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Technology Stocks : Advanced Micro Devices - Moderated (AMD) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: dhellman who wrote (33232)	3/24/2001 11:31:14 AM
From: milo_morai	Respond to of 275872

I will vote to approve it also(eom)

To: dhellman who wrote (33232)	3/24/2001 1:14:46 PM
From: jcholewa	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 275872

Vote NO for Item 4!! The success of the company oft rests in the hands of the top executives. In the past year and a fraction, these people have not obviously done a great job at what they do. Marketing and Advertising have been wasted, and the ASPs of the Athlon and the success of the Duron have suffered a great deal for this (what, do you seriously think that AMD planned all along to sell their products at a 50% discount to the competition's equivalent product prices???). And the promises? * Five new mpu introductions betweek mid November and mid February? What did we get? My count was ... zero! (hrm, maybe one for the Duron-850, and you could <em>really</em> stretch it and make it three total if you included the mobile Durons 600 and 700. Which, I believe, are still overseas only. * I cannot prove this, but I'm almost certain that I heard Jerry promise a 1.50GHz Athlon by January. Of this year. * This is the big one. I cannot stress how annoying this is. Several times, I heard reiteration of the "mobile Athlon introduction in Q1". Then, of course, without warning, it was sacked and thrown into next quarter. These events took place so damned close together that I get visions of Hector saying at a press release saying: "We swear solemnly upon all the religious belief systems in the world that our next generation mobile Athlon will be introduced within this quarter. On a side note, our next generation mobile Athlon will be introduced next quarter". Clearly, Hector Ruiz does not deserve a three million dollar bonus. He's not the man who is responsible for AMD's success here. His main obvious function, that of public speaking, seems to be something at which he is incompetent. Now, the President/COO does have other, more behind the scenes, functions. I was told a number of months ago by some friends on ths inside that Ruiz is doing some truly great stuff back there where we cannot see it. Well, nothing of this has surfaced. Everything I can possibly think of that is not directly related to the design teams' or the fab teams' work has pretty much fallen apart (or at least have moved forward without getting better). Clearly, to me, Ruiz deserves no bonus, and perhaps a salary cut. As I said before, the executives were not instrumental in the success of the Company last year. The people that were are the engineers. The folks in the fabs and the design facilities have ensured that a very smoothly designed core can get a very smoothly designed ramp, one that bests the competition. Granted, most of the best engineers from that company (of which I know) quit in 2000, but I'm sure that there are many talented folk left keeping the machine purring. I suggest an alternative incentive plan. Let's see ... the total here amounts to $34,622,195. And most of the executives are fabulously wealthy multimillionaires already. So they don't need the money. And giving them more money for doing a poor job in the last year will jade them from continuing their work. It is better to reward them when they do good and punish them when they do bad. Sort of a Pavlovian conditioning setup. So, where does the money go? Allocate a third of it ($11.5m) to the "All other Vice President Incentive Program participants" group (hopefully Derrick Meyer is part of this group!), and the remaining $23m should be allocated evenly among anybody at the company who can be considered either process or design engineers. There. Money goes to the people who did the work, morale goes up because the executives are suddenly seen as the good guys for acting all robinhoody and that, and the workers stay at their jobs instead of quitting and the products start getting better on a more timely schedule. ;) Item 4 will pass, but I will write "NO" with all my strength. And the noble among you should do the same.     -JC