Interesting impressions about Hector Ruiz in a post from the Motley Fool. If the author is right, Intel investors should hope he stays at AMD for a long, long time. FWIW:
Tec,
Hector Ruiz's MO or resume in Motorola is a very sad one. His greatest attribute was knowing when to leave before the buisness went South. Typically what he did was the following when he became in charge of a new buisness within Motorola:
1. Look at where the major expenses of the buisness were.
2. Cut expenses drastically, in the short run this made him look very profitable.
3. Remove or ignore key technical peoples advice, most left and Hector replaced these individuals with people who knew nothing of the buisness.
4. Create a massive "new idea" which made him look like a visionary and staff it with incompetent people.
5. Change jobs, when he saw the future potential buisness going South.
Contrary to popular opinion, Hector has never created a buisness success............Never..........ever, other than his own personal success (which by the way is always the 1st and last thing he speaks of).
Jerry has always pursued people with technical excellence. I say pursue cause he obviously has hired people who weren't technically good or they misread the technical tea leaves. AMD under Jerry would reward quickly "perceived performers" and just as quickly demote "under or non-performers", this is well known in the industry.
At least one can argue Jerry attracted and "listened" to "good" technical people. What is most disturbing about Hector, is his total disbelief, acknowledgement, insensitivity and care of good technical personell. Hector spends a lot of energy dreaming of the buisness roadmap, which he should do. The problem comes executing on his vision in two ways (from past data):
1. His vision is too gradiose such that it cannot be executed in the required time or/and staffing.
2. Hiring of good technical leads is largely viewed as unimportant by Hector and is largely viewed as "just filling in a slot" in his grandiose vision. Consequently as you may guess anyone does get hired.
Hector has also known to come into an organization and literally kill off strong, profitable, and large growth buisnesses for ideallogical reasons............why.........no one seems to know.
I also believe a company or large organization will take on the charactersitics of its top leaders. The type of individuals Hector attracts are ones who tend to use people, there tends to be a harsh and intolerant enviroment, and paranoia (personal not technical paranoia) tends to grow. Decisions tend to be made in a rapid fire type of scenario, though in the short term this impresses people in believing there is true leadership in the long run it wears down people and they begin to understand that the leadership itself doesn't know what to do since they change there decisions so often.
Hector, like all leaders, hires his cronies. Good leaders will and should do this as well, however unlike good leaders Hector has yet to display the quality to accomodate and bring in the "non-team" player because of this individual specific needed contribution to the company. In other words Hector has yet to display a bending or shaping of his own personality to keep "good technical" people. In large Hector has driven away good technical people.
In my opinion, once Hector gets control of AMD, one needs to watch for the following:
1. Good key technical people at high levels will start leaving the company. The reasons these people give for leaving the company will always sound legitamite.
2. Grandiose vision will be given higher priority than buisness execution. One will need to watch the company closely for signs of this. It is easy to give grandiose visions, since deadlines and specific goals are fuzzy. It is often difficult or impossible to tell if grandiose visions are in trouble or not until it is too late to do anything about it. Good management will give the investors specific measurements to measure there progress/success/failure. In my opinion what you will see from a Hector led company is these measureing points will be fuzzy.
3. Once it is deemed some project is in trouble rather than killing it and admitting it was mismanaged and/or mistaffed there will be a fire drill mentallity..........get it out at all cost.
Positive side:
The CEO of a company, I believe gets way too much credit and too much blame for a companies success or failure. The only time I would say that we can say a CEO did a good/bad job is after 10 to 20 years of leading a company or one who turned around a company on a negative trend after, let us say in 3 to 5 years. AMD is presently Jerry's company and whether Jerry accidentally or strategically staffed AMD with good people I do not know. However I can say they presently have good people. AMD presently has buisness momentum, this maybe large enough to overcome the negatives of Hector. Another thing is Hector may have learned from his past failures, though I doubt it. Since Hector previous failures are so large and numerous and he has learned from them he maybe a good CEO..........but again I doubt it. Another good thing is since Hector will take over in 2002, it will take him at least 2 years to ruin AMD (extrapolated from previous buisnesses he has led). So AMD investors have at least 4 years before Hectoritis sets in.
BTW, I realize the above are opinions, but they are opinions generated from talking with a number of people for a number of years.
1tht
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