AMD Layoffs Maul Marketing, PR Departments

MojoKid writes "AMD's initial layoff announcement yesterday implied that the dismissals would occur across the company's global sales force. While that may still be true, it has become clear that AMD has slashed its PR and Marketing departments in particular. The New Product Review Program* (NPRP) has lost most of its staff and a Graphics Product Manager, who played an integral role in rescuing AMD's GPU division after the disaster of R600, also got the axe. Key members of the FirePro product team are also gone. None of the staff had any idea that the cuts were coming, or that they'd focus so particularly in certain areas. These two departments may not design products, but they create and maintain vital lines of communication between the company, its customers, and the press."

Comments

Bye markedroids

[Anonymous Coward]

Honestly they haven't been performing and it's understandable they got the axe. Maybe now AMD can focus on product rather than image.

Re:Bye markedroids

[ackthpt]

Honestly they haven't been performing and it's understandable they got the axe. Maybe now AMD can focus on product rather than image.

In my experience image sells more often than brand. Particularly image establishes brand, for what it's worth.

These look like the sort of cuts of a company which may be in particular stress. Not encouraging.

Good?

[Xanny]

AMD's weakness is not in getting brand recognition, every major PC carrier knows who they are. They need a competitive product. That requires engineering investments and hard work to catch up to soon to be Ivy Bridge. Servers don't want a power inefficient processor, and power users want top class for the price, and AMD is delivering neither right now on the CPU front. They also shouldn't try entering any other markets, I imagine that is what they are thinking though, try to get out of the x86 business since they are falling behind. Hopefully the Radeon 7000 series does really well, this next GPU generation is shaping up to be a huge force in the massively parallel server market, and AMD better realize the opportunity they have right now to earn back some cred with a rock solid GPU lineup. It doesn't help that Nvidia, AMD, and every ARM manufacturer are all basically waiting on TSMC for bulk 28nm transistors. They are all starting to feel the heat for depending on one company for all their silicon for this next gen of graphics hardware.

Vital?

[vux984]

These two departments may not design products, but they create and maintain vital lines of communication between the company, its customers, and the press."

Better to cut marketing and the "vital" line of communication to the press, than to cut product development and not have a new product next quarter... because then having lines of communication to the press won't seem so vitally important anymore.

Still it sucks for anyone to lose their jobs.

Re:Vital?

[del_diablo]

It is easy: You cut down to the entire companies managmants wages to lowest engineering wage, and no bonuses. That includes the stockholdes, CEOs and other "high positions".
It wouldn't surprise me one bit if that would earn them a really nice surplus of cash, which again could be used to massive amounts of R&D.
Of course, no corporation these days wants to sit down and do what needs to be done.

Marketing of tech is almost free.

[blair1q]

Seriously, with 14 bazillion bloggers fighting to get clicks to their webpages, all you need is one guy with a copy of the datasheet and a twitter account, and you'll have your part's nomenclature showing up on every RSS feed in the world within minutes if not days. And, if you're lucky (or just know where to put the typos), you can get /. to send your favorite blogger enough clicks to buy an iPhone.

Re:Marketing of tech is almost free.

[westlake]

Seriously, with 14 bazillion bloggers fighting to get clicks to their webpages, all you need is one guy with a copy of the datasheet and a twitter account.

If this were true why is Linux clinging by its fingertips to a bare 1% market share?

You need people who can negotiate OEM system installs, retail placement and sales promotions. Your bazillion bloggers aren't as useful as the one man or woman who knows how to cut the right deal with Walmart.

Does this remind any one of...

[catmistake]

Office Space?

These two departments may not design products, but they create and maintain vital lines of communication between the company, its customers, and the press.

Bob Slydell: What would you say ya do here?

Tom Smykowski: Well look, I already told you! I deal with the goddamn customers so the engineers don't have to! I have people skills! I am good at dealing with people! Can't you understand that? What the hell is wrong with you people?

Amazing

[liquidweaver]

Here it is, 2011, when CEO's live and die by 10K's and stock prices, we have a company that layed off marketing and PR and kept their engineers. How much AMD stock can I buy? Sign me up!