What is the signal behind semiconductor executives' constant job-hopping?

Recently, executives of semiconductor giants have jumped ship. In a short period of time, Intel has poached executives such as Jeff willcocks, director of Apple's Mac series architecture, rohit verma, chief independent GPU architect of AMD, and David Zinsner, chief financial officer of Micron.

In addition, Mike Filippo, a senior engineer who has worked in Apple for nearly three years, also joined Microsoft as the chief architect, responsible for the development of Azure server chips.

Another wave of executive job-hopping has begun in the semiconductor field.

Let's take a look at Jeff willcocks, Apple's architecture director. This time, Intel hired the chief designer of its M 1 chip products from Apple. 20 13 joined apple and has worked in apple for 9 years.

During Jeff willcocks's years of work, he was responsible for developing Apple's T2 security chip and M 1 series processors. Under his leadership, Apple's computer chips have been upgraded and innovated through the ages. To put it simply, Jeff willcocks is the Apple chip, and even the technical pillar behind the Apple computer.

But let's take a closer look at Jeff willcocks's resume. Jeff willcocks worked at Intel for three years as the chief architect of PC chipset, and then was poached by Apple. So many people regard Jeff willcocks's job-hopping as a kind of "retrogression".

In fact, rohit verma, AMD's chief independent GPU architect, who was also poached by Intel, once worked at Intel, and this time he is also a "second-in-command". During 1999-20 13, he was the chief SoC architect of 14 years at Intel.

Since 20 13 joined AMD, during his eight-year career, he has been engaged in projects covering discrete graphics cards for desktops and laptops and SoC architecture design involving CPU, GPU, architecture, power management and security.

Interestingly, the career overlap between verma and Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger is quite high. 1979, 18-year-old Gelsinger joined Intel as a quality control technician. Damville Ma 1999 When he started his career at Intel, Gersinger was already the general manager of Intel's desktop products department and became the first CTO of Intel on 200 1.

It can be seen that in the recent resignation of executives, the executives who were pocketed by Intel are inextricably linked with Intel.

When Pat Gelsinger returned to Intel as the new CEO in 20021year, Intel began a critical period, and frequently recruited talents from other companies, especially the "old team" that he had worked with.

On Linkedin, rohit verma also sent a message saying that she was happy to be back at Intel.

In addition to "returning" to one's own home, the opportunities released by the company's future planning changes have also become an important reason to attract executives.

Microsoft is accelerating the deployment of cloud computing servers and Surface devices to develop customized chips, and released the recruitment information of SoC architecture director in its recruitment position.

Mike Filippo, who has worked in Apple for nearly three years, joined Microsoft as the chief architect, responsible for the development of Azure server chips.

We read Mike Phillips' resume. Before joining Apple, he worked as chief CPU architect, chief system architect and ARM Fellow at ARM, responsible for developing Cortex-A76, Cortex-A72, Cortex-A57 and the upcoming 7nm+ and 5nm chips. He also worked for AMD for 8 years and Intel for 5 years.

In fact, in addition to company executives, the semiconductor field has also set off a wave of digging people because of the layout of the meta-universe.

Microsoft's AR team also lost more than 65,438+000 employees in the past year. About 70 people originally belonged to HoloLens team, and 40 people jumped to Meta, including Charlie Han, former director of HoloLens user feedback, and Josh Miller, former member of HoloLens demo team.

Apples are also the key areas that have been poached. It has lost M 1 processor R&D executives and self-driving car team executives, and even more than 100 former Apple employees were poached by Meta in 202 1 year.

In order to cope with this situation and avoid being robbed of more talents by competitors such as Meta, Apple provided stock benefits to some engineers and employees in the software department. The amount of this extra income ranges from 50,000 to 6.5438+0.8 million US dollars (about RMB 320,000-6.5438+0.65438+0.4 million yuan), and they will be distributed in the form of restricted shares for a term of four years. Apple hopes to reduce the job-hopping of senior employees.

At Google, how to retain employees has become the topic of discussion at the weekly executive meeting of CEO sundar pichai. At the same time, Google also began to provide employees with additional stock incentives to avoid being poached.

But sometimes the ability to spend money is not everything, at least not for executives. Before announcing his resignation, Dr. Venkata Renduchintala, former head and chief engineer of Intel's hardware department, had a total annual salary of about $26.88 million, making him one of the highest paid executives in Intel.

In Intel's official announcement, the TSCG team led by Renduchintala will be split into five groups, and the group leaders will report directly to the CEO. These changes led to Renduchintala's departure.

Previously, Google Vice President Surojit left the Bitcoin base, the largest virtual currency trading company, and became the company's chief product officer. At present, the Bitcoin base is listed, and the equity value of Surojit in the company has exceeded 600 million US dollars (about 3.8 billion yuan).

For the semiconductor industry, it is not a bad thing for executives to change jobs many times.

After leaving Fairchild Semiconductor, Noyce founded Intel with Gordon Moore and process development expert andy grove. Jerry Sanders, director of Fairchild Semiconductor Sales Department, and several employees founded AMD Semiconductor Company. Kaipeng Huaying founded KPCB venture capital company; Valentine founded the National Semiconductor Company, and later founded Sequoia Capital.

In the semiconductor wave around 1970, it can be said that most semiconductor companies originated from Fairchild Semiconductor Company. This group of semiconductor companies can be said to have laid the scientific and technological foundation of Silicon Valley.

Faced with the departure of the "Eight Traitors", Steve Jobs, the former CEO of Apple, made an image metaphor: "Fairchild Semiconductor Company is like a mature dandelion. As soon as you blow, the seeds of this entrepreneurial spirit will fly everywhere with the wind. "

Jim Keller, the father of AMD Zen architecture, has also served as an executive at AMD, Intel and Tesla, and has repeatedly jumped ship to seek new challenges.

Iron-clad executives, flowing water manufacturers. People are the core of the whole industry. China's semiconductor industry is driven by policies and capital, and now is a good time. The treatment of semiconductor talents has generally been greatly improved, which has more advantages in attracting talents.

In the tide of executive job-hopping, there is a noteworthy news. Yang, a former NVIDIA executive, formally joined Bijie Technology, a domestic GPU manufacturer, as the vice president and special assistant to the chairman.

Yang used to work in NVIDIA. During his tenure in NVIDIA, he was responsible for architecture design, R&D, movie streaming and team management. He established NVIDIA's first overseas R&D center in Shanghai and served as the general manager of NVIDIA Shanghai.

It is undoubtedly an excellent trend for giant executives to join domestic manufacturers, which means that the attractiveness of domestic semiconductor manufacturers in China is increasing. Nowadays, China Semiconductor is in the process of changing from "takenism" to real independent innovation, which requires the persistence of R&D investment and the emphasis on personnel training.

Under the firm goal of semiconductor development, we expect more and more giant executives to join domestic manufacturers.