AMD Reviews in Boston, MA Area

Pros

resources - great people - great technology -

Cons

review process needs to work better

Advice to Senior Management

disconnect performance and ranking -

Pros

Interesting work, smart people, free coffee.

Cons

Sometimes a bit of a scramble figuring out what products to make.

Advice to Senior Management

Don't change too many things at once, the grunts can't keep up.

Pros

The paycheck is good.

Different teams are open and honest in their communication with each other; it is less "silo"-ed than some places.

Cons

It's the first job I didn't love. It's the first job I needed to work weekends just to stay afloat.

AMD puts each employee in a little box. Once they find out you can do something, you get to keep doing that one thing forever. You may be promoted and get a raise, but your actual role will not change. Professional development? They've heard of it...

Management is variable. Some of the management usually makes decent decisions. Some efforts that should have been achievable, instead have been derailed by unproductive political battles. So it can be a free for all. Where's the adult supervision? It's a good place if you are a politician.

The company nearly went broke during the 2008-2009 recession.

Advice to Senior Management

Cease operations and free the wage slaves? Who knows what can save this co. from its 1990s business model, internal politics, and competitors who are stronger on the high end and nimbler on the low end?

Pros

Great People to work with

Cons

uncertain environment of industry creates some consternation

Advice to Senior Management

Great relationship with employees. Great support and encouragement to employees. Employees are well compensated and very fairly and competitively compensated.

Pros

AMD is a good place to work. There are very few walls between departments. People are generally supportive.. especially once you have that face to face meeting.

Cons

Sometime, it is hard to change from doing things the old way. But generally, people can be convinced.

Advice to Senior Management

Becareful not to focus so much on the old PC market that we get left behind.

Pros

Interesting and challenging work at the forefront of the CPU and GPU markets. Lots of opportunities to learn about the latest technologies.

Cons

Rough economy and poor execution on the CPU side of the business has prevented the company from providing proper compensation and benefits to retain important staff.

Advice to Senior Management

Management needs to see that compensation and benefits are improved to prevent losing even more engineering staff to our competitors.

Pros

Flexible work hours
Managers are quite generous on time off
AMD supports higher education - process for tuition reimbursement is quite easy

Cons

Office is in the middle of no where, at least 2 miles drive to get to any shop - less choices for lunch.
Lack of bonus, benefit cuts (the last 2 years)

Advice to Senior Management

Need more employee all hands. I don't have any idea how things are going except for my own team.
Need to make code names simpler. The purpose is to confuse the media but the media seems to figure out eventually but the employees are still confused.

Pros

There is a good company culture in the balance of work & personal life with a sense of united spirit in competition against AMD's competitors.

Cons

On the down side the company has struggled financialy the last couple years of years with a resulting drag on salaries & promotions.

Advice to Senior Management

Keep the faith. Keep investing. Don't let the companies financial struggles become an excuse for holding up employees career progression.

Pros

very skilled and smart and intelligent people. if management manages well, good project and good company to work for. has many project and many opportunities to capitalise on

Cons

very bad management and too many wrongly executed projects cause morale to be very low. sometimes management has no clue what is happening and make many mis cues to cause the company to fail.

Advice to Senior Management

just execute well and make decisions that you will stand by. do not make decisions that are not based on well founded research.

Pros

Good Pay , housing for interns paid in half, dental, vision and health covered too! The Boston design center have good amount of young people in a flat hierarchy structure. It makes very easy to work with everybody, people is really friendly and reply to each other queries within minutes. There used to be free coffee, cafeteria inside, and very close to building entrances parking lot. The center is accesible right off the highway, very fast commute. All the cubicles have a huge dual screen setup, system support is really fast getting back at you and there is a pretty forest you can walk on those frustrated days with the CAD tools :)

Cons

company is lossing a lot of money several quarters in a row and the stock is very depreciated

Advice to Senior Management

make more successful microprocessors design, and see them all the way to completion (do not cancel the projects at the middle of them)