AMD's financial woes don't stop Hector Ruiz from nabbing a raise

In most jobs, if you cost the company money and generally screw up, you can expect a solid dressing-down from the management and then a swift boot out the door. Unless you run a major corporation like AMD. If you're Hector Ruiz, CEO of the ailing chipmaker, you can freely and openly admit to fouling up the works and still get yourself a tidy raise, it seems. "We blew it and we're very humbled by it and we learned from it and we're not going to do it again," Ruiz said on Thursday, just before the board of directors raised his $1,046,358 salary to $1,124,000 -- a 7.4-percent gain. Oh, did we mention the nearly $13 million in stock options too? Hey, just because you tacked on $3.7 billion dollars in long term debt and your stock plummeted 56.2-percent doesn't mean you're doing a bad job... although we can't think of another way to describe it.

[Drkmstr104 @ Dec 14th 2007 7:33PM]

Things would get interesting if he stopped making microchips and started making potato chips O_o

[Jon Doe @ Dec 14th 2007 7:52PM]

It would never work out. He'd never figure out how to move away from trans fat oils.

[seoultrain @ Dec 14th 2007 7:49PM]

Ever since Sanders left and this guy took over AMD, the company has gone to crap. Who remembers the AMD that beat Intel to 1GHz and put out that awesome 1.4GHz Thunderbird?

[Jon Doe @ Dec 15th 2007 3:04AM]

I hate to break it to you but AMD didn't so much beat Intel as Intel beat themselves. There was a dark period at Intel. I don't know what pushed the P4\Netburst\Rambus but it was a bad time for Intel. Literally everything they could do wrong they did.

[JP23 @ Dec 14th 2007 8:13PM]

Hector comes from the Motorola school of mis-management. That should have warned everybody from the beginning.

[JuggleNuts @ Dec 15th 2007 12:00AM]

What are you talking about!?! Motorola mismanagement?! They havce super sweet products ... I mean, just look at the super sweet names: RAZR, KRZR, MOTORIZR, ROKR ... how can you argue with such a super hip company?

[Young @ Dec 14th 2007 11:21PM]

JuggleNuts,

Hector Ruiz was Motorola Semiconductor boss back in early 2000s. During his time, Motorola Semi division went downhill. They stopped developing new products like 64bit PowerPC chips (which IBM did, and is now in every game consoles), and the company lost all the competitive edge once the guy left. The sales gradually went down and Motorola ended up spinning out the semiconductor division.

[Jon Doe @ Dec 15th 2007 3:11AM]

Dear Young,

Let me introduce you to a new concept...Irony

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Irony

[strider_mt2k @ Dec 14th 2007 8:22PM]

Great.
Fatcat screwup profits again.

If I was a stockholder I'd be calling for his head on a plate.

[Ashwini @ Dec 14th 2007 8:22PM]

JP23-
Motorola was actually doing very well in 2006, so they wouldn't have been warned then. Both these companies have fallen off a cliff since then.

[JP23 @ Dec 14th 2007 9:58PM]

Ashwini, I have no idea what drugs you are taking but no Motorola wasn't doing good in '06. The last good year for Mot. was 2003.

[Ted @ Dec 14th 2007 8:24PM]

Damn... I wouldn't be doing too badly getting payed just the amount of that raise. About 70,000 dollars 0_o
Although since I live in the U.K. that would only be about £35,000 which is a less impressive-sounding figure and probably wouldn't get you as far as 70000 would in the US.

[BeaverMonkey @ Dec 14th 2007 8:33PM]

I'd rather gen paid in your pounds than in US dollars. So you still come out way ahead!

[TJ @ Dec 14th 2007 11:38PM]

I'd love to know exactly where in this country you'd be doing well with 70k cuz that'll be my next move.

Suburban DC/Baltimore cost of living friggin' sucks.

[Ben @ Dec 14th 2007 8:40PM]

I'm sure this is somehow Intel's fault.

[Brad @ Dec 14th 2007 9:08PM]

I miss you, ATI Support.

[Roger Zhang @ Dec 14th 2007 11:13PM]

DAM! I didn't know they where doing that bad.

[wud_e @ Dec 14th 2007 11:14PM]

Man I work at AMD so I won't say how I feel about this. I miss Jerry.

[Dan @ Dec 14th 2007 11:31PM]

I think I saw him in the Markham TigerDirect.ca once. He looked familiar.

How does one ask for a raise when they're making $1m/year.

[Jeremy W @ Dec 15th 2007 7:31PM]

"How does one ask for a raise when they're making $1m/year."

The same way anyone else does. Just because someone is making seven figures doesn't mean they don't deserve a raise. Ruiz clearly doesn't, but it's not because of how much he made before.

[Reader @ Dec 14th 2007 11:20PM]

Where can I get a job like that?

[Mike @ Dec 18th 2007 9:29AM]

It is called the Midwest. :) You know, the region of the US that people on each coast forget exist.

[Andy @ Dec 15th 2007 12:51AM]

Failing? Intel was light years behind AMD for years, and they pulled a comeback, now just recently intel gets back in the game and suddenly AMD is 'failing'?

[Jon Doe @ Dec 15th 2007 3:17AM]

Andy put away the fanboi goggles and take a look at AMD's offerings. In the last 6 months the only words tied to their wares are good prices and good for budget systems. AMD is hitting the bricks HARD. Everything we've seen being released by them over the last few months has been propaganda BS specs that are questionable at best. Hell AMD can't even get their 65nm process figured out. By the time they do Intel will be on 32nm and close to getting an integrated memory controller into their chip refined (I question how successful Nehalem will be.) and poof goes the final advantage that AMD has.
Someone at that company needs to be fired NOW. Not in 6 months. NOW.

[Andy @ Dec 15th 2007 2:01PM]

I agree- but AMD had the upper hand for years, and intel didn't fail. I'm not a fanboy, I totally admit Intel has the better processors out now and ATI is pathetic. I just think that it's a little premature to call AMD a failing company.

[Jeremy W @ Dec 15th 2007 7:35PM]

Intel didn't fail because they are so much bigger than AMD. It's not even like comparing Microsoft and Apple. It's like comparing Microsoft and Red Hat.

[Xuong @ Dec 15th 2007 1:34AM]

Reward for poor performance is playing politics and not care about the stock holders, this is a bad business management principles; this only encourage confident for one who is doing a poor job. Principles are always before profits like anything else in life, so if the people in the board do not have it then it reflect what kind of character they are. Hector Ruiz's package is almost 13 millions for the year, does he needs 7.4% increase of pay raise? Thanks

[tek @ Dec 15th 2007 2:34AM]

I lost faith in AMD when they purchased ATI (good idea) but instantly changed ATI's web site, product line marketing, and everything else to AMD! Why would they do so much to hide a good, trusted brand like ATI? It's even impossible to find ATI drivers now without jumping through a few AMD hoops and getting lost in their cold, corporate web site!

[Wwhat @ Dec 15th 2007 6:36AM]

Hoops? http://game.amd.com/us-en/drivers_catalyst.aspx

Bookmark it.

[Bruno @ Dec 15th 2007 11:51AM]

AMD all but scuttled ATI. Definitely killed the last bit of spirit within the company. The place is a former shell of what it used to be and you can see it on the faces of many of the staff. Glad I left before the AMD acquisition. No one talked about the huge number of layoffs at ATI, the enormous profit taking by the few higher-ups (some of which have subsequently split), and of course the most obvious is the running of the brand into the ground.

AMD is complaining about having paid too much for ATI? Complete and utter tripe. Only their inflated goodwill figure and subsequent tarnishing of the brand are to blame. In fact they got ATI for a song and then drove their own combined stock price to a lower value than ATI was when they bought it!

I used to be an AMD fan and used a number of their processors in systems I built. Even as a fan, I could never say they were ever ahead of Intel across the board. Having one or two good processors here and there doesn't make them a leader. I'm not an Intel fan, but AD have pretty much their own mismanagement to blame for the dire predicament and outlook.

[teknokracy @ Dec 15th 2007 12:23PM]

oh, gee thanks wwhat. I must be a freaking idiot....
no, how about the fact I have to go there 2-4 times a day to grab drivers ON freshly installed systems? Wanker

[tekdroid @ Dec 15th 2007 2:44AM]

if I'm not mistaken, wasn't Hector praised for a while after he took the reigns, sharing the good Athlon times for a spell up there in AMDville? ie. pats on the back for Hector, etc? I believe so.

I'd say their 'poor' show has a lot to do with Intel's recent moves and AMD's recent huge investments in unrelated (well, sorta unrelated) things and basically misjudging the market and their chief competitor's products.

[Wwhat @ Dec 15th 2007 6:35AM]

Listen he needs that raise, he has to replace all his computers with intel core2 setups and nvidia graphics.

[franzbonus @ Dec 15th 2007 7:16AM]

Ruiz, that old zit, always had a good sense of humor with money! :]

[Ian @ Dec 15th 2007 9:58AM]

He can now afford to buy a lot of Intel chips for his personal PCs.

[Gerry Lim @ Dec 15th 2007 3:52PM]

Can you bozos name someone who can take Hector's place? You think it's easy to fight a battle against a much better capitalized company like Intel, and one that has the process advantages given its numerous fabs? Can you cobble together some strategic plans that years from now would make the current hardships and travails seems so trivial? You're just kibitzers with nothing but air in your head.

[giuliop @ Dec 15th 2007 5:25PM]

I guess everyone would be happy to learn the he's been showed the door, with a huge cheque to accompany him (many more times the amount of that raise), and replaced by someone who doesn't know a thing about that business and that certainly can't learn from his own past mistakes. Happens all the time in big companies - but hey, they don't give their previous CEOs a raise, and clever Engadget can't make some news out of it.

[Jeremy W @ Dec 15th 2007 7:34PM]

Intel didn't fail because they are so much bigger than AMD. It's not even like comparing Microsoft and Apple. It's like comparing Microsoft and Red Hat.