Intel has come up with a cunning scheme to ensure it doesn’t lose out to its rivals in the semiconductor industry: it’s giving employees a handsome raise.
The company is said to have set aside roughly $2.4 billion to bolster employee paychecks in early 2022. In a memo delivered to staff, Intel explained that $1 billion will go towards padding out wage packets, while a further $1.4 billion will be distributed to employees in the form of shares.
The company will reportedly avoid a “spray and pray” approach to distributing the rewards. Instead, raises will be allocated based on performance, the person’s value to the company, and the likelihood they will be poached by a competing organization.
Intel salaries
Although Intel says the new scheme is designed to “reignite our culture and drive our business strategy”, the company has also been candid about the challenges associated with keeping hold of key staff in an industry that has never been hotter.
“These updates are designed to enable Intel to win the fierce battle for talent in today’s competitive market, while strengthening our execution,” wrote the firm.
“These plans include, but are not limited to, updates to our salary structure, increases to our global merit budget, differentiated bonuses for top performers, increased stock targets, and more frequent vesting for restricted stock units.”
Because Intel both designs and manufactures processors, the company presumably has to fend off poachers from both fabless semiconductor firms (like AMD and Nvidia) and rival foundries (TSMC, Samsung etc.).
However, as our sister site Tom’s Hardware notes, Intel has had no qualms poaching talent from its rivals in the past. Back in 2017, for example, AMD lost its chief GPU architect and many other key staff to Team Blue.
In total, Intel currently employs roughly 110,000 workers, which means staff will receive an average pay rise of $21,000/year as a result of the new scheme. TechRadar Pro has asked Intel for clarification over the proportion of staff that will receive a raise.
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Via Tom’s Hardware