The Oregonian newspaper and its website OregonLive.com keep very close watch on Intel’s hirings and firings, in keeping with the company’s status as one of the state’s largest employers. The site recently published details of an unpublicized layoff of 1,155 US employees — 2.3 percent of domestic workers. That’s not at all unusual — Intel’s headcount waxes and wanes constantly — but it’s interesting to see who took the hit.
Intel’s Internet of Things Group was the biggest loser, shedding 4.3 percent of its staff as Intel’s growth in that sector slowed. But the New Devices Group, home to wearables and gaining the name New Technology Group, lost just one employee out of 450.
But buried in the story was the news (to us) that New Devices head Mike Bell, former VP at Apple and head of product development at Palm, had been reassigned in April and is now leaving the company. The group is now headed by Josh Walden, a long-time Intel exec who most recently (according to his LinkedIn profile) was in charge of the company’s chip engineering and manufacturing.