I would counter that this suggests the management team believes layoffs will be beneficial to management.
What is beneficial to management may or may not actually be in the best interest of shareholders (and neither incentive necessarily aligns with the interests of either customers or employees).
The dividend keeps the stock price high, which is good for both shareholders and employees. Cutting employment is how you manage to pay the dividend when you losing money. Not paying the dividend would crash the stock price and make lots of things harder.
If you believe Intel will be profitable again in the near future then paying the dividend really does make sense. Unfortunately there have been lots of companies that thought that was true when it wasn't and the dividend is how they ran out of runway quick.
> If you believe your company will be profitable you should reinvest all avaliable capital into the business to grow it.
No, because being profitable doesn’t mean marginal profits from expansion are available. Your plan would have all profitable firms expanding until they collapse from overextension.
What is beneficial to management may or may not actually be in the best interest of shareholders (and neither incentive necessarily aligns with the interests of either customers or employees).