Robert Hallock Announces His Departure from AMD

[TheLostSwede]

AMD's Technical Marketing Director, Robert Hallock has decided to leave the company after 12+ years with the company, to "explore new opportunities and experiences" as he puts in a post on LinkedIn. He apparently left the company last Friday, but only shared the news today. "After just over 12 adventure-packed years at AMD, I'm leaving to explore new opportunities and experiences. Over the years, I've had the honor and privilege of publicly teaching others about some truly stellar innovation: the Zen core family, 3D V-Cache, chiplet packaging, HBM memory, FreeSync, low-overhead graphics APIs, and much more. After working in both graphics and processors for roughly 6 years each, I've learned so much."

He thanked several current and ex colleagues at AMD, as well as thanking the PC hardware reviewer community and the AMD community on Reddit and Discord among others. He ended his post by saying he'll be taking some time off to travel and think about what he'll be doing next, so it doesn't seem like he has any fixed plans for the future.



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[konga]

He sure picked an interesting time to leave, huh.

 

[ZoneDymo]

is this that guy that made so many cringy as heck posts? because if so, thank god he is gone..... now lets hope Intel is not stupid enough to have bought him.
(again, IF this is that guy)

 

[Fouquin]

is this that guy that made so many cringy as heck posts? because if so, thank god he is gone..... now lets hope Intel is not stupid enough to have bought him.
(again, IF this is that guy)

Fact checking yourself is less important than being the first person to disparage another human being, huh?

 

[ARF]

Has AMD confirmed who the next marketing director will be?

He ended his post by saying he'll be taking some time off to travel and think about what he'll be doing next, so it doesn't seem like he has any fixed plans for the future.

He could have done these things while still being an employee at AMD... paid leave, maybe, whatever.... I guess he has so much money, millions, so he can afford to not work for a while, or maybe forever?

 

[MarsM4N]

Guess he got tired of success. Change of scenery can be very refreshing, when changing wallpapers isn't enough.

New colleagues are a gamble, though. But from the right ones you can get fresh new inspirations.

 

[cvaldes]

He sure picked an interesting time to leave, huh.

Considering he wants to travel his timing is superb.

COVID related travel restrictions have eased compared to a year ago.

The dollar is strong and the shoulder season is a great time to travel weatherwise. Plus the summer crowds are gone with everyone back at work/school.

Mentally he probably left six months ago. He has been through enough launches to know what the next six months hold in stock.

 

[Denver]

Guess he got tired of success. Change of scenery can be very refreshing, when changing wallpapers isn't enough.

New colleagues are a gamble, though. But from the right ones you can get fresh new inspirations.

Rumors that he was upset with the competition doing such a good job of sabotaging themselves, that his job became monotonous and unnecessary.

 

[ARF]

Guess he got tired of success.

Success? He never made the customers want or purchase the Radeons in enough quantities, despite all the positives of the product range.
The marketing has been AMD's weakest department.

 

[ZoneDymo]

Fact checking yourself is less important than being the first person to disparage another human being, huh?

Not sure where the confusion stems from, I specifically wondered for all to read "IF THIS IS THE GUY" so why you are starting to talk about "fact checking " is beyond me.

 

[zlobby]

I'm torn between

And

Guess he got tired of success.

And this one

 

[W1zzard]

Robert has been awesome to work with, I always loved his in-depth knowledge and willingness to answer every reasonable question

 

[RogueSix]

He sure picked an interesting time to leave, huh.

Yeah, the timing is definitely very odd. AMD is more successful than it has ever been with a stellar outlook as far as further growth is concerned. They are launching their all new Zen 4 architecture in only two weeks from now and the reveal of their all new RDNA 3 graphics architecture premiering MCM on a consumer card is only a few weeks out as well. Why leave now? It is factually impossible to work at AMD at a greater time than this. Seriously. It doesn't get more exciting than this, especially for someone who has been with the company for 12 years. So, what is the true story behind his departure?

 

[lastcalaveras]

This guy was funny to watch over the years especially how he would try to be enthusiastic about poorly performing products.

 

[Joja]

Success? He never made the customers want or purchase the Radeons in enough quantities, despite all the positives of the product range.
The marketing has been AMD's weakest department.

AMD marketing has managed to cultivate legions of fanboys, I'd call that a big success.

 

[Mysteoa]

Success? He never made the customers want or purchase the Radeons in enough quantities, despite all the positives of the product range.
The marketing has been AMD's weakest department.

It's not weak anymore. Maybe not as good as Nvidia, but they are doing better than Intel. They still drop the ball occasionally, but there are more people to call them out and the other companies.

 

[mama]

I wondered why he wasn't involved in the recent AMD presentation on Ryzen. There could be some power play politics behind the scenes. In any event, he was good for AMD and I always thought he talked sense.

AMD marketing has managed to cultivate legions of fanboys, I'd call that a big success.

This coming from Intel/Nvidia fanboy?

 

[tabascosauz]

Robert didn't always offer more information than AMD's slides/common knowledge, nor was he immune to misleading marketing-speak......

......but his explanations were informative and useful for AM4 owners. I hope his successor (I hope there is one) continues to develop that trend of community engagement. Otherwise, all we are left with is the quintessential AMD experience = AMD's glowing marketing slides + the videos of a few Youtube experts/overclockers + and the pain of figuring out everything else in between for ourselves.

is this that guy that made so many cringy as heck posts? because if so, thank god he is gone..... now lets hope Intel is not stupid enough to have bought him.
(again, IF this is that guy)

Intel has Ryan Shrout, who tries to fill the same shoes but fails miserably with his hilariously idiotic takes, because he really has 0 technical knowledge about any of the company's products. Fits that description infinitely better than Robert.

 

[Joja]

I wondered why he wasn't involved in the recent AMD presentation on Ryzen. There could be some power play politics behind the scenes. In any event, he was good for AMD and I always thought he talked sense.


This coming from Intel/Nvidia fanboy?

I am neither. AMD fanboys are however by far the most vocal and extreme of them.

 

[trsttte]

 

[zlobby]

AMD marketing has managed to cultivate legions of fanboys, I'd call that a big success.

I think that's mostly R&D and engineering. AMD was in position to prove themselves, so fancy banners alone wouldn't have cut it.

I am neither. AMD fanboys are however by far the most vocal and extreme of them.

Well, my impressions are actually the opposite, so it's better not to generalize for the entire population, based on select samples.

 

[ModEl4]

There are a lot worse marketing guys out there, I wish him well.
The TDP/PPT mistake was probably indicative that the relationship between him and whoever manager/group was responsible for clearly informing him and the CPU marketing team regarding TDP/PPT was not the greatest...

 

[AusWolf]

Leaving a well-paid steady job to "explore new opportunities". What a load of shite! People usually say this after a disagreement with management.

 

[_Flare]

Robert was doing good work for the whole community of interested, as W1zzard wrote.
Had 1-2 questions in the starts of Zen and Zen+ and he was kind enough to share some bits of deeper info, that was posted publicly.

 

[cvaldes]

Leaving a well-paid steady job to "explore new opportunities". What a load of shite! People usually say this after a disagreement with management.

It's Silicon Valley. How do you think it came into existence? It's not like Intel, AMD, Nvidia were there from Day One.

The whole valley is based on people leaving for something better. Shockley, Fairchild, HP, and similar companies were the cradles for many of today's tech powerhouses. The place nurtures entrepreneurship.

Based on Hallock's 12 year tenure, I suspect that Hallock had a big pile of RSUs vest in 2020 (ten year anniversary of his hiring date) but due to the pandemic he decided to stay put. Remember, Santa Clara County was the first jurisdiction in the USA to mandate shelter-in-place orders from county health officer Dr. Sara Cody. Had there been no pandemic he likely would have left two years ago.

There are still plenty of job opportunities for someone with his experience in the industry. But he likely has enough money where he doesn't need to get a job right away.