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Interesting. But correct me if I'm wrong, but don't they need to play catch-up with other chip makers? Won't firing people impede that?
by codeDruid 3y ago
Interesting. But correct me if I'm wrong, but don't they need to play catch-up with other chip makers? Won't firing people impede that?
- blinkingled 3y agoLayoffs are always bad but playing catch up with other chip makers requires a very specific set of skills and depending on who/what department(s) they laid off it may not necessarily affect the eventuality.
- mastax 3y agoAMD is a way leaner company and yet made better products.
- meepmorp 3y agoAMD is fabless (GF was spun off years back), so despite them both being in the x86 CPU business, they're not in easily comparable situations.
- mastax 3y agoI am aware. Even Intel's design teams are fat.
- AnthonyMouse 3y agoBut it wasn't their design teams that caused their products to be worse, it was their fabs.
- UncleOxidant 3y agoThat's debatable. Intel's design teams aren't as nimble or as lean as AMD's. That means it takes longer for Intel to create a new design to send to the fabs. Yes, Intel is a bit behind on process, but seems to be catching up. I think the bigger problem is on CPU design side because AMD seems to be much more productive by taking more advantage of design automation.
- AnthonyMouse 3y agoIntel's designs are basically competitive on performance, even when they were stuck on 14nm against TSMC 7nm, at the cost of higher power consumption. Which is down to the better power efficiency of TSMC's process. Their reputation has taken quite a hit because they're used to charging a premium, so they've been selling hardware with similar performance and worse power consumption for higher prices than AMD. Which isn't a good look. But it's not because they have a bad design, it's because AMD's design is just as good with a superior fab. A lot of people credit AMD with chiplets, which really was a clever way to deal with fulfilling their contract with GF, and has a major advantage for server chips where they have a large number of compute dice. But the mobile chips and some of the desktop APUs are a single die and don't seem to be suffering for it. It's not the reason the Ryzen 7 5800X uses so much less power than the equivalent Core i7.
- chickenpotpie 3y agoI don't think that less employees/layoffs directly correlates with less productivity. As the mythical man month has teached us: what one engineer can do in one month, two engineers can do in a year. It's possible that Intel is trying to reduce the amount of decision makers and streamline their process. Disclaimer: I despise companies that do layoffs and I am not a proponent of them, but I do acknowledge that companies do them for a reason.
- 908B64B197 3y agoMost of these layoffs are "Non-Technical staff". [0] [1] [2] [3] [4] [0] https://interviewing.io/blog/2022-layoffs-engineers-vs-other-departments https://interviewing.io/blog/2022-layoffs-engineers-vs-other... [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-01-24/tech-layoffs-are-hitting-diversity-and-inclusion-jobs-hard https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-01-24/tech-layo... [2] https://www.computerworld.com/article/3690309/about-those-tech-layoff-headlines-most-companies-arent-firing-it-workers.html https://www.computerworld.com/article/3690309/about-those-te... [3] https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2023-03-07-do-recent-layoffs-mean-the-tech-talent-crunch-is-over https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2023-03-0... [4] https://techreport.com/news/3493451/microsoft-layoffs-ethics-and-society-team-fired/ https://techreport.com/news/3493451/microsoft-layoffs-ethics...
- MikeTheGreat 3y ago> As the mythical man month has teached us: what one engineer can do in one month, two engineers can do in a year. I don't remember that being the main idea behind the Mythical Man Month. I think the major take aways were more like "Adding people to a late project makes it later" and "Some tasks don't get faster with more people. For example, you can't get 9 women to birth a baby in 1 month". Other tasks _do_ get faster with more people (doubling the number of people digging a ditch will result in the ditch getting dug faster).
- UncleOxidant 3y ago> I don't think that less employees/layoffs directly correlates with less productivity. True, AMD is able to spin new CPU designs with quite a few less people because they seem to be better at leveraging design automation. Jim Keller went to Intel to try to improve their design process and make it more productive, but it doesn't seem like he was able to turn the supertanker in a more productive direction. Lots of cultural inertia there.
- MuffinFlavored 3y ago> Won't firing people impede that? Not if their upper management has deemed the output/productivity of those employees "not worth it" from a business perspective, or not if the employees they are firing are in the wrong department/organization for that goal.
- mywittyname 3y agoI think most of us have witnessed important/critical people being let go during layoffs.
- MuffinFlavored 3y agoI feel like CEO/board/executives initiate "we want to lay off X people", they send it down the ladder through management. One manager says to another "hey, you have to pick at least 2 people you want to lay off" for example. I don't know how important/critical you are in the grand scheme of things if your manager selected to choose you instead of somebody else on the team. That's all if your manager doesn't also get scrapped/if a manager above your manager didn't choose your entire team to get scrapped, etc.
- nikanj 3y agoIf anything, firing seven layers of managers and TPS-report-manglers might free the technical staff to actually make progress, instead of sitting in meetings all day
- monocasa 3y agoAre the layoffs actually overwhelmingly hitting the seven layers of managers and TPS-report-manglers?