Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD)

[CombJelly]

"but it has lost some pizazz."

True. As I have mentioned before, Jerry is a gambler. My visual image of him is crouched down in an alley, sweat beading on his forehead, shaking them bones...

He was also the deal maker. While some, maybe many, disparage him for using OPM (other people's money) not many people could put together the deals that he did. Now he needed to do it, AMD has been on the brink of disaster more than once. And many of those brushes with disaster were strictly because of The Colonel. But in my estimation, he had the right. There aren't many founders that still have any influence at all after as many years as Jerry has had. Look at Alan Shugart, he has been booted out of more companies than many people have ever worked at. True, Jerry has an extravagant lifestyle. True, he probably could have made better, or at least safer, decisions for his company. And true, he probably could have placed more faith and trust in his various appointed heirs. But, he didn't. In his favor, he did try to take care of the people that made his company what it is. Yeah, you could argue that he could have done a better job in taking care of their stock options. But given the industry he chose to compete in, he could have done a whole lot worse. At least AMD is still a going concern after more than 30 years, how many of it's contemporaries can say that? The ueber parent, Fairchild, has been absorbed, spun out, absorbed, and spun out many times. Intel, needless to say, has done very well. National and TI still exist, but both are just a shadow of where they were when AMD was being operated out of Jerry's spare bedroom. Mostek, MOS Technologies and all the rest might not even show up on a Google search.