This is certainly possible, but I'd be a bit surprised if Intel was cutting costs that naively - I don't think they're as strapped for cash as the businesses th

This is certainly possible, but I'd be a bit surprised if Intel was cutting costs that naively - I don't think they're as strapped for cash as the businesses that make this move. When IBM did this, they were intentionally targeting age qua age - their internal documents set age/experience targets rather than salary ones, and claimed that a younger "tech-native" workforce would produce better results. Admittedly, they seem to have had some monetary motives too, but even those were shady: by firing older workers who couldn't get new jobs, they turned them into a pool of contract workers without pensions or benefits.