AMD Reviews

Former Employee – worked at AMD

Pros – Coworkers were smart and dedicated to problem solving and resolving issues, and attempting to come up with solutions to common problems.

Cons – Management was terrible at working with, and listening to the people that worked for them. They had their own agenda which included only themselves, and how much of a bonus they can pull for themselves at the expense of others.

Advice to Senior Management – Start listening to your employees. Treat them fairly and with respect. Work with other teams in a fluid manner, and stop butting heads with the other teams that make the orginizaton work. It takes effort from everyone to make the company work. Not just your convoluted ideas that you think might work so you can get a bigger bonus. Stop taking everything as a personal attack when something does not go your way.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at AMD

Pros – Grossly understaffed, so everyone picks up big chunk of work
People are friendly.
Relaxed culture, although outings have dramatically reduced in last few years.
Exposed to cutting edge technology.

Cons – Middle management don't take any decisions.
Top heavy
Reviews are unfair.
Money situation always tight...small pie, too many mouths to feed. Money that trickles down to engineers is pennies on the dollar.

Advice to Senior Management – Decisions are seldom taken by middle management. Bureaucratic system that moves at snail's pace on important decisions. Even though key folks are leaving company, management has shown little signs of concern. It validates theory among engineers that they are seen just as a resource.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at AMD

Pros – No pressure like Intel. Good engineers but management team is horrible. Look at the CTOs they are having. Senior management who manges the CPy does not knwo what is going on. CTOs do not have a clue on what is going on. Look at the calibre of the managemnt team...

Cons – No Reward like Intel. Stock does not move. Look at the stocks, it only moves if AMD sell the land or sell some assets. Asset free is the only way it can make money finally it is going to lose all its assets including good engineers....tick tock ...tick tock...where is the CTOs they are travelling....

Advice to Senior Management – Please put people who underatand CPU. Look at the people who are driving CPUs....

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at AMD

Pros – Company growth opportunities exist, but we have major leadership issues which range from incompetence, to ignorance, and to ego problems.

Cons – People don't get rewarded for thier efforts but by whom they know and click with. Basically at AMD to get ahead, its all about playing the game 150% of the time. The actual job performance really doesn't matter.

Advice to Senior Management – You're too heavily loaded on the upper management side, and too lightly loaded on the worker bee side. You're primary problem is that you do not adequately validate your product, and customers end up validating it for you which delays your program launches. Fix these two key problems and you will resolve most of your roadblocks to success.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at AMD

Pros – *Work/life balance is great.
*Do not have to be creative as you can let Intel do the marketing for you.
*Before Hector, a fun family environment to work in
*Intel is hated by so many of it's customers, they run to you for help and pray AMD never goes away
*Despite a very incompetent egocentric dysfunctional executive team, somehow, you'll like working with your colleagues - not so much inter-team fighting

Cons – *Lack of a sane vision (fusion is not sane)
*Political infighting is unparalleled
*To heavily focused in Austin. The Austin talent pool has long been tapped out
*Most AMDers who work in Austin hate technology and treat it like a 9-5 government job, and forget everything at 4:58pm
*It still has so many open bleeding sores from the Hector years, we wondering if she'll live
*The CEO doesn't like to travel and feels uncomfortable in front of customers
*Intel owns the x86 license and will always no exactly how many processors you sell
*If Intel couldn't convince people to change their software for Itanium, what makes AMD think they customers will change their software for their "fusion"initiative

Advice to Senior Management – Hire more people in Silicon Valley where the heart of the industry still is. Listen to your customers. Execute. Make upper executives stop thinking about themselves so much.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at AMD

Pros – The low level engineers are friendly and good people.

Cons – Long hours, constant work over holidays, weekends, and evenings.
Low pay, few perks.
Egotistical, stubborn managers, some that belong to a tightly-knit "old boys club".
Zero attention to employee career/knowledge development.

Advice to Senior Management – Allow your employees to rate their managers. Without feedback going both ways, the relationship between management and engineers will deteriorate.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at AMD

Pros – Work life balance is about the ONLY area remaining where things are still OK at AMD. Otherwise there is nothing left for me here other than a decent commute.

Cons – No Innovation.
No potential for advancement.
Every job is being exported to India while all the competent folks I used to work with were laid off in the technical tracks.
Marketing runs the show, and makes stupid decisions based on made up projections for future sales.
The "Vision" and "Fusion" campaigns are a laugh, and our customers don't know we exist.

Advice to Senior Management – Let's return to innovation and allow our software division to be unbridled and unshackled from the chains of marketing whim!

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at AMD

Pros – Peers! There are good people at AMD....Just none are at the senior management position. Flexible work hours is great. If you are one of the many unfortunate people that need to interface with overseas manufacturing, you work hours will increase significantly (significant night time hours).

Cons – No hope of career advancement. Good performance is not rewarded. None existent review process and promotion guideline. If they exist, it is most certainly not followed. Only way to get promoted and rewarded is to be the "favorite" of senior management. A lot of focus is on trying to impress the senior management rather than what's more important. Lot of political "power struggle"

Advice to Senior Management – Just as Jerry Sanders used to say..."people first, and profit will follow"

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at AMD

Pros – - interesting products, being #2 doesn't mean your product is that bad
- opportunities for internal transfer
- challenging problems in both product and research work
- generally smart coworkers
- feeling of a shared goal / decent morale
- fairly open to suggestions for product improvement

Cons – - company in permanent financial trouble; don't count on a bonus
- low-grade work environment (cube farm with buzzing fluorescents)
- some projects get cancelled, sucks if yours does
- missing recognition even with excellent reviews
- easy to get stuck with uninteresting, long-term maintenance tasks if you're not careful to avoid them immediately

Advice to Senior Management – Make sure all of your low-level managers actually care about the employees.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at AMD

Pros – Cutting edge technology, lots of experienced people to learn from, benefits were great, salary was very competitive. Work culture was very relaxed, no high pressure deadlines on projects. Very extensive IT and compute support. Tool licenses were never an issue (what a delight).

Cons – People with lots of experience who are closed to listening to anyone coming from the outside. Very narrow focus on how designs should be implemented. Old design flows that are hardly used by the rest of the industry. Even within the company ATI is miles ahead of AMD in ASIC flows for low power cpus.

Advice to Senior Management – Listen to the people at the bottom.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend