The "buzzwords" in that memo from AMD CEO Rory... WOW... Layoffs do not strengthen the "fighting spirit"... layoffs kill the morale of a company. Those that left are not happy, those that remain lose friends and co-workers AND have to pickup the extra work. Then they have to worry that there might be further rounds of layoffs. Not a smart move AMD.
The "buzzwords" in that memo from AMD CEO Rory... WOW... Layoffs do not strengthen the "fighting spirit"... layoffs kill the morale of a company. Those that left are not happy, those that remain lose friends and co-workers AND have to pickup the extra work. Then they have to worry that there might be further rounds of layoffs. Not a smart move AMD.
That's what I was going to say, Q. The people who are left are usually terrified that it could just as easily be them next. I remember a few years back when my dad's company was going through massive layoffs. He was losing sleep at night, his blood pressure went up, and he was having nightmares about it. And his job was one of the "safe" ones.
He didn't get laid off in the end, but those few months were brutal for him.
You don't convince people to take the kind of big leaps that can make your company a leader with mass layoffs. You end up making them scared to take any sort of risk, and without risk there's no reward.
Theo at BSN says the complete product review support team got hit by this too... anyone know if that means Damon Muzny got hit too? I always liked dealing with him. The story here just gets worse and worse
While I sympathize with those who are getting laid off I must point out that if you are really upset over shareholders and executive pay... then don't buy that companies products.
Eventually the company will either change their ways to make money or go out of business. Frankly, I think all these complaints over shareholder/executive pay is based solely on envy. In the most basic of nutshells, people are just ticked off because they want more money for less effort.
There is nothing stopping any of you complainers from becoming shareholders or advancing to become an executive of a major company. But that takes a lot of work and effort, more than most people are willing to put into it.
The only glass ceiling is in your own minds. A job is not a RIGHT in this country. So get over it and grow up.
Theo at BSN says the complete product review support team got hit by this too... anyone know if that means Damon Muzny got hit too? I always liked dealing with him. The story here just gets worse and worse
While I sympathize with those who are getting laid off I must point out that if you are really upset over shareholders and executive pay... then don't buy that companies products.
Eventually the company will either change their ways to make money or go out of business. Frankly, I think all these complaints over shareholder/executive pay is based solely on envy. In the most basic of nutshells, people are just ticked off because they want more money for less effort.
There is nothing stopping any of you complainers from becoming shareholders or advancing to become an executive of a major company. But that takes a lot of work and effort, more than most people are willing to put into it.
The only glass ceiling is in your own minds. A job is not a RIGHT in this country. So get over it and grow up.
Excuse me, but I believe you're wrong. In today's world it really isn't possible to move up to he highest echelons of corporate business you need connections and for those to form it would take decades (though with quite a few people, they are born into a certain level of connectedness), and the amount of variables involved in climbing the corporate ladder all the way to the top make it so that only a very small percentage of people can actually get there. If it was as simple as your "hard work and determination" approach, then judging from the caliber of people we have in this country, the wealth of this nation would be distributed quite differently.
Secondly, it's just plain rude to call everyone a complainer, name calling is childish and thusly I'm going to treat you like a child. True, people want more money for less effort, but envy isn't what is driving these people, it's more than likely outrage. A company that makes millions in profits shouldn't have to cut out as many people as are being at the moment.
Third, just refraining from buying a company's products, though it sounds good in theory, is much harder to institute practically. I'll use Walmart as an example as it's much easier to get my point across with it. Imagine yourself saying: "I don't support Walmart's treatment of it's employees, so until they change that I won't buy products from there." While you yourself might not go, does one person abstaining from going there make a dent in their massive pool of regular customers? Does you stopping make others around you stop? How many products are somehow funded or influenced by Walmart? The list goes on. The only real way to make a difference would be some form of organized action on a much greater scale than a single person. So simply boycotting a major industry giant isn't going to limit their bottom line significantly enough to warrant them changing.
Finally, you're off topic, this is about AMD and their recent actions, and people's feelings about it. If you'd like, join the site and create a thread in general banter, I'd be happy to discuss what you brought up further.
Not that I have a dog in this fight but a discussion about layoffs should be fun. Several comments:
1) Layoffs aren't always detrimental to productivity. My company did one in 2009 (about 5-6% of staff) and you can be sure that I wisely chose the engineer that was let go from my team. *If* AMD hasn't done a layoff in the last 3-4 years (I've no idea and I don't care enough to check), this might not be that dire from a productivity standpoint. That said, if they habitually lay people off, you'll cut muscle instead of fat and that's disruptive as well as being counter-productive.
2) Since I'm not in the chip business, I probably shouldn't comment but I just compared Intel's margins with AMD's and AMD's margins are just plain anemic. While I understand that Intel positions itself as a premium product, the numbers appear out of whack to me.
3) I just looked at their quarterly earnings numbers. Someone wasn't watching spending in marketing, general and administrative. While R&D and cost of goods sold grew 3% over the last year, MG&A grew 9% over the last year. Meanwhile, revenue was essentially flat.
I don't follow AMD (we use Intel in our products these days) but wonder why their MG&A spend grew disproportionately. Did they try to launch too many products or something? In any case, if the marketing department's hit hard, it might not matter that much as it would be surprising if they were the ones actually selling the product to customers.
Additional reading of their filings are interesting as well:
1) Their revenue mix is moving towards their lower-cost, lower-margin products.
2) Looking at their headcount numbers, they added almost 1000 employees (~11000 -> ~12000) in the last year while their top-line revenue was essentially flat. Christ, someone made a mess of things as a wise business model would have hiring trail revenue.
Reading their SEC filings brought a couple more gems:
1) Their margins are dropping due to their low-end products accouting for a larger percentage of revenue. While I don't follow AMD, I wonder if this is because their server products perform poorly (this is why we use Intel).
2) Looking at their headcount numbers between the latest filing (~12000 employees) and twelve months ago (~11000 employees) make me scratch my head. They increased the number of employees by 9% while revenue was essentially stagnant. It would have been wiser to have hiring track/trail revenue.
The debate here, it's empty to me, I'll tell you why.
People are not "fat". Don't tell me I have a detachment from corporate reality, blah, blah, blah, just because you may have watched enough Fox news to actually start believing the bullshit you are fed. The news is owned by corporations, corporations that would like to convince you that you are worth far less than you actually are so you will continue to accept lousy work for declining pay and benefits. I'm not a communist nut job with a conspiracy theory, I'm just smart enough to connect all the dots. If you want to argue about it, I'm not interested, I'm right, the end.
Where was I...... Oh yes, People are not fat. I'd define corporate fat as a combination of poor process, bureaucratic management and outlandish executive compensation. In sixty days there is no way possible a new CEO could walk in, examine the entire process structure and make a truly informed decision that lead to destroying 1400 careers. He had no realistic way of knowing whats best. He had a headcount reduction target the day he walked in, right, wrong or indifferent, you post 10%, it looks round, satisfying, impressive in a news release. I guarantee you, day one, he walked in with that number, intent on executing against it.
RootWyrm is correct. It's like this, Rory Read read the first page of the investor appeasement manual. He played it as quickly as possible. A knee jerk reaction to deal with a declining stock price, in part due to bulldozer failing to generate buzz. Reduce head count, investors feel a little better, stock goes the right way for a day, and Rory Read is that much closer to cashing in his bonus options worth millions. If any right winger want's to go toe to toe on how he is entitled, and how much it costs to retain the services of a AAA executive, and how someone has to be the bad guy for the greater good, blah, blah, blah.... Once again, not really interested in the debate. I'm right, you are not, the end.
My point, People are not fat. Cutting people, it's just the easiest play in the book, one that can be executed quickly, make a splash and have some immediate impact on the stock price. For the long haul, it will prove detrimental.
I work for a company that had massive layoff's a couple years ago. Now that the market is back, we are struggling with service and quality issues for our customers, and the leadership wonders why? Let me tell you, I knew each person they let go, and not one of them was "fat." They are people, people matter, my loyalty lies with people. People make things, they build things, they generate ideas, they give tirelessly of themselves in hopes that they can provide for themselves and a family. I don't care how clever you think a corporate strategy may be, you can't gloss over the human impact.
I'm fairly certain I was the worlds last unflinching AMD fanboy. I loved that company, as foolish as I may have been, I felt like AMD had a soul that it's competitor lacked. I felt like they operated outside of the corporate norm. I fell in love with them with my first Slot A Athlon, and have been steadfast ever since. Rory Read has destroyed that in sixty days. AMD is a shell of it's former self, it's spirit broken, the thing that differentiated it, it's people have been compromised for a 5% gain in stock price. For me, AMD will never be the same.
You weren't the worlds last unflinching AMD fanboy. I was right there with you. Until today. Today they proved they're nothing more than another soulless corporation out to make a quick buck at anyone's expense.
To dump the emotion and human element out of firings is silly.
To dump the logical and systemic processes involved in a capitalistic society is silly.
The only thing any of us will agree on here is that good times and bad times exist. They push and pull on each other and forever shape our lives.
None of us know the circumstances, evidence, and reasons corporate did this so lets stop acting like were are all of the sudden finance, hr, marketing, industry, insider, etc. specialists and we fully understand the situation.
It sucks, it's a sad sign of AMD's current struggles, and all we can do is hope they pull out of it and that all the people who lost their jobs will get better ones to replace them.
Reading their SEC filings brought a couple more gems:
1) Their margins are dropping due to their low-end products accouting for a larger percentage of revenue. While I don't follow AMD, I wonder if this is because their server products perform poorly (this is why we use Intel).
That's the thing, their server parts currently, do not perform poorly. Magny-Cours is the shiznat if you've got something that scales well with cores or you're virtualizing heavily. Intel cannot compete in the 4-socket space on cost, availability or memory. (Xeon MPs are a real nightmare.) For certain workloads, they suck - not as much as Bulldozer - but for others they're unbeatable.
Sometime back someone in upper management decided that instead of focusing on what they were doing right and improving to compete, they would instead try to cut Intel off at the head on the low-power and low-end parts. And apparently said upper management decided they'd make up the huge drop in margins on volume. (While people choose iPads over Windows 7 Starter Netbooks.) The low-end push was a fatal mistake, one that is going to cost them for years to come, because they've now lost the people they need to get back into the top end race where the margins are double-digit percentage.
2) Looking at their headcount numbers between the latest filing (~12000 employees) and twelve months ago (~11000 employees) make me scratch my head. They increased the number of employees by 9% while revenue was essentially stagnant. It would have been wiser to have hiring track/trail revenue.
Actually, that's entirely expected to some extent. Prior to a major release like this, we do expect to see a headcount bump disconnected from revenues, depending on accounting procedures. As part of a new product launch and product ramping, you expect to bring on additional marketing, additional project management, and additional engineering depending where you're at in the process. Remember that AMD also makes Radeon and has Northern Islands nearing release soon, so you're going to see a mix of hiring for two product launches.
I don't know enough about AMD's internal org to say for sure, but I do agree that 1K coming onboard as permanent seems very high. I'd expect half that at most, with the remaining 500+ being contractors. Regardless, you run afoul of the adage that you have to spend money to make money. That means hiring engineers to create new products, marketing and sales to pitch them, and so on. Hiring rarely can track revenue closely these days; when revenue is down, it becomes more important to deliver something new or improved. When revenue is up there's hew and cry that you can do more with less. (Not always true, but as we agree, layoffs are not inherently bad. Blanket layoffs almost always are, especially pure seniority ones.)
UPSLynx: Hey man, I'm really sorry if I gave the wrong impression to you and this board. I'm not saying I know anything about what really happened at AMD, and I feel terrible about people who lost their jobs. I really do. Like I said, someone really close to me got laid off from AMD yesterday morning.
Seriously, good luck to you and everyone else. Don't get too down. The unemployment rate for people with college degrees is only 4.2%, so hopefully it's not as bad as it seems out there for qualified people like yourselves.
UPSLynx: Hey man, I'm really sorry if I gave the wrong impression to you and this board. I'm not saying I know anything about what really happened at AMD, and I feel terrible about people who lost their jobs. I really do. Like I said, someone really close to me got laid off from AMD yesterday morning.
Seriously, good luck to you and everyone else. Don't get too down. The unemployment rate for people with college degrees is only 4.2%, so hopefully it's not as bad as it seems out there for qualified people like yourselves.
Seriously, good luck to you and everyone else. Don't get too down. The unemployment rate for people with college degrees is only 4.2%, so hopefully it's not as bad as it seems out there for qualified people like yourselves.
Seriously? Seriously? You've posted 60 times on this article, just join already.
From what I've read, most guys were from the PR department. How good they were to begin with?
One can argue they were crippled because of internal politics, but fact is: AMD PR/Marketing sucks. Always have. Even when they had good performance products, it wasn't "out there". It was all about the GeForces and Pentiums.
They need new blood, someone who can get the word out about AMD. I just hope they don't FOCUS on low-end. As someone said here, you focus on high-end and let the low-end spawn from that, not the other way around. Raw performance isn't what brings in money, but surely it's what makes people want some brand instead of other, even if you aren't getting the most expensive offer.
Comments
I want my brain inside you?
That's what I was going to say, Q. The people who are left are usually terrified that it could just as easily be them next. I remember a few years back when my dad's company was going through massive layoffs. He was losing sleep at night, his blood pressure went up, and he was having nightmares about it. And his job was one of the "safe" ones.
He didn't get laid off in the end, but those few months were brutal for him.
Eventually the company will either change their ways to make money or go out of business. Frankly, I think all these complaints over shareholder/executive pay is based solely on envy. In the most basic of nutshells, people are just ticked off because they want more money for less effort.
There is nothing stopping any of you complainers from becoming shareholders or advancing to become an executive of a major company. But that takes a lot of work and effort, more than most people are willing to put into it.
The only glass ceiling is in your own minds. A job is not a RIGHT in this country. So get over it and grow up.
Damon left for Dell some months back.
Excuse me, but I believe you're wrong. In today's world it really isn't possible to move up to he highest echelons of corporate business you need connections and for those to form it would take decades (though with quite a few people, they are born into a certain level of connectedness), and the amount of variables involved in climbing the corporate ladder all the way to the top make it so that only a very small percentage of people can actually get there. If it was as simple as your "hard work and determination" approach, then judging from the caliber of people we have in this country, the wealth of this nation would be distributed quite differently.
Secondly, it's just plain rude to call everyone a complainer, name calling is childish and thusly I'm going to treat you like a child. True, people want more money for less effort, but envy isn't what is driving these people, it's more than likely outrage. A company that makes millions in profits shouldn't have to cut out as many people as are being at the moment.
Third, just refraining from buying a company's products, though it sounds good in theory, is much harder to institute practically. I'll use Walmart as an example as it's much easier to get my point across with it. Imagine yourself saying: "I don't support Walmart's treatment of it's employees, so until they change that I won't buy products from there." While you yourself might not go, does one person abstaining from going there make a dent in their massive pool of regular customers? Does you stopping make others around you stop? How many products are somehow funded or influenced by Walmart? The list goes on. The only real way to make a difference would be some form of organized action on a much greater scale than a single person. So simply boycotting a major industry giant isn't going to limit their bottom line significantly enough to warrant them changing.
Finally, you're off topic, this is about AMD and their recent actions, and people's feelings about it. If you'd like, join the site and create a thread in general banter, I'd be happy to discuss what you brought up further.
Yeah, I bit the bait.
1) Layoffs aren't always detrimental to productivity. My company did one in 2009 (about 5-6% of staff) and you can be sure that I wisely chose the engineer that was let go from my team. *If* AMD hasn't done a layoff in the last 3-4 years (I've no idea and I don't care enough to check), this might not be that dire from a productivity standpoint. That said, if they habitually lay people off, you'll cut muscle instead of fat and that's disruptive as well as being counter-productive.
2) Since I'm not in the chip business, I probably shouldn't comment but I just compared Intel's margins with AMD's and AMD's margins are just plain anemic. While I understand that Intel positions itself as a premium product, the numbers appear out of whack to me.
3) I just looked at their quarterly earnings numbers. Someone wasn't watching spending in marketing, general and administrative. While R&D and cost of goods sold grew 3% over the last year, MG&A grew 9% over the last year. Meanwhile, revenue was essentially flat.
I don't follow AMD (we use Intel in our products these days) but wonder why their MG&A spend grew disproportionately. Did they try to launch too many products or something? In any case, if the marketing department's hit hard, it might not matter that much as it would be surprising if they were the ones actually selling the product to customers.
1) Their revenue mix is moving towards their lower-cost, lower-margin products.
2) Looking at their headcount numbers, they added almost 1000 employees (~11000 -> ~12000) in the last year while their top-line revenue was essentially flat. Christ, someone made a mess of things as a wise business model would have hiring trail revenue.
1) Their margins are dropping due to their low-end products accouting for a larger percentage of revenue. While I don't follow AMD, I wonder if this is because their server products perform poorly (this is why we use Intel).
2) Looking at their headcount numbers between the latest filing (~12000 employees) and twelve months ago (~11000 employees) make me scratch my head. They increased the number of employees by 9% while revenue was essentially stagnant. It would have been wiser to have hiring track/trail revenue.
People are not "fat". Don't tell me I have a detachment from corporate reality, blah, blah, blah, just because you may have watched enough Fox news to actually start believing the bullshit you are fed. The news is owned by corporations, corporations that would like to convince you that you are worth far less than you actually are so you will continue to accept lousy work for declining pay and benefits. I'm not a communist nut job with a conspiracy theory, I'm just smart enough to connect all the dots. If you want to argue about it, I'm not interested, I'm right, the end.
Where was I...... Oh yes, People are not fat. I'd define corporate fat as a combination of poor process, bureaucratic management and outlandish executive compensation. In sixty days there is no way possible a new CEO could walk in, examine the entire process structure and make a truly informed decision that lead to destroying 1400 careers. He had no realistic way of knowing whats best. He had a headcount reduction target the day he walked in, right, wrong or indifferent, you post 10%, it looks round, satisfying, impressive in a news release. I guarantee you, day one, he walked in with that number, intent on executing against it.
RootWyrm is correct. It's like this, Rory Read read the first page of the investor appeasement manual. He played it as quickly as possible. A knee jerk reaction to deal with a declining stock price, in part due to bulldozer failing to generate buzz. Reduce head count, investors feel a little better, stock goes the right way for a day, and Rory Read is that much closer to cashing in his bonus options worth millions. If any right winger want's to go toe to toe on how he is entitled, and how much it costs to retain the services of a AAA executive, and how someone has to be the bad guy for the greater good, blah, blah, blah.... Once again, not really interested in the debate. I'm right, you are not, the end.
My point, People are not fat. Cutting people, it's just the easiest play in the book, one that can be executed quickly, make a splash and have some immediate impact on the stock price. For the long haul, it will prove detrimental.
I work for a company that had massive layoff's a couple years ago. Now that the market is back, we are struggling with service and quality issues for our customers, and the leadership wonders why? Let me tell you, I knew each person they let go, and not one of them was "fat." They are people, people matter, my loyalty lies with people. People make things, they build things, they generate ideas, they give tirelessly of themselves in hopes that they can provide for themselves and a family. I don't care how clever you think a corporate strategy may be, you can't gloss over the human impact.
I'm fairly certain I was the worlds last unflinching AMD fanboy. I loved that company, as foolish as I may have been, I felt like AMD had a soul that it's competitor lacked. I felt like they operated outside of the corporate norm. I fell in love with them with my first Slot A Athlon, and have been steadfast ever since. Rory Read has destroyed that in sixty days. AMD is a shell of it's former self, it's spirit broken, the thing that differentiated it, it's people have been compromised for a 5% gain in stock price. For me, AMD will never be the same.
To dump the logical and systemic processes involved in a capitalistic society is silly.
The only thing any of us will agree on here is that good times and bad times exist. They push and pull on each other and forever shape our lives.
None of us know the circumstances, evidence, and reasons corporate did this so lets stop acting like were are all of the sudden finance, hr, marketing, industry, insider, etc. specialists and we fully understand the situation.
It sucks, it's a sad sign of AMD's current struggles, and all we can do is hope they pull out of it and that all the people who lost their jobs will get better ones to replace them.
That's the thing, their server parts currently, do not perform poorly. Magny-Cours is the shiznat if you've got something that scales well with cores or you're virtualizing heavily. Intel cannot compete in the 4-socket space on cost, availability or memory. (Xeon MPs are a real nightmare.) For certain workloads, they suck - not as much as Bulldozer - but for others they're unbeatable.
Sometime back someone in upper management decided that instead of focusing on what they were doing right and improving to compete, they would instead try to cut Intel off at the head on the low-power and low-end parts. And apparently said upper management decided they'd make up the huge drop in margins on volume. (While people choose iPads over Windows 7 Starter Netbooks.) The low-end push was a fatal mistake, one that is going to cost them for years to come, because they've now lost the people they need to get back into the top end race where the margins are double-digit percentage.
Actually, that's entirely expected to some extent. Prior to a major release like this, we do expect to see a headcount bump disconnected from revenues, depending on accounting procedures. As part of a new product launch and product ramping, you expect to bring on additional marketing, additional project management, and additional engineering depending where you're at in the process. Remember that AMD also makes Radeon and has Northern Islands nearing release soon, so you're going to see a mix of hiring for two product launches.
I don't know enough about AMD's internal org to say for sure, but I do agree that 1K coming onboard as permanent seems very high. I'd expect half that at most, with the remaining 500+ being contractors. Regardless, you run afoul of the adage that you have to spend money to make money. That means hiring engineers to create new products, marketing and sales to pitch them, and so on. Hiring rarely can track revenue closely these days; when revenue is down, it becomes more important to deliver something new or improved. When revenue is up there's hew and cry that you can do more with less. (Not always true, but as we agree, layoffs are not inherently bad. Blanket layoffs almost always are, especially pure seniority ones.)
Frigging shame. What a waste.
Seriously, good luck to you and everyone else. Don't get too down. The unemployment rate for people with college degrees is only 4.2%, so hopefully it's not as bad as it seems out there for qualified people like yourselves.
That was classy man. Thanks.
Oh, and good post. +1
One can argue they were crippled because of internal politics, but fact is: AMD PR/Marketing sucks. Always have. Even when they had good performance products, it wasn't "out there". It was all about the GeForces and Pentiums.
They need new blood, someone who can get the word out about AMD. I just hope they don't FOCUS on low-end. As someone said here, you focus on high-end and let the low-end spawn from that, not the other way around. Raw performance isn't what brings in money, but surely it's what makes people want some brand instead of other, even if you aren't getting the most expensive offer.