Christy said lay off decisions will be left to managers. Favoritism is rampant with those incompetent managers. So they keep their favorites. Then those managers will keep their favorites until it finally comes down to bottom most layer.
It we be completely unfair , unsustainable, and will back fire Intel because incompetent middle management will still need people to justify their own headcount’s. Once things ease up, middle managing will ask for head counts and start hiring again
In my group the middle management has very low turnover while the bottom most layer ICs has the highest turnover. This is during normal times. Now during lay offs you can imagine which layer will be let go.