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Jerry Sanders | |
|---|---|
| Born | Walter Jeremiah Sanders III (1936-09-12)September 12, 1936 (age 89) Chicago, Illinois, U.S. |
| Alma mater | University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (BS) |
| Known for | Founder ofAMD |
| Spouse | |
Walter Jeremiah Sanders III (born September 12, 1936) is an American businessman and engineer who was a co-founder and long-timeCEO of the Americansemiconductor manufacturerAdvanced Micro Devices (AMD), serving in the position from 1969 to 2002.
Jerry Sanders III grew up in theSouth Side ofChicago, Illinois, raised by his paternal grandparents.[1] He was once attacked and beaten by a street gang[2] leaving him so covered in blood[1] that a priest was called to administer thelast rites.[3] He attended theUniversity of Illinois Urbana–Champaign on an academic scholarship from thePullman railroad car company.[1] He graduated from there with aBachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering in 1958.
After graduation, Sanders worked for theDouglas Aircraft Company. He subsequently moved toMotorola, then toFairchild Semiconductor.
Jerry Sanders joined Fairchild Semiconductor in 1961 as a young engineer.[4] At Fairchild, Sanders quickly rose from lower sales positions up to a succession of management positions in marketing, making him a likely candidate for one of the company's top vice presidencies.[2] However, in 1968, a new management team was brought into Fairchild Semiconductor bySherman Fairchild, led byC. Lester Hogan, then vice president ofMotorola Semiconductor. The staff from Motorola, also known as "Hogan's Heroes", were conservative and hence immediately clashed with Sanders' boisterous style. Sanders' flamboyant personality and style made the new management at Fairchild Semiconductor feel uneasy so they fired him. Sanders said that, on his firing from Fairchild, "My whole life has been about treating people fairly, and I wasn't treated fairly".[2]
In 1969, eight engineers left Fairchild Semiconductor together to start a new company, foundingAdvanced Micro Devices (AMD) inSunnyvale, California, in May 1969. They asked Jerry Sanders to join them, and he said he would, provided he became the president of the company. Although it caused some dissension within the group, they agreed, and the company was founded with Sanders as president. Every employee at the company got stock options, an innovation at the time.
Sanders gave the company a strong sales and marketing orientation so that it was successful even though it was often behind its competitors in technology and manufacturing; Stacy Rasgon, a semiconductor analyst at Bernstein Research, called Sanders "one of the best salesmen thatSilicon Valley had ever seen".[5] He shared the success of the company with the employees, usually coincident with sales-oriented growth targets.
Sanders at AMD famously remarked that in the semiconductor industry "real men havefabs".[6] Originally intended as a jibe against competitors, Sanders's remarks have been largely disproven in the years since. From 1969 to 2009, AMD fabricated its own processors but it later sold off its foundry division asGlobalFoundries in 2009.[7] AMD is now fabless and outsources its fabrication to GlobalFoundries andTSMC.
He steered the company through hard times as well. In 1974, a particularly badrecession almost broke the company. Through a period of stagflation in 1979, he refused to lay off AMD employees and instead took a leaf from the Japanese rather than engaging in the same rampant layoffs that had occurred at Fairchild earlier.[8] Instead of reducing employees, he asked them to work Saturdays to get more done and get new products out sooner. There were also good times for the company. Sanders gave each one of his employees $100 as they walked out of the door during AMD's first $1 million quarter. AMD implemented a cash profit-sharing employee compensation program, where employees would regularly get profit checks of $1,000 or more.
By 1979,Intel needed a second source to produce its8088 processor forIBM PCs so it turned to AMD. In 1982, Sanders was responsible for a renegotiated licensing deal that would enable AMD to copy Intel's processor microcode to make its ownx86 processors, a deal that eventually made the company the only real competitor to Intel.[2][3] The open-ended legal language of the deal was used by Sanders to lead efforts for AMD to reverse-engineer and clone Intel's8086 processor. Intel successfully countersued AMD which caused AMD's stock to collapse and nearly killed the company.[9]
In 2000, Sanders recruitedHéctor Ruiz, at the time the president of Motorola's Semiconductor Products Sector, to serve as AMD's president and CEO, and to become the heir apparent to lead the company upon Sanders' retirement. He stayed with the company as chairman after Ruiz succeeded him as CEO in 2002.[3] Sanders stepped down as AMD chair in April 2004 after 35 years at the company.[10]
| Business positions | ||
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| Preceded by Company founded | CEO,AMD 1969–2002 | Succeeded by |