Greediest corporate rant in a published interview of 2008... so far:
"***Electronic Business: Do you plan to keep that 80% United States, 20% offshore mix?
Rodgers: It'll shift over time. We will do our expansion offshore to limit our investment in fabs. We will hit a 50:50 point sometime in the future. That will be a few years out.
Electronic Business: A general asset-lite strategy, then?
Rodgers: Exactly.
Electronic Business: If you were starting Cypress today, would you locate it in San Jose, or would you locate it somewhere with a lower cost of living, somewhere that offers a more business-friendly environment?
Rodgers: I just wrote a letter to the editor of the Wall Street Journal. What it said was California is a very hostile place to do business. From Cypress' start in 1982 through the mid-1990s, with the exception of our sales force, we were pretty much 100% California. Today, we have 8000 employees, 7000 of whom are not in California, and we are reducing our footprint there rapidly. It's not just uneconomical to do business here, it is an outright business-hostile environment.
If you go to 47 of the states or virtually any country in the world and say, "I will write a check for a billion dollars to build a plant, to employ people, to create economic benefit in jobs and taxes for your entity, what will you do for me?" You'll get answers like free training, road construction, tax holidays. In California—and I don't know what you want to print—the dumb bastards running the state actually charge you sales tax on your investment. So if I buy equipment for a fab in California, I actually have to pay 6.5% sales tax for the privilege of being here. They don't get it. They refuse to get it.
They think they have a birthright somehow to Silicon Valley. What they don't understand is that they have already driven the silicon out of Silicon Valley. Most fabs are gone. Cypress doesn't have a fab in Silicon Valley anymore. LSI doesn't have a fab in Silicon Valley. Intel was supposed to shut its last fab in Silicon Valley and they just told them they have an 18-month reprieve—and they used the word "reprieve."
There is no silicon left in Silicon Valley, and we've got politicians who spend their time talking about legislating trans fats out of our diets and other world-shaping things like that. Meanwhile their growth of government spending is preposterous. We have a Republican governor who is Republican in name only. Our budget's in trouble in California. And by the way, I'll say the same thing for George Bush. He's an economic disaster. He's about as Republican as Al Gore is when it comes to running the economy in a frugal way. You can say what you want, you can go on the 6 o'clock news and grandstand, but businesses have to—are morally obliged to—make decisions in the best interest of their shareholders and that is not California right now. I don't think the arrogant people in this state are going to get it until they wake up one day and the goose that laid the golden egg has waddled across the Nevada border.
Electronic Business: So what are you looking for from the next administration?
Rodgers: It used to be that every time I would get outraged, I would write an op ed for the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times, but I don't care anymore. I have concluded that, and I'll use a Reagan phrase here, government is a brake on the economy. It's a drag. It's a parasite. Therefore, I go where government leaves me alone and leaves my shareholders alone. And by leaving me alone, I mean two things: I want government out of my pocket and off of my back. And California is both in my pocket and on my back. So I look for places that want business, and there are many places in the world and in the United States that want business. We have sites all over the United States, not in California, and we have sites all over the world and we simply put our investments where we are wanted and that's doing what's required to encourage business to locate there.
Electronic Business: So you'd be looking for a more general acceptance of tech and its importance to the United States?
Rodgers: Yes, and there are a lot of places where that happens. We have a large design center in Mississippi, and they were real happy to get IC designers there. We have a large design center in Bangalore, India, another one in Hyderabad, India, and they were real happy to have companies come in, train people, give jobs, and pay wages higher than the local scale, creating local wealth. And that's where we are investing our money right now, not in California.
Electronic Business: Do you see Cypress' near-term growth being more on a global scale than it is in the US?
Rodgers: Asia-Pac, in particular. I just shifted the first executive vice president, meaning a person who reports directly to me, to Shanghai. He's got 120 people working for him and that's just the kickoff. So yes, we are moving toward Asia-Pac, and that means design, manufacturing, product engineering, not just sales. That's where the business is going. We now export 65% of what we make. It used to be most of our stuff was used in the US and we exported about a third. Now it's the other way around. ***"
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