AMD’s CEO Addresses Employees Following Massive Layoffs

From X-bit Labs: Rory Read, chief executive officer of Advanced Micro Devices who took office a little more than sixty days ago, addressed the company’s employees following massive layoffs that affected between 1400 and 1500 workers. The executive of the company will unveil the chip designer’s new strategy this Wednesday and completely believes that AMD will be able to deliver on its commitments even with dramatically reduced workforce.

“Today we undertook the difficult, but necessary step, of implementing a reduction in our AMD workforce. This is a company-wide action that will include all functions and locations across AMD and impact approximately 10% of our global workforce. […] Our industry is at an inflection point as new trends emerge around the consumer experience, the breakdown of traditional control points and technology convergence. It’s clear we have to take aggressive steps to create distinct value for our customers, and must optimize our existing business today while enabling the company to capture future growth,” the letter by Rory Read (which has been published by a company’s [perhaps, former] employee on conditions of anonimity) claims.

Based on unofficial information, AMD intends to unveil a new strategy under which the company’s low-power micro-architecture code-named Bobcat will play a much more critical role in the company’s future than it was originally intended to.

Although the company fired massive amounts of people worldwide across different divisions, the massive hits were taken by public relations and marketing departments, which will be extremely reduced in terms of headcount. Although this will reduce costs, it is clear that this will also greatly reduce AMD’s ability to advertize itself in various way, which will automatically translate into better recognition of Intel, Nvidia and other historical competitors of AMD among end-users.

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