that Paul Otellini's restructuring scheme is far from over.

There are best case and worst case prophets of doom - one source from North America said engineers there were concerned about layoffs happening before the end of August.

The prophets of doom in Europe appear to have taken out the entrails of the beast and are examining the auspices with misery written into every line on their faces.

According to one source, thousands of jobs may go in Intel EMEA, partly as a result of the proposed AMD ATI merger.

But we must stress that all this, so far, is internal speculation and mutterings. It is true that Otellini's 90 day review is not yet over - and it's more than conceivable that a fair bit of fat could be trimmed from the Intel body corporate.

Layoffs, to Wall Street, are like a massive dose of adrenalin. If the layoffs are as big as rumoured, then Intel's share price will rise, smoothing the feathers of major stockholders.

Intel was unavailable for comment at press time, but we suspect that this isn't the kind of thing it would comment on anyway. µ