Personally, I am starting to get numb to AMD restructuring news — and that is never good.
Less than a month ago we reported on the semiconductor design company’s decision to cut 15% of their workforce. The company still has life in it and has a respectable presence in all upcoming videogame consoles along with its inclusion within many consumer laptops and desktops but it is clearly not as much life as they need.
Original rumors stated that cuts could be on the order of 10-30% which 15% would be on the lighter side of. With rumors of more cuts coming in January I wonder if this was a last minute decision to break up the layoffs into two less dramatic installments.
One of the beauties of the tech industry is the low cost of starting or turning a company around; it would be irresponsible to completely count out a player while it still has access to millions of capital. AMD is also sitting upon lots of assets which could be liquidated and their employees have ridiculous talent to be employable elsewhere. I have been noticing that most chatter about the topic is not based in concern with AMD and their employee’s future but with concern about an x86 competitor to Intel.
This is pretty much the same concern which I have been having about Windows 8: the house of cards may be standing but it is still a house of cards. We rely upon the proprietary standards which Intel and others impose upon the art, the word being used both in literal and “artisan / practical art” contexts which includes utensil applications.
Concern mounts but practically no-one grafts it to similar instabilities in other platforms.
No I am not saying abolish technology patents or anything like that: I am simply saying that this is yet another drop in the torrent of concerns with content upstream to proprietary platforms.
These issues rightfully cause alarm but are not isolated events.
in reality the tech industry
in reality the tech industry in this country is hurting, most of those put out of work will not return to work in the same industry. the job will be filled, but overseas or with a 401b
only a select list of engineers will be lucky- the greater number will – alas- drop a good 20-30 % salary (if they are lucky) some will drop more-
i say this have several ex – techs in my business area- people who worked for big blue and others- who now now work so far away from the field they trained for – and make so far less than they used too.
This is a little sad to hear
This is a little sad to hear about AMD the underdog in a bad slump. I’ve always been back and forth with Intel and AMD. My first AMD build was a K6-III that was better than the Pentium III (My opinion). I still use AMD as a budget build. The new Trinity was my newest build lately and love the integrated Radeon GPU. I hope they make it.