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AMD To Shed 10% of Its Workforce
stress_life writes "Recent rumors about AMD firing 5% of its workforce proved to be understated. AMD just announced that the company is going to deliver pink slips to 1600-1700 workers, or around 10% of its employees. AMD needs revenue of $2 billion per quarter, but Q1'08 is expected to come in around $1.5 billion. These firings have to be complete by Q3'08, the quarter by which Hector Ruiz promised to be profitable." We most recently discussed AMD's struggles in February.
AMD dies, then Intel will jack their rates up about double.
We saw something like this with Blu-Ray when HDDVD was announced to be dead.
And Via.. Well, they're VIA. Leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
I guess AMD buying ATi didn't help things either (?).
They're all quacks of course.
Too bad about the layoffs, though. I think this is going to get worse (across the whole economy) before it gets better. Business is so slow that my state's tax revenues have plummeted.
People that I have talked to in the transportation business seem to think the recession already took place from around mid last year into this quarter, but now they think the economy is recovering. They are basing this on a rather dramatic falloff in freight shipments and then a recovery.
This followed a similar pattern in the early 1990s.. that is, by the time Clinton said "It's the economy stupid", the recession was already technically over. It's just now the pundits and papers need something to scare people with to sell more punditry and their papers.
This is my sig.
They can just make it up through overclocking !
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
I wonder if they will be getting rid of the people who decided to release the Phenom X3s and the energy efficient Phenom X4 with the TLB bug intact? By releasing a lot of new chips at the same time, some with the fix and some without, it seems as though AMD are trying to confuse people into buying buggy chips with awful performance.
Apparently we have to wait even longer before this mess will be cleared up. Is it any surprise that revenue is down?
But Bluray drives dropped in price by almost half when HDDVD kicked it. They were about $250-$300 then, and are about $150 now.
I'm not an economist, but I have a good head on my shoulders and I have a masters in business. Help me understand how AMD hopes to turn around their company by laying off 10% of their staff? They're hoping the remaining 90% demoralized, repressed, deflated staff will do it? What are the chances the 10% that walk out the door may be their best and brightest and may have the answers to turn their company around?
It drives me crazy when companies think that the only way out of their mess is to lay off the staff, when the people responsible for the mess (board of directors and executive), don't give themselves a pay cut of 10%. Chances are, knowing how US exeuctives pay themselves, it would proably equal the amount saved laying off 10% of their staff. But what do I know?
Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things. - Peter F. Drucker
"Dell Job Cuts to Top 8,800 as U.S. Spending Slows" (Dude! You're getting a pink slip!)
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aEO1GX_CC.8U&refer=u...
"Google DoubleClick cuts 300 jobs"
http://www.newsoxy.com/google_doubleclick_cuts_300_jobs/article10671.htm
"Motorola to lay off 2,600 workers"
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-fri-motorola-8k-jobcuts-motap...
"Chrysler Slashing Tech Jobs - The latest cutbacks affect 400 technology workers"
http://www.thecarconnection.com/blog/?p=1095
In other news, according to the NYT:
> The economy shed 80,000 jobs in March, the third consecutive month of rising unemployment, presenting a stark sign that the country may already be in a recession.
> The unemployment rate ticked up to 5.1 percent from 4.8 percent, its highest level since the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in September 2005.
> The downturn has even come to San Francisco, where highly trained workers with elite degrees flock to work for some of the world's biggest technology companies. CNet Networks, the online media giant, laid off 10 percent of its staff -- about 120 workers -- this year in an effort to increase profitability and its share price. Yahoo, the search engine company, said it would cut its work force by 1,000.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/04/business/04cnd-econ.html?em&ex=1207540800&en=c1de4fb13c4ec4bd&ei=5087%0A
There is yet one dwarf in Moria who still buys AMD.
:P
Seriously, though, I realize I'm a bloody hypocrite for laughing at Mac fanboys whilst being an AMD fanboy, but I love AMD. I want to do things illegal in Texas to my Opteron.
I also realize I'm partially moronic for having brand loyalty in this day and age - but I've never had a problem with any AMD chip. They just work. Perfectly.
So the rest of you Slashdotters go ahead with your 'logic' and 'benchmarks'. I'll keep AMD afloat so you can enjoy competitively priced Intel chips.
Your examples are good, other than the Google doubleclick one. Google is not laying off these people because they are doing poorly, they're just not needed any more. It's fairly typical of acquisitions, you end up with a bunch of redundant employees and someone has to go.
Also, your link to newsoxy seems to be some kind of spammy site. A better article is here: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/04/03/BUA2VUNAO.DTL&tsp=1
AMD's product line can't beat Intel right now but they started out that way and managed anyway. They had gotten along quite well selling a second-rate cpu that was good enough for a lot of applications whereas Intel was always pushing the performance envelope and charging accordingly.
When the Athlon came along, I think AMD was as surprised as the market was that Intel couldn't compete technically. Those days are gone, at least for awhile, and AMD is back where they started. There'll always be a market for a cheap cpu that does the job.
Jack Welch at GE advocated the 20-70-10 principle which says to periodically purge the lowest-performing 10% of employees to keep a company healthy. First, it gets rid of nonproductive employees. Second, *not* firing the lowest 10% is bad for the morale of the top-performing 20%.
I remember when Apple first switched to x86 a few years ago and everyone was screaming about them picking Intel over AMD. Apple's response was that based on Intel's roadmap, they were the better choice.
The past few years has certainly vindicated Apple on that regard. They absolutely made the right choice.
Yes, indeed the new deal did nothing to rebuilt the US of A and its production infrastructure to the point that it could out produce the 3 power of the axis combined.
In fact, FDR's plans were so catastrophic that he was elected "only" 3 times, and people cried in the streets when the guy crooked.
Sometimes, the ignorance of the American populace as illustrated by the anonymous coward above astounds me. The lemming attitude that makes idiots like these proactively handicap their own interests astounds me.
So let me get this straight, one of the few economic policies with a proven record of success (the new deal for example) are now framed as toxic. Whereas the insane policies that led to the gilded age, the great depression, the crash of the late 80s, the recession of the early 90s, and the current credit crunch... all those things are now gospel. Wow!
No wonder that capitalism is about making dumb people part of their money, as there seems to be an infinite supply of dumb idiots....
AMD did well until recently because, with the Athlon 64, they managed to bring something new fresh, interesting and with good performance :
- x86-compatible 64bits architecture, integrated memory controller, low power and thermal
exactly at a time when intel was stuck in dead ends :
- on one hand Itanium proved not to be the optimal way to bring 64bit to desktops and was stuck in the scientific cluster market
- on the other hand the Pentium 4, which was the CPU equivalent of a hummer, and was unable to go above 3GHz although the NetBurst architecture was planned to reach 10GHz
Intel had to lose time, going back to an older generation (PentiumIII-based PentiumM) and developing a decent workstation & desktop processor out of it (Core 2 was the first decent answer to Athlon 64).
Now we are back to the statu quo. With AMD having some technologically interesting products (true quad-cores) and interesting perf/price ratio in the mid-range products, but other wise no massive advantage.
And Intel throwing tons of resources and replaying the "Gigahertz race", except this time with the number of cores bolted to the same package, offering expensive but fast processors.
*BUT*
AMD could still get some advantage in the near future.
First, the gain obtained by multiplying the number of cores will soon top (My crystal balls predict somewhere around 6-8 cores). Intel is going to hit a wall soon, just like they got stuck with their Gigahertz race.
Second, integrated design with the memory controller on the CPU and a standard bus between the CPU and the rest of the PC seems to make a lot of sense. At least that's what Intel's engineer are thinking.
Here again AMD has some advantages :
They already have such an architecture since Athlon 64, the hypertransport bus has been adopted already by several other constructor for various (FPGA and other accelerators, or simply communication between multiple chipsets on motherboard with several northbridges), their socket has stabilised (thank to the compatible family AM2 => AM2+ => AM3).
Whereas Intel will probably once again lose some time developing and perfect their Quick-Path based processors, probably changing their connector a couple of time along the way (can't technically reuse LGA775, will have to develop a new one and as usually will probably change it a couple of time before stabilising), will have to convince other constructor to adopt it (they will, of course as they are "the standard x86 cpu that every PC maker use". But it'll take some additional time), etc...
Once again we will see a transition at Intel, during which AMD has a small advantage (smaller than with the Athlon 64, but still present).
If they leverage their advantage well (partnerships around the HyperTransport, perhaps), they can achieve some success.
Of course that advantage won't stay indefinitely, and after that Intel will probably be back again with big beasts. Probably by then the technology will better take advantage of bigger multicores. And they'll also have a good advantage in the GPU / GPGPU markets by then.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Here at the state university I work for, it is two very different things.
Laid off means that the university just didn't need your specific job anymore, or doesn't have the money to pay you. You get a severance package and other benefits. For example should the department that laid you off open the same (or similar) job within a year, it is automatically yours if you want it. Also you get priority for getting interviews for other jobs on campus. More or less a layoff means "Sorry, we'd like to keep you, but we just can't." You are, of course, eligible for rehire if laid off.
Being fired means you fucked up. It isn't easy to fire someone, there has to be documentation supporting it and such. When you get fired you don't get anything in parting. You are just out the door, and they are going to hire someone else to do your job. You aren't eligible to be rehired.
So yes, in many cases it can be very different.