In my last post, I shared the speculative rumors going around Intel about my business group. Well, today we found out numbers 3 and 7 are the facts. My business group has been sold to Marvell.
Here’s what I know after several email updates, and two employee Q & A forums today.
Marvell paid $600 million for the CHG organization, which is about1400 employees, 500 of whom work at the Chandler site. They will acquire all of those employees, along with the rights to the cellular and handheld chips we design. We employees will receive job offers from Marvell within 2-4 weeks; salary, grade level, bonus program and stock options will be included and are expected to be as good or better than our current compensation packages with Intel. If anyone chooses to decline the Marvell offer, they will be terminated from Intel. No separation packages or internal transfers are allowed. Marvell does not currently have a facility here, but is actively seeking one in the Phoenix area to house the 500 Arizona employees. The finalization of the entire deal and transfer will take about 5 months, but should be completed by Christmas, at which time we cease being Intel employees and start being Marvell employees.
They offer health, dental and vision plans, and vacation and sick leave but we don’t know whether they will implement a sabbatical program or where the new facility will be located … it could be within a mile of the Intel site, or 40 miles across town in Glendale.
The COO of Marvell is visiting on Thursday for another open forum, so we may get more answers from her. We hear the majority of their employees have EE degrees, which doesn’t sound promising for mask designers. It’s possible their engineers do layout — some companies do assign their work that way. I am certainly not interested in becoming an engineer and I don’t know many of our engineers who enjoy doing layout. One guy in our group used to work for Marvell and he said they do not allow tele-commuting. Employees have desktops, not laptops, and you can only use webmail from outside the company walls. I think we need to help them change that.
Marvell’s stock dipped today while Intel’s went up. We hope that doesn’t mean we are considered the albatross, but that it’s just normal market fluctuations tied to a major business deal.
Well, I got what I prayed for: everyone who needs a job has a job, and I retained my salary and health insurance. I’m happy about that. There are a lot of unknowns and the change is a bit scary, but it’s also exciting. I feel the loss of leaving Intel, but am thankful it’s to a company with such a great reputation. I’m sure over the next several days, weeks and months, things will become clearer and we’ll settle back into a routine.
I forgot to mention the dream I had last night (nightmare, really). It was much worse than the reality of what happened today. Let’s just say I was picking up any loose change I could find on the floor of our cubicles before I was booted out the door to go stand in the unemployment line.
I see that Marvell was first place on Forbes list of “Best Managed Companies”. Sounds like you could have done a lot worse.
I’m sure their stock is down on the uncertainty. For Marvell, it’s a very big deal — they have just upped their workforce by about 50%. For Intel, it’s a small deal; 1400 out of some 100,00 will not even be felt (website hostess excepted, of course!)
It’s likely too that stock options or stock participation plan will be worth a lot more to you. They’re a small company with a lot more room for growth.
Good luck!
This is a wait and see proposition. There is certainly possibility for as good or better than you have now. That’s what you need to hope for.
I have been involved in several situations where companies were outsourced and Perot Systems acquired their employees. In almost every case the employees ended up with the same or better compensation packages, but almost every one of them was ultimately disappointed with the change. Because outsourcing has become a commodity, every time people were forced to do more with less. Most ultimately sought better situations elsewhere when they could.
I hope your results are better. Good luck.
Well that looks like spam!
What looks like spam?
A previous comment looked like spam.