For those who came in late, ARM was going to be flogged off to Nvidia for about $40 billion but governments and the industry threw up their collective hands in horror when they realised that Nvidia would have rather a lot of power.

Having given up on selling their souls to a Roman vengeance daemon, ARM thought it would be wider to get in a new CEO and go public.

Rene Haas has been warming the CEO’s chair for a month and decided to call in the Axemen to chop between 12 and 15 per cent of staff.

In an email Haas said: "To stay competitive, we need to remove duplication of work now that we are one ARM; stop work that is no longer critical to our future success; and think about how we get work done."

Well, apparently not getting work done will be what about a thousand of those staff will be doing, unless you count signing on.

Haas said that Arm needs "to be more disciplined about our costs and where we're investing."

"I write this knowing that although it is the right thing to do for Arm's future, this is not going to be easy," he added. Well not for the staff obviously. We would have thought it would be easy for everyone involved in making the decision. Haas could have made it harder for himself by signing off on the job cuts while jumping through a ring of fire over a crocodile pit while smeared in blotter paste so we don’t think making life easier was at the top of his priority list.