"This issue" led Lisa Su to guide AMD out of the trough
AMD CEO Lisa Su reflected on her career during a speech at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, emphasizing the profound impact of questions posed by her early bosses on her professional development. When she took over AMD in 2014, the company faced significant decisions and ultimately chose to focus on high-performance computing rather than mobile chips. Lisa Su's leadership has helped AMD's stock price rebound from $3 to approximately $100 today, successfully guiding the company out of difficulties
AMD CEO Lisa Su recently reflected on her experiences in a speech, mentioning a question her boss asked early in her career that helped her make significant decisions during a precarious time for AMD.
In the mid-1990s, Su was a junior employee at Texas Instruments (TI) and IBM. She expressed that she was very fortunate because her boss had asked her, then in her twenties, what she wanted to do "when she grew up." This made her realize that what she truly wanted was to manage people and projects.
Nearly 20 years later, she joined AMD during a turbulent period and asked herself the same question as she took on an executive role. In her recent speech at Stanford Graduate School of Business (Stanford GSB), she stated that determining AMD's long-term goals—essentially "what we want to be when we grow up"—was a crucial factor. She said, "The decisions made today will really show their impact in 3-5 years."
She noted that when she became AMD's Chief Operating Officer in 2014, the company was evaluating the development of mobile chips, which were becoming popular at the time. She said, "That was a good direction, but it wasn't for us because we weren't fundamentally good at it," leading AMD to prioritize the development of high-performance computing instead.
After spending about 18 years in the semiconductor industry, Su joined AMD in 2012 as Senior Vice President of Global Business. She mentioned that the company was at a "crossroads" at that time, and her mentor advised her not to accept the position due to AMD's "poor execution record."
Su later rose to become AMD's Chief Operating Officer and took over as CEO six months later. At that time, AMD's stock price was around $3 per share, and amid strong competitors like Intel and NVIDIA, there were rumors that the company was on the brink of bankruptcy. However, under Su's leadership, AMD's operations began to improve, and the stock price surged, nearing $200 last year and currently around $100.
Lisa Su mentioned her original intention for joining AMD in her speech at Stanford
