AMD Lays Off 10% of Its Workers and Modifies Its Strategy

The new CEO of Advanced Micro Devices did say it wanted to make some changes to how AMD operated and, sure enough, the company announced the first major one.

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) will enact a restructuring plan whose ultimate purpose is an overall more competitive and productive business.

Unfortunately, quite a few people will welcome the new strategy with misgivings, since it relies on laying off a number of workers.

10% of all workers worldwide will have their employment contracts terminated.

This will supposedly rebalance AMD's global workforce skill sets and improve productivity, while also reducing, by a great deal, expenses.

About $10 million (7.23 million Euro) operational savings/restructuring plan savings will be made in the fourth quarter of 2011 alone, while $118 million (85.40 million Euro) will be saved in 2012.

Adding to that the predicted $90 million savings in operating expenses, this brings next year's savings figure to over $200 million (144.75 million Euro).

“Reducing our cost structure and focusing our global workforce on key growth opportunities will strengthen AMD's competitiveness and allow us to aggressively pursue a balanced set of strategic activities designed to accelerate future growth,” said Rory Read, AMD president and CEO.

“The actions we are taking are designed to improve our ability to consistently address the needs of our global customer base and stake leadership positions in lower power, emerging markets and the cloud.”

The majority of the restructuring actions will be carried out during this quarter (October-December, 2011).

Obviously the people losing their jobs will have double the reason to be disillusioned, since it is happening so close to the holidays.

Then again, AMD isn't the first company to take this course of action this year and, indeed, it actually took quite a bit longer to start laying people off than other corporations, so there is a silver lining, of sorts.