#culture

Just heard him in a meeting just now joke about elon and the hardships of running a telecom company. senior management is still in denial...

AT&T’s $T CEO spent September telling everyone $SPCX Starlink’s mobile plan was “not a viable strategy.”

His exact words: satellite solves the last 2%, not the 98%. It can’t penetrate buildings. Small cells won’t fix it. It would cost as much as building a macro network. “A whole bunch of reasons why that won’t effectively work.”

Then SpaceX bought nationwide 800 MHz low-band spectrum today. The exact band Stankey himself admitted gets decent penetration into buildings.

The one he said satellite doesn’t have.
Then the FCC cleared 15,000 Starlink Mobile satellites at 330 km, up to 150 Mbps per user, with a waiver letting SpaceX sell service on spectrum it owns instead of leasing from a carrier.

Then, on October 1, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon launched a joint venture to blanket US dead zones with satellites. Their own words: pooling spectrum, common standards, direct-to-device.
So the timeline is: “not viable” in September. “We need satellites too” in October. Same month.

Stankey also said fiber is three times faster than satellite and nothing beats it. True. Fiber also doesn’t fit in your pocket. Nobody is choosing between a fiber line and a phone plan.

The 2% he dismissed is a $200B+ market. And the company he called non-viable just bought the spectrum layer he said it was missing.

Meanwhile the stock is in free fall down over 10%

There are way too many Directors and Upper Management...Why lay off the people who actually do the work?

That Elon’s so hot right now

Happy to see AT&T stock drop. They don't value workers. AI cameras and presences dashboards? WTF? This place su-ks. Maybe focus on sh-t that actually matters. Nobody here cares anymore.

Place your bets

It’s a mystery lol

lol....have fun eating starlink for lunch lmfao, what ya gonna do now T?

In the HTC at palm bay. You would think that bats invading the office space is enough to at least work from home for the week while they sort that out but nope, "just don't touch them".

Ok, all you coffee badging, Costco shopping, laptop leaving, anti-collaborating RTO deniers, the con is up. The Stank is going to know how long you spend sipping your latte, getting your steps in, perfecting your golf swing, working on your penalty kick or kayaking on Lake Stankey. The Surplus Squad will not need a name on an office to find you when it is time for your layoff.

Does anyone know how USAA is doing financially for the year?

It looks like the senior leadership has made a conscious choice to turn the employee meeting into a brainwashing session instead of sharing anything of substance?

Presumably most of the people posting on here are Verizon employees or have some other internal interest. And yet, when something legitimately bad happens for not only the company, but the industry- something thatwill most definitely negatively affect the employees and people are on here like they just won the ** Super Bowl or something.

I found that there are a lot of truly and deeply unhappy people on this board, they have given up hope of anything good ever happening to them. So they find joy when bad things happen. I legitimately feel bad for these people.

Has Five9 turned into a burnout factory to just burn through good people with no thought about maintaining our ability to complete our mission...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXNlaBpj2Y0

Holy He-l that was absolutely terrible.
Audience reaction in beginning and end says it all. He talks to audience like how he talks to us internally and it was just awkward and fell flat. He definitely did not receive the same reception he is used to internally. It’s not the same when the people aren’t being paid to nod their heads and say yes to you.

He also stated - don’t worry we won’t steal our customers IP - several times. Even if you weren’t thinking it before - now you would hyper aware that they are absolutely going to steal your IP if you go to Anderon to build you quantum wafers.

Also Albany isn’t a manufacturing line. Manufacturing capability is not manufacturing success: Reporting wafers produced and quantum systems deployed does not establish competitive yields, process repeatability, device reliability, or cost-effective production at commercial scale.

Also why is he bringing up his friend on stage from a self proclaimed competitor to launch Anderon? The guy spent most of his time promoting his own company and seemed to only remember why he was there in the final minute. The whole thing was just so bizarre.

Did anyone else honestly think this launch went well at all?

As a reminder, please do NOT take the survey!

I've been working here at Walgreens for 4.5 years, never got a promotion so wasn't surprised that I got let go. How do I feel? I felt numb by it knowing the culture as i process the news. Layoffs have happened yearly since I joined.
Well moving on now.

Farewell

The level of skill at gainwell is shocking. Most of the people i work with seem to be pulled of the streets.

We are constantly firing and hiring. But only from people within gainwell.

Do you think the talent level is related to the low pay?

Let’s here how good people got it and how bad people got it

Today COO told in meeting no more layoffs now for a year. Congratulations to all of us who survived 😎😎

Watch out UHG…. If Microsoft and Adobe were called out for foreign workers. Your next! It’s about time you stop undermining American workers.
Great job JD!

In 2019 Nike HR identified that we were 5-10 years from a retirement cliff of experienced leaders who had been with the company for ~30 years. We identified a number of up-and-coming leaders who were being groomed to backfill these leaders. Due to the location of Nike in Oregon, the experienced leaders and the backfill candidates were mostly all white men. Donahoe comes in with his Stanford Business School strategy of firing 15% per year, combined with George Floyd inspired aggressive diversity targets and we fire all the experienced leaders and the backfill candidates. Once they leave, no matter how talented the new team is, we lost the institutional knowledge that made Nike successful. Easy as that.

LT is listening ... what a load of Cr@p!

They’ve reduced the allocation amount, stretched the vesting schedule to four years, and limited withdrawals to just twice a year.
At this point, it almost feels like Dan doesn’t want the program to exist—but somehow couldn’t actually shut it down, so he’s slowly making it less and less attractive instead. 😂

What do you think? RA is laying it on thick. Sorry but it's very fake. I'm not falling for this rah rah sh-t.

Enrique Lores is a pile of dog sh-t

May as well rename "Edward D Jones & Co" to "McKinsey Graduates & Co" because that's who's really running the firm in to the ground. The current MP office occupant at this point is just a podcast participant and generic figurehead with no respect, no spine, and no actual leadership skills to speak of.

If the MP could lead the firm on their own, why would they have needed to bring in so many GPs from the outside???

I love how he didn't even get to write his own notice, and they made it clear he's out before the year ends. I can't wait to see more of our useless c-suite get canned.

Go to the intranet home page.

Go to the WE are turning your feedback into real change tile and click the link.

Scroll all the way to the bottom.

Click the tiny little Learn more about what we are not changing tile near the bottom.

The message isn't surprising but the way they tacked it on at the bottom behind a relatively tiny tile is pathetic and hilarious.

By far

Why do they RIF great people leaders and move us under someone who is clearly in over their head?

In the same breath, Verizon requires employees to get manager approval just to use AI tools.

The irony? Managers and executives already have access without approval—while the people actually doing the work and delivering results have to jump through hoops.

If the goal is to empower employees and reduce bureaucracy, this is exactly the opposite.

Bureaucracy with an AI label.

A company with a reputation for frustrating customers has now decided to give its employees the same experience, complete with layoff limbo, corporate doublespeak, and mandatory office attendance. And somehow, we’re supposed to believe top talent will be lining up at the door? Sure, money talks, but so does reputation. And without the NBCUniversal halo giving the place some cultural cachet, what’s the pitch exactly? Come for the paycheck, stay for the uncertainty? At this rate, the biggest challenge won’t be cutting talent. It’ll be convincing anyone talented to come here in the first place.

And here comes the inevitable “we’re going to operate like a startup!” A startup? In this economy? With decades of corporate baggage and the same leadership that got the business into this mess? That’s not a fresh start. That’s a rebrand of the same problems with fewer resources and higher expectations. I signed up to grow a successful business, not rebuild one under the direction of the people who ran it into the ground. Same leadership, fewer employees, bigger expectations? Hard no. That’s not a startup. That’s a turnaround without accountability. scan artists at its finest.

Yes that was a statement made by leadership. If you were on that call what might be your thoughts if you were or were not ISPed last week?

Would you feel comfortable?
Would you feel someone genuinely cared?
Would you feel safe?

It’s becoming increasingly difficult to understand the direction this company is taking.
Reorgs seem to mean moving employees into roles beneath the roles they were previously promoted in to, while insisting it isn’t a demotion. At the same time, bonus structures have been reduced or made so difficult to achieve that incentives no longer feel particularly motivating or achievable.
Experienced leaders are being let go, outside hires and former colleagues of the new leadership is being brought in, and long-tenured employees with decades of institutional knowledge continue to leave. That kind of talent and experience isn’t easily replaced.
Perhaps most concerning is the shift away from what has historically mattered in this industry: customer relationships. Publishing is relationship-driven. Those relationships take years to build, and constant employee turnover comes at a cost.
Customers are also questioning product and platform decisions that we cannot answer for because it just doesn't make sense.
At some point, you have to ask: if experienced employees are leaving, customers are frustrated, incentives are disappearing and successful people are either being let go or demoted, what are you doing here?
You will find it increasingly difficult to retain good employees if you stop rewarding them for their success, whether that recognition comes through compensation, bonuses, advancement, or simply allowing people to remain in positions they worked hard to earn. You cannot continually remove the incentive to succeed and expect people to stay.
The culture that once earned this company recognition as one of the best places to work is being dismantled by these decisions. That should concern everyone.

What would it be like working at Pratt in DPHM or OBPHM? How does it compare to the tech sector or other sectors? What is the technology like?

Seriously, it’s draining and exhausting the commute is adding 3 hours to my day that’s brutally unfair.
When can we start hearing a relaxation on this nonsense and allow employees have some autonomy?
No one hours in FT anymore this is primitive barbaric snd selfish.

If your company is making record profits, the employees should be getting record raises and bonuses. Otherwise, consider us servants

Why is everyone being so secretive about this?

My boss and two other colleagues have been laid off, and apparently everyone knows. Yet nobody has addressed it directly, and the whole thing seems to be getting swept under the rug.

We’re not asking because we’re looking for gossip. This is going to have a direct impact on our team and our workload. The work still has to go somewhere, and at some point someone needs to communicate what the plan is.

The problem is, nobody wants to be the one to ask and potentially end up absorbing all the extra work without any additional compensation. We shouldn’t have to find out through the grapevine or wait until the workload lands on our desks before anyone acknowledges what’s happening.

that's the post

Everything seems to come back to reducing costs rather than improving the business. As a result, the many, many cuts are making it harder for teams to communicate and get anything done. It's all a big joke.