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History of a AMD fan-boy.

Discussion in 'General' started by ZapWizard, 24 Jun 2005.

  1. ZapWizard

    ZapWizard Enter the Mod Matrix

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    As some of you know I work for AMD...or I should say work as a contractor for AMD.

    Well today is my last day at AMD. Not of my own doing, but of a contractors policy that I can only work 1 year under contract, then I have to leave for at least 90-days. (Google contractors, IRS, lawsuits to find out why companies do this)

    I am using my last bit of time here to tell my story about AMD and my time there.
    This will be a long story, it more for me, but shows what working for a company you are also the fan of can bring. In short: Great experience, growth, and instability.

    Ever since I was nine I have been doing electronics as a hobby. I aced all my electronics classes from high school, to dual-enrolment to college. During middle-school I was the normal build a PC from used and scavenged parts geek. And the same in high-school.
    My dual-enrolment electronics class teacher had the entire (small) class apply for an internship at AMD. At the time I did own and AMD powered PC but I wasn’t a fan boy, and still thought that Dell’s were top-of-the-line.

    Me and about 5 others won internships, which also included a college scholarship of $1500. Granted this was for a "fast track" AAS degree program in Semiconductor manufacturing at the local community college.

    The internship was actually my first real job. I was instantly turned into a fan boy of AMD. I worked in a cubical and had a mentor in charge of giving me work. My first job was fun and simple, making a website that listed all the personnel in our area with they contact info and a automated text pager system. After that I was able to help out inside the Fab. (Not processors, but flash memory) If you ever get a chance to tour a fabrication plant, take it. There are insane machines that you wouldn't think even exist. Stuff like a 80,000 volt DC! Plasma injector. In the time there I got to mess around with a scanning electron microscope, I helped to program and update computers that ran the machines. By far the weirdest thing about a fab is the "photo lithography room", like a photo lab that would be lit up red, these rooms are instead lit up yellow. Your eyes get used to yellow, and in about an hour everything looks a little off, but still white. That is until you leave the room, and all the sudden anything white looks like it's glowing, and anything colored looks like it's fluorescing.

    My second summer at AMD was a fun at first...doing more web work, more programming, and more maintenance. But one problem, I worked so fast that my mentor couldn't give me enough work. I would often spend a whole day sitting in a cube browsing the web. (Hey I was getting paid, but I was bored out of my mind). I looked around and realized that there were technicians here that had spent 15 years in the same cube in a windowless room, doing not much more then optimizing and upkeep of machines in the Fab. It was not something I felt like doing for the rest of my life. And I didn't apply for a third year.

    In-between the summers at AMD I worked at Radioshack, and did well there, although made about half as much as I did as an Intern. My love of computers , games, and electronics did however explode and I still wanted to work at AMD, just doing something besides high-tech maintenance.

    Two years later, I was going to school, engaged to be married, working a crap job at Dillards in the electronics department (Radioshack should never be anyone long term employer), and I needed a new job to provide for my marriage.

    While in school I was looking for new work and just happened to blurt out in class: “does anyone know of anyone hiring?” It happened to be that one of my classmates was a late-shift supervisor at AMD, and they were hiring.

    A few days later I had a job as a data acquisition technician. I started the late-shift from 3:30pm to 11:30pm. I did good at the job, and soon was specializing in DDR measurements. I learned tons with the new job. About motherboards, the nature of digital signals (They are more analog then you can believe) and I was messing around with the lasted high-tech stuff. I was handling things like 4GB sticks of registered experimental memory. In only three months I was moved to the day shift and continued my job.
    But there was a problem, there were 30 other people who were qualified to do my job. Two supervisors, and pretty much zero change of career advancement. I had only one ok-ish raise during my two years at that position. Again I felt I had a job that would go no-where.

    During that time however I found bit-tech.net and began honing my modding skills. This led me to be an even bigger fan boy of AMD. While at QuakeCon03 I met people from AMD marketing. I had my Ammo PC there and they loved it. Through my future success with modding I was able to get to know dozens of people in AMD marketing, and I felt like it would be a great job for me.

    Modding gave me some good opportunities. I was able to attend the AMD Athlon 64 launch event in San Francisco, all expenses paid. I got to play with games like FarCry before anyone even knew what it would become (Me included, I didn't think much of it at the time). This also led to less then pleasant relations between me and the day-shift supervisor, who felt that his boss was letting me off easy with all my traveling that didn’t help him at all.

    A few months later I had the chance to break into marketing. AMD had launched a program specifically targeted towards computer enthusiasts: AMDEdge.com The program hardly made a blip on the radar of most PC users, due to what I would call traditional marketing. (Marketing enthusiast stuff to the general public). But I was able to write most of the first pieces of content for the program.

    About a month later I was given the opportunity to manage the content; what would be on the website and who would write it. I of course took the job. For the time I was there it was an awesome job. The pay was good, I was helping AMD to market to enthusiasts, and I helped AMD to adapt the AMD support forums into a genuine community of fans.

    Alas, it wouldn't last. While AMD loves and supports much of the enthusiast community, the AMDEdge program was expensive and consumed a lot of resources. It was also redundant of many review sites and fan sites. I don't blame them for putting the program on hold.

    I was able to, for one last time, switch jobs and remain in marketing. I was given the opportunity to revamp the AMD Athlon 64 FX image. To help show that it was still the best gaming processor, and to separate it from the world of dual-core chips. This job though was temporary from the start. I had three months. Until just before the launch of the Athlon 64 FX-57. I can’t say much about this job for policy reasons, but it was fun, and paid well.

    So today my contract ends, not of my own doing however. AMD, and other companies have a policy towards contract workers. You can only work one year, and then you have to leave for at least 90-days before you can be re-hired. There are a few groups at AMD who I know, and want to hire me but can’t due to this. I am not sore though, I will find new work elsewhere. Working at AMD has given me more experience and education then any college could. I am sure I will keep my eyes open for future opportunities at AMD, but for now it’s on to other things.

    I will of course keep modding for years to come.
    :dremel:
     
  2. DreamTheEndless

    DreamTheEndless Gravity hates Bacon

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    I understand headcount rules and all, but there is the option of hiring you as an actual AMD employee without waiting that extra 90 days. It's too bad they couldn't make a position for you.

    Anyway, good luck in all your endeavors etc. and I will be very surprised if you don't end up back at AMD at some point in the future.
     
  3. Springs

    Springs Boing boing

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    nice... tells a lot about you and your amd life i never new about... you can also tell through your website that it has payed off well (nice big TV :D ) hope you go back
     
  4. webbyman

    webbyman Hax.

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    cool story :D

    your quite lucky working for amd then leaving then returning e.c.t :)


    ...if it was me i would never leave AMD for radio shack :hehe: :hehe: rofl


    anyway good luck with the future :) :dremel:
     
  5. CaseyBlackburn

    CaseyBlackburn Network Techie

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    Very nce story there Zap.
    I can now say I know something about Zap's life.
     
  6. Nexxo

    Nexxo * Prefab Sprout – The King of Rock 'n' Roll

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    ...and you're telling us all this why?
     
  7. warrmr

    warrmr What's a Dremel?

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    because he can.
     
  8. Lovah

    Lovah Apple and Canon fanboy

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    Very interesting read. Didn't know most of this. But as Nexxo pointed out, is there a certain point to this, that I'm missing? Or is it, letting us know you don't work with AMD anymore (for the time being).

    Good luck with your next job!

    L
     
  9. Dayains

    Dayains Notamodder

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    Well it's an interesting read got more point to it than many posts around.
     
  10. Smilodon

    Smilodon The Antagonist

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    isn't the point pretty obvious? He needs a job ;)
     
  11. CaseyBlackburn

    CaseyBlackburn Network Techie

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  12. Nexxo

    Nexxo * Prefab Sprout – The King of Rock 'n' Roll

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    Er. Thank you for sharing... :worried:
     
  13. RotoSequence

    RotoSequence Lazy Lurker

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    That wasnt the nicest comment in the world, Nexxo :eek:

    Im gambling I know what your 3 month job was about :D Im hearing rumours that after the FX-57 is released, the FX-55 is going to stick around instead of ceasing to exist like the previous to FX series CPUs - and the FX-57 is going to be pointed out as a nicely overclockable CPU. Good ol' Inquirer... ;) Dont know how accurate this may turn out in the end though.

    Definitely an interesting story, Zap. I hope you find a nice job during your 90 day off period from AMD that will pay the bills and whatnot. Do you have any interesting pictures of the plant and stuff that you can show us? Im personally curious about what those nutty sounding machines look like :naughty:
     
  14. Nath

    Nath Your appeal has already been filed.

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    I thought it was quite reasonable though...
     
  15. Sch1sm

    Sch1sm Guest

    That was rather interesting, something you never really hear about, working for a large company such as AMD. I know the NVIDIA Forums have a title which tells you whether or not a certain member is employed by the company but i never see anyone online! I have always used an AMD processor, infact this is my second AMD XP 2600+ as my last was sadly burnt to a crisp due to my friends father letting it rise to a firey 70C. :eeek: Lets just say i wasn't amused.

    It's a pity you couldn't keep a blog describing daily work at AMD, but are there any chances of freebies such as an AMD t-shirt available? :p :rolleyes:
     
  16. ZapWizard

    ZapWizard Enter the Mod Matrix

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    As CaseyBlackburn pointed out.
    "This will be a long story, it more for me, but shows what working for a company you are also the fan of can bring. In short: Great experience, growth, and instability."
    And also because so many people e-mail me saying "I know you work for AMD, and....."

    RotoSequence, you are closer then you can imagine, but I am not responsible for the rumors. Sry no photos from inside AMD. (Plus I worked in a cube in a office building..seen one seen them all)

    Also I got a job today, interviewed at 1pm offer at 5:30, not bad.
    It's a technician job at www.netstreams.com, pretty cool stuff.
     
  17. CaseyBlackburn

    CaseyBlackburn Network Techie

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    Glad you got a job, looks interesting too.
     
  18. CyberSol

    CyberSol 1337 Pants

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    Great read!
    I used to be the Biggest Intel fanboy. Until I tried my first AMD.

    Heh, I will take any amd over any intel anyday now!
     
  19. penski

    penski BodMod

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    You're a fool then. Blind fanboyism is an idiotic thing.

    *n
     
  20. webbyman

    webbyman Hax.

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    to me it sounded a little harsh. :eek:
     

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