There was one guy who was strung up as a leaker ten years ago. Don't remember his name, but it was a big deal.

AMD's culture is just different than Apple's. For one, there are no "secret teams" like iPhone, iTablet, etc. (well, at least none that I knew about). For another, developers have real autonomy to make business decisions, something that would never happen at Apple. For instance, I, a lowly intern, redeployed software to the production line during an emergency. If something went wrong, chips would actually stop rolling out of the factory. I would imagine normal (non-senior) Apple engineers don't have that kind of autonomy.

The other major difference, which perhaps you caught above, is that AMD actually manufactures their own stuff. So, not only are there US engineers, but engineers overseas in the plants that AMD owns, engineers in Dresden, etc. Not to say that foreign engineers are somehow bad, but it is a lot harder to control leaks when you have engineers working literally 24/7 all around the world. And at the scale that you're making your own stuff, there are just more people than there are at Apple, and things are way harder to control. It's like herding cats.

> For instance, I, a lowly intern, redeployed software to the

> production line during an emergency. If something went

> wrong, chips would actually stop rolling out of the factory.

While I'm all for letting engineers react to things progressively, that you were in position where a screw up could have shut down a fab as an intern is nothing short of terrifying to me.

> That you were in position where a screw up could have shut down a fab as an intern is nothing short of terrifying to me.

To me, the converse is a lot scarier: what if I, feeling no personal responsibility for yield, wasn't there after-hours looking for bugs in the first place? Or what if I did find the critical bug, but had to wait weeks for forms before it was pushed through? Or was blocked by office politics?

There's nothing more disheartening as having a fix for something serious that you can't push through. I've worked at companies like that: taking away the power to break something means taking away the power to make it better.

Not to say that I somehow dislike code reviews or generally fly by the seat of my pants: the situation really was a real emergency. I can't talk specifics, but the bug had already cost more than the damage it would do to if I broke something.

Toyota have a very similar rule that they actively promote: every worker has a button with which they can shut the line down if they see something wrong.

It seems to work for them...

Culture is part of it. How many people there had worked for Intel in the past and how many leave AMD to go to Intel in the future? I'd expect that's part of it too.

The problem here is that you can easily detect leaks to the press. Tainted information gets published and you know who leaked by how the leak deviates from reality.

It's less so with leaks between companies. A company that deals this way will never allow the information it gathers to show up like that. Even analysts who will examine the leaked materials will have little (not so little in the case of Intel - they have like two competitors) information about the origins of what they are looking at.

"I can't imagine Steve Jobs allowing this to happen at Apple. They have definitely caught people leaking things, and the consequences were swift and unpleasant for the leaker."

Indeed, you don't wanna mess with Apple: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-10291701-37.html

Well AMD is a small fraction of the size of Apple as well. Even more, Apple's business isn't oriented towards cutting into the market share of a large competitor. And there have been significant leaks at Apple.