6 ms·

She is credited for turning around the entire company from bankruptcy to now eclipsing Intel. Out of admiration and curiosity, how does one go about doing that?

by imranq 5y ago

tomnipotent 5y ago
> eclipsing Intel AMD had 2020 revenues of $9.76bln to Intel's $77.87bln. This eclipse is going to take awhile. I'm really excited for the results.
- samhwr 5y ago
  >> eclipsing Intel > AMD had 2020 revenues of $9.76bln to Intel's $77.87bln. Ever heard of a solar eclipse? ;)
- arp242 5y ago
  Intel also has a much broader product line; when people talk about "Intel vs. AMD" they're mostly talking about CPUs, and it would be fairer to compare the revenue only from those parts of the Intel and AMD businesses. Right now it seems that Intel has roughly a 60% market share of x86 CPUs vs. ~40% for AMD. I don't now what that is in terms of $ revenue. Intel was never 8 times bigger; AMD has actually always retained a respectable market share; ~20% market share is nothing to sneer at.
  - tomnipotent 5y ago
    AMD also has GPU, embedded, and custom (like Xbox/PS5). Don't get me wrong, I'm an AMD fan since the day I bought my first Athlon and am happy for their success. Good time to be a customer.
    - arp242 5y ago
      Of course, but Intel has more of it, so if you're comparing CPU revenue you should look only at that part of their businesses.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
silisili 5y ago
I'm not taking away from her, at all. She's kicking ass. But giving the CEO all the credit is unfair to everyone who participated. Keller and Papermaster are equally if not more important in this turnaround. That said, if Su had a hand in having these two on board, then yes she can have most of the credit.
- roenxi 5y ago
  Business is the pointy end of civilisation where humanity deals with the real world. If the universe was fair then business could also afford to be fair. But it is not. Lisa has absolutely got the power to cause catastrophic ruin to AMD through a couple of small decisions and there is nobody who can stop her. The reality that she didn't do that is just more important than the fact that Papermaster or Keller are technical geniuses and work hard. There are 8 billion people in the world, we are not short on technical geniuses. There are something like 8,000 people out there who are natural born one-in-a-million geniuses at CPU design, Su "just" has to find a few 10s of them for AMD to get insanely good results. There is an eternal shortage of people who are both powerful, good decision makers and capable of recognising a 1:1,000,000 genius.
  - cto_of_antifa 5y ago
    The implications of that handwavy first sentence are bad, to be honest. Why is the end-all-be-all of human existence corporate? What essential nature of the universe makes sweatshop labor necessary?
  - vmlagw 5y ago
    There is an artificial shortage of good CEOs. Most CEOs get to their position via nepotism of some sort. If there are 8,000 people who can design excellent CPUs, there are perhaps 1,000,000 people who can recognize such talent. It is easier to recognize a great painting than to paint it. I'm surprised that HN so often lionizes those who organize the work of others.
    - WanderPanda 5y ago
mixmastamyk 5y ago
You get your company 'firing on all cylinders' while your main competitor falters, a crypto currency boom starts while the government creates trillions of dollars out of thin air. Combination of skill, nerves of steel, and plenty of luck.
NonEUCitizen 5y ago
Be an engineer, and do not defer to an MBA (nor other "business types") on business decisions: https://youtu.be/xxcJzv_sgHg?t=837 https://youtu.be/xxcJzv_sgHg?t=837
- Jensson 5y ago
  Yeah, subject matter experts who learns business seems like the best leaders. That describes most successful founders as well. The hard part is finding those who cares enough about business to get good at it and not just continue being an expert.
  - deaddodo 5y ago
    That’s overly simplistic. Everyone of AMD’s CEOs was an engineer; not an MBA[1]: * Jerry Sanders | 1969—2002 | Founder, electrical engineer * Hector Ruiz | 2002—2008 | Electrical engineer * Dirk Meyer | 2008—2011 | Computer engineer * Rory Read | 2011—2014 | Information Systems * Lisa Su | 2014—present | Electrical engineer And yet only two of them (Jerry and Lisa) are considered truly successful at running the company and one decent at keeping things afloat (Rory). The real answer is much more complex and has to do with Intel’s constant monopolistic actions against AMD; some internal struggles (overheating issues early on, bad laptop support, spinning off business divisions right before they were set to be wildly valuable [Adreno, Spansion, etc], wildly overpaying for ATI, etc). While Jerry and Lisa are both great CEOs for the company, and all credit belongs to them for their leadership; AMD’s woes were simply more complex than that. 1 - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Micro_Devices https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Micro_Devices
    - syshum 5y ago
      I dont know much about all of the CEO's of AMD. However the grandparent comment said not to defer to MBA's not that the CEO was an MBA What i have seen in other companies is that even if the CEO is a subject matter expert, they get to the level of CEO then start deferring business matters to the MBA's who are viewed as subject matter experts of business. This weak leadership and difference to MBA's often leads to extreme short term thinking and lack of vision centered around quarterly probability statements not around core competences or a vision for making the companies product good
gumby 5y ago
It’s a great question that is relatively simple to answer (but hard to do). First, you need good material to work with. This is why it will be hard/impossible to fix WeWork. Sadly it may also make Intel hard/impossible to fix — lots of great stuff but deeply embedded in a matrix of mediocrity. same for HP (poor choices at the top didn’t help) and probably why google can’t be fixed — even more than Intel they have a lot of excellent resources and assets but they are embedded, not in mediocrity, but a fucked up management culture. And they haven’t had their near death experience yet. Second: have enough domain knowledge to be able to identify and nurture the good stuff. One exception to this was Gerstner at IBM (at the time I derided him as “the cookie guy”). He famously visited most of IBM around the world and then his grand plan was: “actually things are great — let’s not make any changes”. In reality he shook up the management culture but let most the tech people keep teching. That righted the ship. Sadly he was not followed by successful CEOs, some of whom were otherwise admirable. Third: be lucky the right way. Sometimes a company won’t catch a break (e.g. being a stagecoach maker today) but if there is a trend, or even better a phase change in the market you can take advantage of, take advantage of it. This is the “lucky generals” theory. Lisa Su is a consummate techie but she uses her brilliance cleverly: she can match what’s going on inside the company with external needs, and channel the marketing and sales people to address it in the right way. Sometimes you can’t pull it off. Hector Ruiz was a wizard at Motorola yet somehow he could pull it off at AMD. I couldn’t understand why. OTOH look at someone like Gil Amelio. He only got one thing right at Apple, which was to fire himself and bring back Steve Jobs. But that was an important thing.

She is credited for turning around the entire company from bankruptcy to now eclipsing Intel. Out of admiration and curiosity, how does one go about doing that?

by imranq 5y ago

She is credited for turning around the entire company from bankruptcy to now eclipsing Intel. Out of admiration and curiosity, how does one go about doing that?

tomnipotent 5y ago

> eclipsing Intel AMD had 2020 revenues of $9.76bln to Intel's $77.87bln. This eclipse is going to take awhile. I'm really excited for the results.

samhwr 5y ago
>> eclipsing Intel > AMD had 2020 revenues of $9.76bln to Intel's $77.87bln. Ever heard of a solar eclipse? ;)
arp242 5y ago
Intel also has a much broader product line; when people talk about "Intel vs. AMD" they're mostly talking about CPUs, and it would be fairer to compare the revenue only from those parts of the Intel and AMD businesses. Right now it seems that Intel has roughly a 60% market share of x86 CPUs vs. ~40% for AMD. I don't now what that is in terms of $ revenue. Intel was never 8 times bigger; AMD has actually always retained a respectable market share; ~20% market share is nothing to sneer at.
- tomnipotent 5y ago
  AMD also has GPU, embedded, and custom (like Xbox/PS5). Don't get me wrong, I'm an AMD fan since the day I bought my first Athlon and am happy for their success. Good time to be a customer.
  - arp242 5y ago
    Of course, but Intel has more of it, so if you're comparing CPU revenue you should look only at that part of their businesses.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

silisili 5y ago

I'm not taking away from her, at all. She's kicking ass. But giving the CEO all the credit is unfair to everyone who participated. Keller and Papermaster are equally if not more important in this turnaround. That said, if Su had a hand in having these two on board, then yes she can have most of the credit.

roenxi 5y ago
Business is the pointy end of civilisation where humanity deals with the real world. If the universe was fair then business could also afford to be fair. But it is not. Lisa has absolutely got the power to cause catastrophic ruin to AMD through a couple of small decisions and there is nobody who can stop her. The reality that she didn't do that is just more important than the fact that Papermaster or Keller are technical geniuses and work hard. There are 8 billion people in the world, we are not short on technical geniuses. There are something like 8,000 people out there who are natural born one-in-a-million geniuses at CPU design, Su "just" has to find a few 10s of them for AMD to get insanely good results. There is an eternal shortage of people who are both powerful, good decision makers and capable of recognising a 1:1,000,000 genius.
- cto_of_antifa 5y ago
  The implications of that handwavy first sentence are bad, to be honest. Why is the end-all-be-all of human existence corporate? What essential nature of the universe makes sweatshop labor necessary?
- vmlagw 5y ago
  There is an artificial shortage of good CEOs. Most CEOs get to their position via nepotism of some sort. If there are 8,000 people who can design excellent CPUs, there are perhaps 1,000,000 people who can recognize such talent. It is easier to recognize a great painting than to paint it. I'm surprised that HN so often lionizes those who organize the work of others.
  - WanderPanda 5y ago

mixmastamyk 5y ago

You get your company 'firing on all cylinders' while your main competitor falters, a crypto currency boom starts while the government creates trillions of dollars out of thin air. Combination of skill, nerves of steel, and plenty of luck.

NonEUCitizen 5y ago

Be an engineer, and do not defer to an MBA (nor other "business types") on business decisions: https://youtu.be/xxcJzv_sgHg?t=837 https://youtu.be/xxcJzv_sgHg?t=837

Jensson 5y ago
Yeah, subject matter experts who learns business seems like the best leaders. That describes most successful founders as well. The hard part is finding those who cares enough about business to get good at it and not just continue being an expert.
- deaddodo 5y ago
  That’s overly simplistic. Everyone of AMD’s CEOs was an engineer; not an MBA[1]: * Jerry Sanders | 1969—2002 | Founder, electrical engineer * Hector Ruiz | 2002—2008 | Electrical engineer * Dirk Meyer | 2008—2011 | Computer engineer * Rory Read | 2011—2014 | Information Systems * Lisa Su | 2014—present | Electrical engineer And yet only two of them (Jerry and Lisa) are considered truly successful at running the company and one decent at keeping things afloat (Rory). The real answer is much more complex and has to do with Intel’s constant monopolistic actions against AMD; some internal struggles (overheating issues early on, bad laptop support, spinning off business divisions right before they were set to be wildly valuable [Adreno, Spansion, etc], wildly overpaying for ATI, etc). While Jerry and Lisa are both great CEOs for the company, and all credit belongs to them for their leadership; AMD’s woes were simply more complex than that. 1 - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Micro_Devices https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Micro_Devices
  - syshum 5y ago
    I dont know much about all of the CEO's of AMD. However the grandparent comment said not to defer to MBA's not that the CEO was an MBA What i have seen in other companies is that even if the CEO is a subject matter expert, they get to the level of CEO then start deferring business matters to the MBA's who are viewed as subject matter experts of business. This weak leadership and difference to MBA's often leads to extreme short term thinking and lack of vision centered around quarterly probability statements not around core competences or a vision for making the companies product good

gumby 5y ago

It’s a great question that is relatively simple to answer (but hard to do). First, you need good material to work with. This is why it will be hard/impossible to fix WeWork. Sadly it may also make Intel hard/impossible to fix — lots of great stuff but deeply embedded in a matrix of mediocrity. same for HP (poor choices at the top didn’t help) and probably why google can’t be fixed — even more than Intel they have a lot of excellent resources and assets but they are embedded, not in mediocrity, but a fucked up management culture. And they haven’t had their near death experience yet. Second: have enough domain knowledge to be able to identify and nurture the good stuff. One exception to this was Gerstner at IBM (at the time I derided him as “the cookie guy”). He famously visited most of IBM around the world and then his grand plan was: “actually things are great — let’s not make any changes”. In reality he shook up the management culture but let most the tech people keep teching. That righted the ship. Sadly he was not followed by successful CEOs, some of whom were otherwise admirable. Third: be lucky the right way. Sometimes a company won’t catch a break (e.g. being a stagecoach maker today) but if there is a trend, or even better a phase change in the market you can take advantage of, take advantage of it. This is the “lucky generals” theory. Lisa Su is a consummate techie but she uses her brilliance cleverly: she can match what’s going on inside the company with external needs, and channel the marketing and sales people to address it in the right way. Sometimes you can’t pull it off. Hector Ruiz was a wizard at Motorola yet somehow he could pull it off at AMD. I couldn’t understand why. OTOH look at someone like Gil Amelio. He only got one thing right at Apple, which was to fire himself and bring back Steve Jobs. But that was an important thing.