I asked a friend who worked at Intel and he said part of it has to do with the company's hiring and organizational structure. The basic gist is that people are brought onto teams that only exist long enough to fulfill their initial objective. While some teams are dedicated to long-lived consumer product lines, others might focus on R&D or custom B2B orders. Once a team has fulfilled its responsibilities within the larger company, it is likely to be dissolved and there's no guarantee for room in other teams for the leftover employees.
That's how I understood it, at least. If anyone more familiar with Intel's inner-workings thinks I'm off-base, please feel free to correct me.
I'm not aware of what you're referring to. The most recent series of layoffs at Amazon was due to poor sales of the Fire Phone [1][2]. Most companies in Amazon's position would have done the same thing.
I don't believe that's a thing that happens at Amazon. I've worked here nearly 4 years, across several product launches (hardware and software) and only known of one person being let go, and that was for entirely unrelated reasons (politics and such).
That's how I understood it, at least. If anyone more familiar with Intel's inner-workings thinks I'm off-base, please feel free to correct me.