Thread regarding Verizon Communications Inc. layoffs

@m9

'I called IT yesterday and had to use Google Translate to understand what the guy was saying. It is no way to run an American Company!'

While you were Googling your IT person, the 'incredible' AI assistants were busy adding an extra $500 to customer accounts today that just called in for a simple question! The 2nd quarter numbers will be the best ever - if you drink the kool-aid!

I called IT yesterday and had to use Google Translate to understand what the guy was saying. It is no way to run an American Company!

@a3

There’s a pattern here: transformation positioned as empathy, metrics paraded as milestones, and “complexity” invoked to soften the fallout of choices already baked into Project 624.

Meanwhile, the very people who built the foundation — many with decades of service — are quietly pushed aside under the guise of restructuring. It’s hard not to notice who’s being filtered out in the process.

Customers aren’t blind either. When support falters, bills fluctuate, and familiar names disappear, trust erodes — no matter how polished the message.

Doing the right thing isn’t about storytelling. It’s about confronting uncomfortable trade-offs with clarity — and owning the consequences.

Hans has assembled his take on the Bad News Bears vs Telecom Industry. What a clown show. The bar is so low that a bedbug could crawl under it and su-k more blood out of the company.

Gone from best of breed to chasing T Mobile's fall off. This period in Verizon will be a classic Harvard Business case for the ages.

This board of directors and executive team will be legendary in being able to take the number one dog in telecom and wireless telecom and turning it into a dead dividend stock with sketchy prospects.

The company was once best of breed in network performance, customer service and able to command top dollar, then traded it all to be a prepaid also ran.

Can't wait to read that case!

@OP

Response: Project 624 – Strategic Optics vs. Structural Change
In reply to “Raising the Bar – A Response from the Trenches”

The original post captured what many have felt for a while—that much of Verizon’s recent transformation is more semantic than structural. Project 624 reinforces that impression.

At its core, 624 isn’t a reinvention. It’s a reframing—a narrative architecture designed to repackage legacy decisions (layoffs, automation, decentralization) under the language of customer-centricity.

Let’s break it down:
• AI Integration: While AI can enhance certain workflows, its implementation here appears reactive—filling capacity gaps created by aggressive workforce reduction, rather than augmenting skilled support. We’re not seeing AI deployed as a force multiplier; we’re seeing it deployed as a labor substitute.
• Customer Champions: Conceptually strong. In practice, they are absorbing multi-channel escalation paths under greater pressure, with fewer tools. The human layer has narrowed, not expanded.
• Retail Network Claims: The “93% coverage” stat is technically correct, but strategically misleading. Proximity ≠ quality. Footprint ≠ investment.
• Perks & “myAccess”: Incentivization is fine, but branding gift cards and cookies as experience improvements confuses retention tactics with service design.

The broader takeaway? Project 624 signals a shift in storytelling more than in capability. It’s about perception alignment—shaping how stakeholders interpret a leaner, more automated service infrastructure.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with that. But it shouldn’t be mistaken for transformation. Not yet.