AMD And JetBlue: Fire Everyone

The lesson to be learned from the recent stock price movements of Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and JetBlue (JBLU) is that you cannot fire enough and you also can't fire high enough up the management chain.

JetBlue pushed out its CEO, probably due to the severe customer service problems the airline had in a snow storm this past February. When the company bounced him from the corner office, its shares rose almost 5% to just under $11.

Over at AMD (AMD) word made it to the street that the troubled chip company would fire 450 people. Oddly, the CEO is not going. AMD's stock moved up almost 4% to just above $14.

Both JetBlue and AMD have been trading a bit above 52-week lows, and it is difficult to say whether the stock price gains will hold. But, if they do, it may be a lesson in letting people go.

Douglas A. McIntyre