Quote:
Originally Posted by Domino
Hey JF, a bit of a personal question....
You're big in mountain biking and the outdoors as personal hobbies. What made you want to go work for AMD?
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Definitely did not grow up rich, was working by 14 and putting in 40 hours a week from 16 on. Didn't have a car so I had to ride a bike everywhere. Including all winter in chicago. So the biking thing was always in me; didn't get my first car until I was out of college.
I started mountain biking for real when I got to Austin, it's the first place with real trails. Part of it is exercise, part of it is the fun and a large part of it is the beer and tacos with my friends after the ride.
My degree is in economics, which does not make me the typical computer nerd. Everything that I know came from hands-on experience, not from a classroom.
I spent ~15 years working for OEMs, on the server side. In my last gig I was the intel apologist. When someone came to our customer briefing center and said the word "opteron" my phone rang and I would drop whatever I was doing and go sit in to the customer to tell them why it was a bad idea. Every month it got harder and harder to dismiss AMD. I really wanted us to do Opteron servers, but the company held out.
A friend of mine was running the Opteron marketing and every quarter he would call me up and say "are you ready to come over yet." With 10 years under my belt at that company I was not in the mood to switch. But finally I had enough and went to work for him. 2 weeks later my old company signed the deal with AMD.
I have been much happier at AMD, completely different culture. And my buddy is still here too, he runs the whole Opteron business now.