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Many people think Globalfoundries has a problem – it’s too secure. All that Abu Dhabi money has dispelled the sense of urgency that a semiconductor start-up needs to establish itself. Too much security can be a negative.
Unfortunately they don’t seem to have replacements for them. Hopefully GloFo won’t follow the example of AMD whose CEO left in January and is still not replaced.
There is something wrong with the executive search procedures in the tech industry. They say Mark Hurd, the ex-HP boss who was fired for molesting staff, was offered the AMD job.
Then there was Nokia appointing a Microsoftie.
There must have been numerous people at Nokia , or indeed Apple, HTC and Samsung, who know the handset business backwards, and there must be numerous people at AMD who know the microprocessor business backwards – young guys with fire in their bellies, ideas in their heads and wanting to make a name for themselves.
The same applies to GloFo. The foundry business is a large industry. It has loads of super-clever, manufacturing-savvy, aggressive guys wanting to show what they can do.
Will the executive search head-hunter companies ever come up with their names?
Not in a hundred years. They’ll come up with a superannuated vet headed for the San Jose retirees home.
Sure most “wallstreet oriented” CEO’s only know about cutting costs on the wrong places, messing up a whole company, and then leave.They don’t know the feeling of how it is to create something and see it used everywhere.
Well said, Terry, spot on. I can think of loads of good engineers who became great CEOs – our own Sir Robin for starters. It always seemed to me that if you have the brains to be a good engineer you can figure out the problems which confront CEOs.
T J Rodgers could teach Sir Alan a thing or two about engineering and management. To say that engineers don’t make good managers is demonstrable nonsense.
Of course the current new generation has great leaders – but in Europe they are running biotech companies and in the US software companies.
With all due deference to His Lordship, I think he’s talking bollox, Mike, the two most successful and innovative companies in the semiconductor industry – Fairchild and Intel – were headed up by Noyce, Moore and Grove – among the brightest technologists of their generation. I agree we saw all the greats and their like is rare indeed today, but you have to remember that Noyce and Moore were adjudged as unsuitable for management in their Fairchild days and in today’s environment of much more conventional MBA-type models for management, it must be even more difficult for great men to come through. But I refuse to believe that potential great leaders are not in the industry – no generastion has a monopoly on talent – they’re there – it’s just that the current managements and headhunters either can’t, or won’t, recognise them or they recognise them but don’t value them. A lot of this is due to the malevolent influence of Wall Street who like CEOs to talk the same language they do – i.e. money.
I’m not certain the industry does have “loads of loads of super-clever, manufacturing-savvy, aggressive guys wanting to show what they can do”. It has probably has a lot of the latter part of the sentence but if the generation behind is so good why did a company based in the Far East where manufacturing IS regarded highly get itself into the position where Morris had to take the CEO position back onto his own shoulders ? I don’t think he was headed for a retiree’s home anyway but I’m sure he would have liked to have a little more spare time.
In the west the semiconductor industry isn’t attractive enough anymore and I think, Germany and Czech aside, manufacturing has become almost a dirty word. There are two many other areas which are more appealing to the brightest people, from software or biotech to (unfortunately) investment banking.
Of course there are still brilliant engineers in our industry and AMD has a couple of the very best, though one wonders if they aren’t looking to pursue other career options. But as Alan Sugar pointed out last Wednesday, the brightest engineers are rarely the best people to run a company and so I don’t see them as the best option for AMD either.
This whole perception in Europe of our industry needs addressing but even if done now it will still take a generation to resolve. I was on one of my regular university visits yesterday and walking down the corridors I noticed the number of researchers with Chinese sounding names, presumably on some form of secondment, now exceeds 75%. In fact apart from the professor, I could only identify one other person from the host country.
Anyway I think we need to be grateful that we saw the true greats of our industry in their prime from the 70s to the 90s and that they did try to bring on a next generation of top managment, albeit with varying degrees of success.