The CEO of Intel, Pat Gelsinger, is getting a mixed reaction after he posted a Bible verse from the book of Proverbs on Sunday after making the announcement that his company was going to layoff a whopping 15 percent of its workforce as its stock price takes a steep dive. The verse in question comes from Provers 4:25-26, which says, “Let your eyes look straight ahead; fix your gaze directly before you. Give careful thought to the paths for your feet and be steadfast in all your ways.”
According to The Christian Post, Gelsinger caught a lot of negative attention from users on X who essentially made fun of him for “praying” and then leveled accusations at him of trying to “resort to religion to save the company.”
We live in a day and age where it’s suddenly not okay to pray for people’s well being, which is a testament to the rampant godlessness that plagues modern culture. When a company experiences significant losses in the price of shares they are forced to make these kind of cuts, whether they want to or not. Gelsinger simply wants to pray for his workers to be able to land on their feet. Nothing wrong with that.
“Have you even asked yourself how bad it really is?” one user on the platform asked the CEO. “It’s ‘Intel CEO is quoting the bible’ levels of bad.”
The thing is, Gelsinger usually posts his favorite Bible verses on a weekly basis, so this is nothing new for him. He’s a man of faith and uses his platform to help spread some light and give glory to God in a world sorely in need of it. It could be that this is just the verse that was chosen for this week.
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Gelsinger started working at Intel back when he was young, like super young. Try 18-years-old. He’s been the CEO for the company since 2021 and is bold in the proclamation of his Christian faith, just as Christ commands all of His followers to be. To demonstrate just how deeply his religious beliefs impact his life, back in 201, when he was the CEO for VMWare and co-founded Transforming the Bay with Christ, a nonprofit group that was working to jump start a movement for Jesus in the San Francisco area with the end goal in mind of seeing societal transformation.
“Gelsinger’s post came days after he announced in a note to employees last week that the chipmaking company would be cutting about 17,000 of its 116,500 workers as part of a $10 billion cost-reduction plan, according to FOX Business,” the article said.
“This is an incredibly hard day for Intel as we are making some of the most consequential changes in our company’s history,” Gelsinger stated. “Simply put, we must align our cost structure with our new operating model and fundamentally change the way we operate.”
“Our costs are too high, our margins are too low,” he then added. “We need bolder actions to address both — particularly given our financial results and outlook for the second half of 2024, which is tougher than previously expected.”
“These decisions have challenged me to my core, and this is the hardest thing I’ve done in my career. My pledge to you is that we will prioritize a culture of honesty, transparency and respect in the weeks and months to come,” the CEO continued.
The stock price for Intel shares fell through the floor, dropping a whopping 26 percent after Gelsinger’s announcement. This is the company’s worst day in five decades and the second worst day in its entire history, a report from CNBC revealed. Back in July 1974, the company experienced a 31 percent drop only three years after it first went public.
The federal government gave Intel $8.5 billion in grants and that still was not enough to prevent the company from having to slash jobs. The grants were meant to help light a fire under the creation of chipmaking here in the United States, according to reports coming out of FOX Business.
Unlike the critics, be sure to take a moment to pray for those losing their jobs in this cut.