To lose one senior executive may be regarded as misfortune, to lose two looks like carelessness. AMD has lost not one but two senior executives recently, and both were not people you want to see go.
As the Wall Street Journal reported, Bob Feldstein has left AMD to join Nvidia. Bob was the point guy for the console development world, and since AMD has at least the GPUs for all three next generation consoles, some CPUs too, you could say Bob is good at what he does. He is, and how AMD let him go is an open question, but we won’t comment on their HR choices of late. Yes we will.
As you can see, from Cyrix to Calxeda
If you think that one is bad, the loss of Ben Williams to Calxeda is quite possibly worse. Ben’s last position at AMD was Corporate VP and GM of APAC, and a corporate fellow, not exactly a lightweight position to have jump ship. He is one of the original Opteron guys, coming from Cyrix if you know your x86 history, and someone who knows the business inside and out. This too is not a loss to take lightly.
SemiAccurate considers both Ben Williams and Bob Feldstein as people who do a really damn good job, and AMD losing them is not good for the company. The circumstances of their departures are not known to us, but AMD should not have let either happen. There is no good to come of this.S|A
