Chipmaker AMD’s decision to cut jobs globally is likely to have an impact on the company’s workforce in India.Late last month, AMD notified employees about the plan to restructure its workforce as part of a global move to cut over 700 jobs, sources said. Industry insiders say that Madhusudan Atre, one of AMD India’s top officials, has left the company. Atre was the Country Engineering Head & Corporate Vice-President for AMD India. The company could also make other mid- and senior-level roles redundant, it is reliably learnt.
Restructuring activities
In response to a BusinessLine questionnaire, a spokesperson for AMD India said: “On October 29, we began notifying employees affected by our previously announced targeted restructuring activities.“Reducing our workforce is difficult because of the impact on our global team-mates, who are leaving the company, but these actions are necessary to align our investments and resources with our highest-priority opportunities. We are providing affected employees with resources and assistance to help them bridge to their next opportunity.”
The spokesperson did not comment on the number of job reductions in India. According to the company website, AMD has facilities in New Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore and Hyderabad.
AMD, which competes with the likes of Intel and Nvidia, said in October that it will cut 7 per cent of its workforce, or about 710 jobs, after missing its sales estimates for the third quarter ended September 30.
The company, which had about 10,100 employees at the end of the third quarter, follows a January-December accounting calendar. It has been losing ground to Intel in the affordable computing space.“These actions are not about how we manage the business for the short-term, but about how we re-engineer the company for long-term profitability and growth…
“We expect to be largely completed with notifications globally by the end of 2014,” the spokesperson added.
Third round of job cuts
Globally, this is said to be AMD’s third major round of job cuts since 2011. Recently, Chief Executive Officer Rory Read was replaced by Chief Operating Officer Lisa Su, an unexpected move that sparked speculation about fresh issues at the company.
