AMD Plans 7% Layoffs

Story of Semiconductor companies. Though i am always surprized that AMD is still going on like a wounded warrior. 

1st thing they always do is layoff people. 1st they spend huge amount of money to aquire lot of comapnies, then after some time new Ceo realize, we  have too many business that don't make  money and layoff people.

It is not these engs fault, it is the CEO fault that they acquire a good small company and take it ruins.

Companies  where CEOs make right decisions and have vision, do not need to layoff people, they give direction to these business units to make money.

Lisa Su, used to be VP of Semiconductor research and development at IBM, she didn't too much good for IBM, then she went to Freescale, now amd, lets see what great lenghts she takes AMD to or sell if off in pieces before moving on,

This is not the usual technical topic common in EE Times, but a very Political topic. So my response too will have to be political.

First, Lisa Su is from Communist China. Students like Su from the PRC were given preferential admission and treatment at leading US universities like MIT as part of a suicidal US foreign policy to build up Maoist China to bribe and turn it against their earlier benefactor the Soviet Union. Wall St. compounded this blunder by favoring China, with its huge regimented low-cost labor force, over native US industries, by forcing many premier US Corp.s like Motorola to transfer technology to China at no cost. After the Tian An Men massacre in '89, Bush I bestowed Chinese Grad students in the US 50,000 Green Cards under "humantarian" grounds. Many US Corp.s like now disappeared Motorola hired and promoted Chinese even in their US operations in order to curry favor with the Communist Govt. of China. Lisa Su became the CTO at Motorola successor Freescale. Up and coming Chinese co.s like Huawei established themselves by pilfering tchnology from Motorola. recently Motorola's pioneering Mobile phone biz was bought by China's Lenovo. Won't be too surprised if very soon AMD too is bought up by the PRC. That will be the final nail in the coffin.

As to the relative merits of Engineers from and in the PRC vs Taiwan one has to only compare TSMC ( 20 nm in prod. ) vs SMIC ( just beginning at 28 nm after strong - arming Qualcomm ).  

The US had the hubris to try to turn Communist China into Capitalism. In the end it turned out the other way because China was too big and too hungry / aggressive even for the US, thereby destroyed US manufacturing, something the smaller vassal state of Japan had not been able to do.

Perhaps they should've just spun off the former ATI as a separate company rather than just decimating it.

@AZ-skibum: Au contraire! ATI is saving their bacpon with its videoame console deals where it always did well. Its graphics business is probably making AMD's lousy consumer PC group look better, too.

AMD just seems to be extending its core competancy in being the leading follower of Intel into more markets- now graphics and ARM servers.... At least its a strategy...

Wow! I read that Lisa's family emigrated from Taiwan and she grew up in NY, not communist China. For a woman to have competed and thrived in the semiconductor buiness is quite a feat and she should be given the credit for it.

It never failed to amaze me how dark the real human nature can be, once a seemingly harmless person can spit venom in no time under cover by his/her anonymity.

I felt sad and stopped reading at this line

"...First, Lisa Su is from Communist China...."

Check your fact book before a personal attack against another human being. Otherwise, your opinion is too cheap to be reckoned with. In fact, I find myself foolish for even wanting to respond to such attack.

But lies need to be pointed out for the sake of all readers.

Lisa Su, was born in Taiwan, the *non-communist* China and migrated to US with her parents as a small kid. All her education, including primary schooling, were received in the US.

CEO's have to run a business and their first priority is to protect share-holder value. That is the capitalism. Unfortunately this means that when business is down, there are layoffs.

For those who defend Ms. Su on the ground that she is actually from Taiwan, I suggest you read the US Constitution, maybe for the first time.

For all those Asians Americans who enjoy China bashing, this is what will happen to you too. Nobody will look up your bio before they attack you and your children. If you help to create this environment of hate, you will get the full payback.

Attacks like this will happen a lot more often in the coming years, because that is the last straw of failed men.

I was glad to hear engineers will be spared most of the layoffs.

Curious, who's hiring these days?

You nailed it. "1st priority is to protect share holder value". 

Just few years ago when tsmc was going thru a hard time from competition, when Dr. Morris CHang step down,

He came back and not layed off bunch of engineers or sold fabs to protect share holder value, he invested in tech and development and hire more engineers to make  the tsmc what it is today,

And shareholder value is much better now,

It takes a CEO with Vision, not bean counters,

@Rick: I don't know about what kind of market needs what kind of speciality but engineers can get jobs anywhere. Laying off is tough to deal with but then you get better prospects once you start looking for a better job.

@DrFGPA: AMD always has a strategy but then laying off has to be met with backlashes. Microsoft laid off so many from the Nokia merger and they got backlashes. They could expand when annual profits are higher than the redline and expand less when it's close to the redline. Firing employees while expanding is not a good solution.

The bigger news is that AMD is not laying off 100% of its staff. I have a lot of respect for AMD which continues to survive despite all odds

>> I don't know about what kind of market needs what kind of speciality but engineers can get jobs anywhere

Always remember the best time to get a great job is when you have a job. Do not think by AMD engineers losing theirs that they are positioned for great things ahead. That may not be guaranteed.

@goafrit.

Coudln't agree more, Best time to get a new job is when you are still employed, ( you gotta be able to see what is coming in future) and make a move before the Layoffs, I have had lot of Eng. freinds, Great engineers, Layoffed, hard to find job, specially if don't live in Silicon Valley, or some other Hub,

@goafrit.

Coudln't agree more, Best time to get a new job is when you are still employed, ( you gotta be able to see what is coming in future) and make a move before the Layoffs, I have had lot of Eng. freinds, Great engineers, Layoffed, hard to find job, specially if don't live in Silicon Valley, or some other Hub,

@Anand engineers can get jobs anywhere. Laying off is tough to deal with but then you get better prospects once you start looking for a better job.

I found this to be true back when i was young. Better jobs happened after layoffs.

But not so true when older.  Age discrimination in hiring is alive and well.

@goafrit Always remember the best time to get a great job is when you have a job.

Right on!  Much harder to be taken seriously after suddenly becoming unemployed.  Job hopping rules!

uh.. the best way to handle this if you are working in a un-stable company such AMD, HP?

Save money, invest .

imagine if you can save 500k$ in an certain amount of time.

you can relocate yourself to a 3rd world country when the bad news hits you.

in some 3 rd world cities you can enjoy a decent life with $500 per month, 

that's 1% return of your capital.

I was thinking of the earlier post about how a CEO's number one job is to maximize shareholder value. The graphics business is indeed one of the healthier businesses within AMD. Is shareholder value maximized by keeping it or by spinning it off?

zeeglen wrote "Much harder to be taken seriously after suddenly becoming unemployed."

I don't think that is necessarily true when the reason you are unemployed is a layoff that was prompted by business conditions. Great engineers are often laid off simply because they were in the struggling business unit. It isn't necessarily the case that a layoff of 7% means that the company is keeping the 93% who were the better performers. Sometimes a business unit just gets downsized, and if you are part of that business unit, you get downsized too.

Sometimes, great engineers get cut because their business unit is shut down.  (As for moving to another division, the open reqs may not fit or current leadership will often not cut their own employees and replace them with you ... I have never heard of organizations 'upgrading' during the Great Recession, in practice, despite reading of it in the business press.  I guess that team morale still counts, sometimes.).

On the other hand, it may be your focus area that is eliminated.  In semiconductor technology, the company no longer has plans for it.  Or if you look at EDA, many people transition into that area from customers' internal CAD organizations.

They have always said that LinkedIn profile is the ultimate revenge for a broken system where employers can fire anytime. So, employees without fear and remorse openly advertise for jobs.

One strategy is to be associated with a small firm no matter how small or even start something while in the transition of looking for job after being fired. It is never a good sign for the employer to know that you were let go as that is a sign you are not among the most valuable in the firm.

There are many risks associated with living in a poor country just to extend your savings. One problem is that if you are sick, even your money cannot  you decent healthcare. That is one of the reasons people enjoy living in advanced nations.