AMD set to make more cuts

AFTER YESTERDAY'S story about the additional limbs AMD is going to be hacking off, we received a few bits of mail from DAAMIT insiders unhappy at the way the company is being chopped up.

Yesterday's announcement amounted to a cut of around three per cent of DAAMIT's global workforce. Less than a month ago, Hector himself promised a total workforce reduction of around five per cent, so there's still another 2% to go - or around 300ish people with the axe still ominously looming.

Our sources tell us that the announcement on Wednesday of the 430 cuts was preceded by a number of 'personal interviews' in the halls of the AMD meeting rooms, with plenty of security guards lurking on hand to escort unwanted employees out of the door.

While the cuts were billed as 'performance managed' out of the company, sources suggest that many people were chopped for political reasons, rather than performance.

One engineer of 10+ years experience, just the kind of chap you'd expect DAAMIT to need in its bid to get to grips with its latest tech line, was bundled out rather ungraciously with no 'performance related' cause to speak of.

Hector's gopher, Dirk Meyer, did let everyone know, in an internal memo, that employees were being encouraged to apply for other positions inside the company. However, in the next sentence, he reiterated that the company has a hiring freeze in place right now, so such hiring was rather unlikely. Joined up management?

It seems that the bloodshed is far from over at AMD and ATI, and the ongoing political struggles inside the company are going to continue to have ramifications both internally and in terms of products. Unhappy employees do not good products make. µ

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