The axing of their 12,000 in 2016 (roughly 11% of their whole work-force) and the rounds of lay-offs before (5,000 in 2012) and after (2,500–3,500 in 2018), were massively gutting the company, yes. No doubt about it.

Yet especially the massive cuts in 2012 were a point, which broke Intel's manpower's back psychologically, where these official figures 12,000 were largely downplayed, as IIRC about 14,000–15,500 were let go.

However, Intel as always done that – Gutting departments' staff as soon as the profit-trajectory even remotely looked like it could endanger the c-suites' personal pockets – Even in 2020 around 12,000 were sorted out (~10% workforce), even if it was 'gracefully' sugarcoated as 'restructuring efforts' …

TheRegister.com – Intel fires 10,500 to make up for past mistakes - The 'Barrett Hangover' (Sep 5th, 2006)

A quite ironic quote from the article linked above;

Rivals have enjoyed taking shots at Intel over the past two years as the company cancelled numerous products and delayed plenty of others. In addition, Intel had to change its entire processor architecture this year to better address customer needs around power-efficient chips.

Most of Intel's gaffes stem from mismanagement that occurred during previous CEO Craig Barrett's tenure. Chip companies tend to take anywhere between two and four years to rework their product lineups due to the complexity of chip design and fabrication. But while Barrett failed to take the oncoming threat from AMD seriously enough, it's Otellini who has suffered in the public eye for Intel's mistakes. ®

You really, really have to keep it to yourself these days, for not getting triggered hard and furiously pointing desperately at that age-old adage at the wall »Same old, same old.« … but you get what I'm saying here.

Though that's what you get when treating your engineers like super-market cashiers;
→ You kill any own in-house competence, and preventing actual talent from even coming around.