Pros

salary is good. benefits are good. potential for company growth

Cons

Too much favoritism. Employee performance is not properly assessed or rewarded.

Advice to Senior Management

More subjective way to assess employees. More feedback from multiple managers. recognize those with aspirations and those who achieve more through efforts, actions and those who strive and achieve higher education.

Pros

1. Incredibly smart, hardworking people
2. Strong graphics product lineup
3. (Moslty) challenging and interesting work
4. Dedication to employee career growth

Cons

1. Weak CPU products
2. Attempts to do too many things at once resulting in cancellations and roadmap changes
3. Too cash starved to invest in future technologies and initiatives
4. Time to market of CPU products is too long
5. Losing money for 3 years in a row is crushing morale

Advice to Senior Management

1. Focus on core competencies - do fewer things, but do them exceedingly well
2. Continue to cut the cruft: layoff or redeploy resources that are providing little value or are unnecessary overhead
3. Make a profit!

Pros

There is little good to be said about working for AMD. The company has no values or philosophy and believes that the way to beat Intel is to change the plan daily. The company does have a number of very good individual contributors, but this resource is squandered by layers and layers of management diluting the end deliverable.

Cons

Poor leadership and lack of company values makes for a soleless relationship

Advice to Senior Management

Sack 1/2 the (program) managers, who actually add little value

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

- good compensation and benefits
- travel opportunities, meet with clients
- the job as AE provides a good mix of software and hardware tasks
- I had a knowledgable and supportive manager

Cons

- work gets repetitive and boring
- tight deadlines all the time
- lots of overtime hours without paid
- documentations are messy sometimes

Advice to Senior Management

- when people work hard and do a good job, promote them
- make sure your PMs have some level of technical knowledge

Pros

The work environment is fairly casual and flexible. The work-life balance is also good. You get a chance to work on leading-edge semiconductor technology. Pay and benefits originally seemed competitive with what was being offered at other companies in the semiconductor industry, although some of that has been scaled back since AMD began its cost-cutting measures in late 2007. Some of those measures were temporary, however. For example, the 10% pay cut that was instituted earlier this year is set to be removed in December 2009.

Cons

Due to AMD's financial difficulties, layoffs are an ever-present concern. It also seemed like they changed their internal organizational structure quite frequently. These changes became confusing and it wasn't really clear to me how they were supposed to impact the business.

Advice to Senior Management

I don't see the point of the entire "Future is Fusion" marketing campaign. It seems like little more than buzzwords to me.

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!

Pros

I thought I was very well paid for the job I was hired for.

Cons

I found that I was limited in growth being a product development engineer. The work that I had to do was very basic and often, I felt that the group I was in was overstaffed... Too many people not enough work.
I did not like the fact that there were too many mini leads, leads between the individual contributor and the actual manger.

Advice to Senior Management

I would encourage to limit the number of management layers.

Pros

There is lot of challenging and interesting work that you can find in AMD. You can also get an opportunity to work with other leading companies in different related industries. Work culture is good, flexible timings, option to work remotely. Think about it this way, if you land a good position in a good group your work can directly impact mainstream hardware and software industry.

Cons

Work culture, compensation, opportunity to grow can highly depend on the group that you work for. Below average compensation for Software professionals.

Advice to Senior Management

Keep up the good work of bringing in new and exciting products that are best suited for the dynamics of the current market. Strong moral and business ethics are huge plus points of how this company functions, try to capitalize on them. Good people, good people, good people is a 3 step formula to success, please retain them.

Pros

The microprocessor designs are on the cutting edge, so it is technically interesting. Coworkers are generally friendly and technically savvy.

Cons

Raises are poor or nonexistent. There is a culture among management of disparaging employees' performance and finding excuses not to give raises or promotions or even pats on the back. This can foster an attitude of not really trusting any coworkers, as compared to other tech companies where I've been where people do a better job of pulling together.

I was a staff engineer at my previous company, with the corresponding years of experience, but took a position at AMD as a senior engineer because of what I believed were growth opportunities, as well as the promise of raises, promotions, and bonuses. Instead, I have not received a raise or promotion in three years, and have been given a 10% "temporary" pay cut due to the recession. In addition they have cut 401(k) and sabbatical benefits.

Criticism is quick to come when you make a honest mistake, even the first time when you're learning something new, but if you do something outstanding or above and beyond the call of duty, you're told it was only what was expected of you. Between that and the low pay, it can be a very discouraging place to work. It's not a place where very many high achievers stay for very long.

Advice to Senior Management

If you would pay better you would attract and retain better people. If you want to remain average to below average in pay (and at the same time tell your employees how well you are compensating them), you will never overtake Intel.