[allthingsd.com] AMD getting ready for another round of Layoffs

[Vesku]

http://allthingsd.com/20121012/exclusive-amd-to-cut-up-to-30-percent-of-workforce/

Loading up on consultants while slashing engineering and sales, not a good sign.

 

[Soulkeeper]

I guess this would be inline with their trend/goals over the past several years

reminds me of this graph

 

[beginner99]

Read, what a coward. No balls to fire the people himself He will then "blame" the consultants. But then thats pretty much standard nowadays.

I will never understand why anyone thinks money spent on consultants will actually lead to something useful. Mostly they don't understand your business and worse think they actually do. Probably the consultants that teach at manager schools teach it's a good idea or so.

Anyway just makes me think of this again:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Principle

/rant

 

[blastingcap]

AMD's CEO position was apparently so undesirable that they took forever trying to find a permanent CEO and came up with ...Rory Read?!?!

Intel - Paul Otellini, Bachelors Economics, USF; MBA UC Berkeley (Haas school of business)

NVidia - Jen-Hsun Huang, BS (EE) Oregon State University, MS (EE) Stanford University

AMD - Rory Read, bachelor's degree in Information Systems from Hartwick College

One of these guys doesn't belong. Hiring consultants, firing engineers, driving out a ton of guys ranging from Huddy to Demers to Carrell Killebrew... wtf. Don't fire your GPU people, the only part of the company making money. If you're gonna fire anyone, fire Rory Read.

 

[zebrax2]

A 30% cut in workforce in their engineering and sales would probably be devastating to some of their projects.

 

[NostaSeronx]

One of these guys doesn't belong.

Rory Read is president and chief executive officer of AMD and also serves on the company’s board of directors. Prior to joining AMD in August 2011, Read served as president and chief operating officer of Lenovo Group, Ltd. He previously spent 23 years at IBM serving in various global leadership roles.

Read’s five year tenure at Lenovo featured an extensive track record of growth, transformation and innovation. Read led the company through a substantial business turnaround, marked by market share gains and revenue growth. Read also led Lenovo’s entry into the tablet and smartphone markets. At the time of Read’s departure, Lenovo had just marked the 7th straight quarter as the fastest growing PC maker in the world and had become the world’s third largest global PC manufacturer.

While at IBM, Read consistently drove revenue growth while significantly improving the operating profitability for the groups under his management. As Managing Partner for IBM’s Business Consulting Services Industrial Sector, Read led the division through a turnaround that significantly improved gross margins, drove new customer acquisitions and generated double digit revenue growth and operating profitability.

:\, cutting the scabs and fat off of a recovering company is necessary.

The CEO isn't the problem it is the CTO. http://www.amd.com/us/aboutamd/corporate-information/executives/Pages/mark-papermaster.aspx

 

[guskline]

The CTO only joined AMD in Oct 2011 so how can he be the problem? That's the info per your link.

 

[Tsavo]

A 30% cut in workforce in their engineering and sales would probably be devastating to some of their projects.

Let's see. A Tech company that eviscerated its R&D department and is dropping engineers like they've got the plague.

They can't sell off the company...at least not its x86 parts because IP deals with Intel won't transfer to a new company.

So what next?

I hope you are all looking forward to buying AMD branded crayons.

 

[guskline]

Sad to see for a guy who was thrilled to buy an AMD 386 DX 40 because it was faster than the Intel 386 DX33!

 

[Keysplayr]

:\, cutting the scabs and fat off of a recovering company is necessary.

The CEO isn't the problem it is the CTO. http://www.amd.com/us/aboutamd/corporate-information/executives/Pages/mark-papermaster.aspx

But it's not a recovering company. It has been slowly dying since it purchased ATI, has had TONS of cash infused to it not to mention a billion from Intel via lawsuit(s). Now, cutting it's staff from 10 to 30% is just the beginning. This might buy AMD a few more months. Zero faith in the company will result in nobody buying the stock and everybody selling while they still can (or just hold onto the stock til the end it's so cheap anyway right now.)
Now, it's no longer slowly dying, but picking up speed. Nobody wants it's CPUs apparently. There is a 100 million dollar write down because the stock remains, well, stock and not moved product. The GPU division in comparison is doing quite well, but not anywhere near enough to save AMD.
It's not a recovering company and I have no clue why you can even feel comfortable saying that.

 

[AtenRa]

There are a lot of changes/restructuring happening globally in AMD currently that have a big impact in sales and that effects everything. Thinks will start to change again to the better in a couple of quarters from now.

 

[ShintaiDK]

http://www.businessweek.com/news/20...ces-said-to-plan-to-cut-as-many-as-2-340-jobs

Someone put a number on it. 2340 people. Still need to see the official number in the near future tho.

AMD will get the same fate as VIA.

 

[Keysplayr]

There are a lot of changes/restructuring happening globally in AMD currently that have a big impact in sales and that effects everything. Thinks will start to change again to the better in a couple of quarters from now.

How?

 

[AtenRa]

When the reforming will be complete.

 

[Idontcare]

 

[inf64]

Why is this a surprise?
From the source:

In the third quarter of this year, total global PC shipments fell 8.3 percent from a year earlier to 87.5 million, market-research firm Gartner Inc. said earlier this week.
Applied Materials Inc. (AMAT), the largest producer of chipmaking equipment, said last week it will cut as much as 9 percent of its workforce. Disk-drive makers Seagate Technology Plc (STX) and Western Digital Corp. (WDC) have also said demand has been worse than projected.

The world economy is in a serious downturn and cuts are logical way to go(unless you want overstaffed inefficient money eating company that will go bankrupt in a year or two).

 

[VirtualLarry]

Sad to see for a guy who was thrilled to buy an AMD 386 DX 40 because it was faster than the Intel 386 DX33!

Now I wish I still had that PC. Just to run some DOS games on.

 

[Tsavo]

The world economy is in a serious downturn and cuts are logical way to go(unless you want overstaffed inefficient money eating company that will go bankrupt in a year or two).

Except this is a tech company, not a janitorial service. Firing the people who make the products you sell seems like a really good plan for going out of business.

Now, if their plan is to cut on Monday so they can survive till Tuesday, fine, but what will they sell on Wednesday now that they've cut their R&D to dust and are using consultants they hired off of Craigslist to design their chips?

 

[Vinwiesel]

But it's not a recovering company. It has been slowly dying since it purchased ATI

This is the sad part. If ATI and AMD had remained two separate companies, I believe both would be doing well. Now, Intel has run away with the CPU market, and it remains to be seen if AMD can stay competitive in the GPU market with all this turmoil. Nobody wants a world with only Intel and Nvidia.

 

[cotak13]

Why is this a surprise?
From the source:
The world economy is in a serious downturn and cuts are logical way to go(unless you want overstaffed inefficient money eating company that will go bankrupt in a year or two).

The economy isn't that bad. What's bad for the likes of AMD and Intel is the drop in corporate spending.

When the economy went bust all those firms stopped buying new stuff for a few months building up a demand. Then they realized things weren't that bad and they went shopping. That's why Intel had so many record quarters while the news on the economy was still doom and groom.

Now, the spending spree is over and both CPU company is feeling the effects.

 

[CTho9305]

Read, what a coward. No balls to fire the people himself He will then "blame" the consultants. But then thats pretty much standard nowadays.

I will never understand why anyone thinks money spent on consultants will actually lead to something useful. Mostly they don't understand your business and worse think they actually do. Probably the consultants that teach at manager schools teach it's a good idea or so.

I've heard that the consultants are sometimes brought in to avoid any appearance of improper behavior in the selection of who goes and who stays. There's lawsuit risks if you end up getting rid of too many old/young male/female raceA/raceB people.

 

[Ferzerp]

Nobody wants to see the company go under, but pretending huge layoffs like this aren't really a big deal is nothing more than denial.

 

[inf64]

Of course they are a big deal,nobody is denying that. But it's no surprise and AMD is not the only semi tech company that is forced to to that. Hopefully this won't affect their product schedule since SR core and Excavator are more or less finished designs. It could affect the schedule of their 2015-2016 cores (if they stick around that long that is).

 

[happysmiles]

they had a sales department?

 

[AnandThenMan]

Interesting that people are rating this a 5 star thread.