The report says employees have been complaining about the way Intel laid off some people based on "the level of performance-based stock grants they received" from last year, as opposed to its standard annual-review-based layoff process. Also, many employees are upset that once they're laid off, they're not eligible for rehire at Intel, which is a policy most employees were not aware of.

The report says Krzanich addressed these issues at an internal meeting on Wednesday, shortly after the earnings call, telling the employees both policies have been in place at Intel for years.

"The problem is we haven't, with discipline, applied it. So we said: We're trying to build a different company. You don't orchestrate change by doing things the same way," Krzanich was quoted as saying.

Krzanich had already warned the employees in an internal email last month that Intel would be going through a restructuring plan affecting hundreds of employees in each of its offices worldwide. He didn't specify how many workers would be let go, but The Oregonian reports roughly 3% of Intel's total of 106,000 employees would face possible layoffs.