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Re:AMD expects to outsell Intel in Q4 for the first time in ... by AMDAnon on Wednesday November 04, 2026 @02:57PM (#50370684)
They can't find new leaders! Sharon Zhou, VP who handles all our engagements with the frontier labs quit today to be an MTS at Anthropic. https://lnkd.in/p/g53S3-fG

Sharon was the AI Chief of Staff brought in through an acquihire, managed all the high-visibility external/internal AI engagements, reported directly into Lisa Su, and was being groomed to be Lisa's successor. Even with all that, she couldn't make it 2 years at AMD.

Our internally developed execs/directors/VPs have no credibility with the frontier labs or hyperscalers because they're non-technical types. They don't understand software management so they couldn't fix any of the problems with ROCm by making systemic changes in how we develop software e.g. Alan Lee who got pushed out ages ago after spending years promising ROCm would get better while nothing happened.

The only software-oriented technical VP with credibility now is Anush Elangovan. He was also brought in through an acquihire, forced us to upstream, forced us to have CI, and adopt basic software practices common at every other company. If we lose him, we're going to start plummeting fast.

Re:AMD expects to outsell Intel in Q4 for the first time in ... by mickeyp on Wednesday November 04, 2026 @03:18PM (#50370914)
How sad.

I remember buying an AMD K6-2 back in the day as it was cheaper and better. I've dropped in and out of the AMD sphere depending on who was winning at the given moment.

Now they're both losing.

Re:AMD expects to outsell Intel in Q4 for the first time in ... by NooneAtAll5 on Wednesday November 04, 2026 @03:24PM (#50370990)
> our internal directors/VPs are mostly non-technical

why not start with trying to fix that?

Re:AMD expects to outsell Intel in Q4 for the first time in ... by bravetraveler on Thursday November 05, 2026 @10:34AM (#50380413)
The technical people are being rented out to customers, unfortunately; economics, to put it short.
Re:AMD expects to outsell Intel in Q4 for the first time in ... by z3ratul163071 on Thursday November 05, 2026 @03:33PM (#50384111)
well, that explains everything.

unfortunately most us industry fell victim to this mba-ization of companies.

Re:AMD expects to outsell Intel in Q4 for the first time in ... by georgeburdell on Wednesday November 04, 2026 @03:26PM (#50371019)
100% Lisa Su is a control freak and thought Zhou was a threat. Cult of personality CEOs do not generally end well for the company
Re:AMD expects to outsell Intel in Q4 for the first time in ... by josh_frome on Wednesday November 04, 2026 @05:06PM (#50372196)
Jobs being the exception that proves the rule
Re:AMD expects to outsell Intel in Q4 for the first time in ... by justsomehnguy on Wednesday November 04, 2026 @07:16PM (#50373289)
Jobs failed hard and was outed in the first place. And he didn't 'come back' he was quite literally bought in with NeXTSTEP. Don't forget $150M from Microsoft and the Office for Mac deal.
Re:AMD expects to outsell Intel in Q4 for the first time in ... by LeFantome on Thursday November 05, 2026 @08:13PM (#50386925)
NeXT software on lower end Apple hardware was a winning combination.

And the software ecosystem was already in place (even though everything had to be rewritten).

Re:AMD expects to outsell Intel in Q4 for the first time in ... by cowlevel on Wednesday November 04, 2026 @08:28PM (#50373873)
He backed it up with actual product-building merit and enough (but not a lot of) reality-testing. His products were successful largely because of him. Too many copycats forget about the merit part of the equation.
Re:AMD expects to outsell Intel in Q4 for the first time in ... by pjmlp on Thursday November 05, 2026 @03:12AM (#50376512)
Not all products, NeXT was a major failure, with a few books telling the story how it all went down, only due to Apple's acquisition there was a moment that with Apple's remaining cash, and what was left of OpenSTEP, they managed to survive both companies.

Had Apple gone with Be instead, most likely all three companies would have gone bankrupt before 2000, and Pixar would be Jobs last successful company instead.

Re:AMD expects to outsell Intel in Q4 for the first time in ... by LeFantome on Thursday November 05, 2026 @08:11PM (#50386908)
I am no Steve Jobs fan but NeXT was amazing and much of the tech is still commercially important today. There is no way you can call it a technical failure.

Where NeXT went wrong is in being astronomically expensive, which drove its addressable market to nothing. This is the exact same mistake Jobs made with the Lisa. The significantly inferior Apple II platform was far more successful.

Re:AMD expects to outsell Intel in Q4 for the first time in ... by amarcheschi on Wednesday November 04, 2026 @03:38PM (#50371167)
I can apply as a ceo if you accept master students. Having studied drama, I can definitely say I act better than pat gelsinger
Re:AMD expects to outsell Intel in Q4 for the first time in ... by specialist on Wednesday November 04, 2026 @06:19PM (#50372807)
Sure, but do you have any missionary / evangelism experience?
Re:AMD expects to outsell Intel in Q4 for the first time in ... by amarcheschi on Wednesday November 04, 2026 @07:41PM (#50373484)
Unfortunately no, but I can pray really hard maybe
Re:AMD expects to outsell Intel in Q4 for the first time in ... by skew-aberration on Thursday November 05, 2026 @12:09AM (#50375448)
You might be better qualified as a shareholder then
Re:AMD expects to outsell Intel in Q4 for the first time in ... by latchkey on Wednesday November 04, 2026 @06:44PM (#50373010)
Sharon was acqui-hired after Lamini failed to find product market fit, and she had to fire her co-founder Greg. Greg went to Tensorwave (another AMD play) and eventually quit there as well.

The way I look at it, AMD and others dumped $25m into a very early AI play that never was going to be successful. I don't fault them for trying.

There was no way she could even come close to successor of Lisa though. The grooming thing was a media play at best. Dr. Fei-Fei Li would be a heck of a lot more appropriate than Sharon.

Anush is excellent and turned around the software story. If he goes, the party is over.

Re:AMD expects to outsell Intel in Q4 for the first time in ... by pointyfence on Sunday November 08, 2026 @06:49PM (#50419028)
The fact that Sharon was mentioned as a possible successor to Su made me LOL. OP totally clueless. She should never have been given a VP AI Engineering title given how little she's done in her career which says more about how ignorant / desperate AMD was at the time. They've made big strides since then. I'm not expecting her to make it 2 years in Anthropic either.
Re:AMD expects to outsell Intel in Q4 for the first time in ... by z3ratul163071 on Thursday November 05, 2026 @03:32PM (#50384102)
"Even with all that, she couldn't make it 2 years at AMD." imagine how toxic and rotten the company must be from the inside