AT&T CEO John Stankey's viral memo says the quiet part out loud about the broken state of the corporate workplace.
https://www.businessinsider.com/att-ceo-memo-workplace-loyalty-dead-employees-job-security-2025-8
18 replies (most recent on top)
I will never complete another one.
Good to see someone in the media torching Stinkey for the clueless poser he is. It is rare to see actual unbiased journalism these days not bought and paid for by corporate marketing teams. Bravo, Ms. Ito.
“ No more free handouts. Gotta work for your pay.”
That message should be aimed squarely at Juan Skunkey, the (complicit) BoD & C suite.
An email came out in June encouraging us to take the survey. It said things like “Your feedback will help us make the changes we need to build a culture where every employee is fully engaged in their work.” "We’ll share results to hold ourselves accountable and act on the insights we gain from all of you.” “It’s time to accelerate transforming our culture and improving the employee experience.” With that said, I felt encouraged to give some gentle suggestions as to how my employee experience might be improved. The email we received Friday, was like a slap in the face.
I have my severance and new job. How's everyone been? John been treatin you all ok?
No more free handouts. Gotta work for your pay.
Interesting that all the CEO's he noted that are likely to follow Stankey's example are all male.
I started a contract job for Lumen recently and the culture is supporting, trusting, transparent, and loyal. Nearly everyone I've worked with so far are remote. Lumen has a female CEO, Kate Johnson. Loyalty is not dead at Lumen under her leadership.
"What he missed was the hope buried beneath their discontent. Some 99,000 workers cared enough to respond — and many of them voiced their frustrations because they believed AT&T could once again be a place they'd be thrilled to give their best work to. Underlying that hope is one message: It's not too late."
LOL
Next survey will have like 11 participants
"AT&T is just reviving the old Bell South spirit."
BellSouth was never like this. This culture is all SBC!
@ar " The BOD should ask him to retire."
He's now in charge of the BOD; ain't gonna happen.
For anyone who doesn't pay for Business Insider:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/careers/at-t-just-made-it-official-workplace-loyalty-is-dead/ar-AA1K4ro4?ocid=winp1taskbar&pc=oneClick&cvid=6894c374e8d8463e9ce78a6f89568b8c&ei=12
Nice article BTW.
AT&T stock is 20% higher this year. He should have thanked employees for this 1H-2025 achievement and asked everyone to keep doing what they are doing for 2H-2025. I am retired but I still own some stock and I still have AT&T cell service. I feel sorry for my friends who are still working there. A good leader motivates staff to improve. Stank stinks as a leader. The BOD should ask him to retire.
His memo will one day be a Harvard case study on poor leadership
@a2 Unless it affects the stock price, he couldn’t care less.
They don’t care. The direction is move away from cooler, then slash a lot of jobs. Introduce AI to handle as many tasks as possible and then use contract employees.
The issue with the plan is everyone else will do the same. Wireless will be a low cost commodity and revenue will shrink along with the headcount.
And let’s not forget new technology may come along to creat a new form of wireless service.
I’m
Well written article, and a sad fact. Guess when you making $26 million a year, and are never held accountable for such mistakes that were made, you really can just hate the 99k things you see as worthless and expenses.
Thanks for sharing. Stank really messed up again. I’m seeing people that always stay late leaving on time and citing his letter as why. They said they are done putting in extra now. It was a backfire. Aww
He really did some major damage with that silly little email he sent thinking he was a big man