Thread regarding Comcast layoffs

Hubris, check. Arrogance, check. Delusional, check. Emperor has no clothes!

Dear Michael,
I wrote you, but you still ain’t callin’
I left my cell, my pager and my home phone at the bottom
I sent two letters back in august, you must not’ve got ’em
There probably was a problem in the mailroom or somethin’
Sometimes I scribble addresses too sloppy when I get laid off.

RIP Comcast (1963–2026) — 63 Years. The End of an Era.

@am Isn’t this the same guy who openly admitted he sold the public a cr-ppy product at DirecTV?

Says a lot about his approach to business.

Anybody that starts with, “ But I'm still here because I believe in this company and in the people in it…”, and promptly writes an open leader to the Internet on this website is not be genuine. People that truly mean those words just spoken would say these things internally, to Michael, not by way of some Anonymous bullsh-t on a site that is an open forum for people to spew professionally immature garbage about their employer.

@ak I’m not asking the Chief Growth Officer anything at the town hall. either is any other employee, these executives are disconnected to think that anybody wants to come to that meeting. He hasn’t delivered results that give me any more confidence in him than the rest of this leadership team.

And I’m a shareholder too, so spare me the spelling lesson. I’m still waiting to see the value you’re talking about. Another presentation about what we “aspire” to become doesn’t put a return in my portfolio.

@af This is the type of company they’re aspiring to become. Ask your Chief Growth Officer at tomorrow’s town hall. And if you’re expecting meaningful change that benefits employees or customers, you’re missing the bigger picture. Let me spell out who ultimately matters here, since comprehension seems to be an issue: S-H-A-R-E-H-O-L-D-E-R-S.

@ad “Centralized, AI-driven, Big Tech-style machine.” Lol. My God. Did you actually read the restructure?

It reads much more like a company consolidating functions and slimming down around its core connectivity business. Yes, the letter mentions AI-enabled customer experiences. That doesn’t make Comcast Amazon. Once NBCU and Sky separate, the stated focus is broadband, mobile, business services, and entertainment platforms. An executive comparing us to Big Tech doesn’t give us its business model, investment strategy, or approach to staffing and compensation.

You’re giving this org chart a he-l of a backstory.

And that's exactly the problem. Our customers have been telling us what they think of our leadership's decisions for years, and they're doing it with their wallets. They're choosing our competitors.

You can call it transformation, modernization, or adopting a Big Tech operating model, but none of those labels mean anything if the end result is a worse customer experience and a shrinking customer base.

Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft aren't Comcast. We operate a massive physical infrastructure that requires experienced people on the ground to build, maintain, and troubleshoot. You can't simply automate away the people who keep that infrastructure running and expect customers not to notice.

What's especially concerning is that leadership seems determined to double down on the very decisions that have contributed to customers leaving in the first place.

At some point, you have to ask whether this is a strategy to make Comcast successful or simply a strategy to make Comcast cheaper to operate. Those are two very different things.

Customers don't care how many layers of management we've eliminated or how much AI we've implemented. They care whether their service works, whether their problems get resolved, and whether they're getting value for their money.

And increasingly, they're deciding they can get that value somewhere else.

You still have hope in this company? Read the room. You’re chasing a ghost at this point. The market is laughing at Comcast’s arrogance. I saw an analysts on LinkedIn who made a whole cartoon about the arrogance Comcast’s executives continually show. How condescending to tell customers that wanting lower prices is “irrational” when their Internet and cable are still working for three times less with those “irrational” competitors. So privileged: Comcast comes off angry that customers won’t adjust to them rather than they adjust to customers. Even the market sees it and is laughing but execs will still believe they’re superior because of the top schools they networked into. It is truly comical but they don’t and won’t see it past their executive compensation and getting named high titles of power. They didn’t get here overnight. It took awhile but the funk was there awhile.

@ad Comcast is not Amazon, Meta, or Microsoft. And cutting jobs doesn’t mean they’re building some AI-driven machine. Get your head out of the sand.

The problem is that the leadership responsible for getting us here is still in charge. Nobody is asking them to bring back the old Comcast. People are asking for actual change, including accountability at the top. Rearranging everyone underneath the same leadership doesn’t address that.

You’re lecturing people about resisting change when they’re explicitly demanding it. The reading comprehension in these threads is something else.

Too heavy? Maybe at the top, but those of us on the front lines have been running dangerously thin for years. Understaffed, overworked, and constantly expected to do more with less. And somehow, leadership decided the solution was to cut even deeper.

The customer experience is about to get significantly worse. Entire departments that directly or indirectly support our customers have either been eliminated or stripped down to the point where they can barely function. The disconnect between executive leadership and what actually happens in the field has never been greater.

There's a fundamental difference between dealing directly with an upset customer, seeing their frustration, understanding the problem, and personally wanting to make it right, versus being pulled into an issue several layers removed from the customer. The urgency, accountability, and personal investment simply aren't the same. We've spent years removing the very people who understand that difference.

After nearly 28 years with this company, I have never witnessed a bloodbath like this. We aren't talking about trimming unnecessary management layers. We're talking about dismantling the operational foundation that generates revenue, maintains our infrastructure, and delivers service to our customers.

And that raises a much bigger question: What exactly is the long-term plan?

With the spinoff moving forward, entire organizations being gutted, and experienced employees being shown the door, it's becoming increasingly difficult to believe these decisions are being made with the intention of building a stronger Comcast for the future.

From where I sit, it feels more like a company being systematically dismantled than one positioning itself for growth. Finish the spinoff, strip down the remaining business, maximize short-term financial performance, and eventually sell what's left. I genuinely hope I'm wrong, but the decisions being made certainly aren't inspiring confidence.

You cannot cut your way to greatness. You cannot eliminate decades of institutional knowledge and expect the same results. And you cannot claim the customer experience is your priority while eliminating the very people responsible for delivering it.

In nearly 28 years, I've never been more concerned about the direction of this company. This doesn't feel like a restructuring designed to build something better. It feels like the beginning of the end of the Comcast many of us spent our careers building.

I need to interject.

I think people need to realize this is part of a bigger corporate strategy. Look at Amazon, Meta, Microsoft. Constant restructuring, layoffs, and uncertainty have become part of their culture. Comcast wants to operate like a tech company, and look at the leaders they’re putting in charge. They’re not exactly the warm and fuzzy types. This is the environment they’re used to. It’s also the kind of transformation McKinsey advises on: fewer layers, lower costs, and continuous change.

People keep appealing to the CEO to restore the old Comcast without considering that leadership may have no intention of bringing it back. It’s a tough pill to swallow, but this has been happening in tech for years. Comcast, as usual, is catching up.

People pleading are grieving a ghost. Executive leadership didn't break the old model by mistake; they intentionally demolished it to build a centralized, AI-driven, Big Tech-style machine.

The real question isn’t when Comcast will go back to being what it was. It’s whether people want to be part of what it’s becoming.

Michael don’t give a fuuuuu

It’s already clear the original message was ignored. Above director level very little changed. He doesn’t care. Just get out.

This is basically what the first open letter said back in July. The politics, the turf wars, the leaders protecting themselves. It was all laid out. And here we are, asking for help with the same problems.

What has he actually done to change that culture? What have we seen that makes you think he gives a sh-t now? I understand wanting to believe, but I don’t see what another appeal to him is going to accomplish. From where I’m sitting, the same people are running the same machine. We’re rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic and being asked to call it transformation.

Original. https://www.thelayoff.com/post/@OP+1kxmc4nzr

.Many want to stay but also want to be valued, both as US employees and as people who work hard to make the company successful.

“It’s been 84 reorganizations”

• titanic lady

Help us, Michael, you are our only hope.

Fix the RTO mandate please.

I have no idea who this is and likely work on the opposite end of the business and couldn't agree more. Our executive leadership is in pi----g contest to own and control, sometimes to receive questionable benefits from outside partners, all instead of helping lead for success.

@OP agree that the SVPs who say they own "AI" or "agentic" are too busy pi----g all over each other. Instead they should be collaborating and playing on the same team, but they choose instead to waste their time “defending their kingdoms”. It’s clear these execs are the ones who should have been shown the door, instead of those willing to collaborate and work as a team towards the same end goal. If I hear “my strategy”, “what I want to do”, “how I want to approach this” come out of the mouth of these execs one more time I’m going to scream.