Thread regarding Comcast layoffs

@11g it’s them. We can spot their hallmark a mile away, huh? Lol

@OP completely agree with you on all points. I will add that leadership doesn’t have strategic thinking capabilities either. Strategic thinkers question everything and they make sure to oust anyone who questions.

@ap you sound like Comcast leaders lol

@sm if things fall thru with that attorney, also check out whatever firm is handling the pie in the face complaint against them.

@sm post it once your ready to go. We are.

@sm I am curious and would like to know what will be the basis of any legal claims based on your initial conversation. It may help folks decide if they would like to be part of some class action case.

@sm I believe folks would need to rethink this option before signing any separation paper which usually has clause waiving right of any legal action or claims as a condition of receiving any severance?

Veteran ED at this company. I’m in the mist of speaking with one of the most highly regarded and feared employment law firms in the United States. They are shocked and appalled by what Comcast did and at least Pennsylvania they believe there’s a very strong case.

Once things get formalized and if you all would like to join, I will post some information. I’m sure I’m cannibalizing my future with the company as I will be named on the lawsuit, but somebody has to hold them accountable.

@ha Just wait until those who get laid off have nothing to lose by telling the dark truth about this company!

@ha Just because you haven't seen it on the news doesn't mean it isn't real. The people who have been hurt are still living with it. Some are still working there. Some of the people who are commenting who no longer work here we’re not ready to tell their story. Some can't talk about it yet, and that is their right. When you say there's nothing to see, you're telling them what they went through doesn't count. It does. They'll speak when they're ready, and until then, be careful what you assume.

@ha @he Be careful about declaring there's no story here. You don't know what people inside this company have been through, and many are still afraid to speak. Scale isn't the measure of whether people were hurt, and the lack of headlines says more about how hard it is to speak up than about whether there's anything to tell. There are also real questions worth asking as AI mo

There are also real questions worth asking as AI moves to the edge of carrier networks. What data is collected, where does it go, who has access to it, how are employees and outside vendors vetted, and what independent oversight exists? A carrier should be able to answer those publicly.

@ha Netflix has already proven that kind of story works. The Case Against Boeing wasn’t compelling because Boeing vanished overnight. it was compelling because people got to watch how leadership decisions, culture and incentives damaged a once dominant company’s reputation and trust.

You don’t need Enron fraud or some scandal. Corporate hubris, bad decisions and a slow motion decline are already a genre. That’s exactly why it works. Netflix mu---r mysteries pull you in because you’re trying to understand how things went so wrong and who made the decisions that got everyone there.

Comcast has that same how did we get here?story. Cable company, then communications company, then entertainment company, now tech company. all while customers and employees are left asking what the company actually is anymore. The identity crisis is part of the story.

Think it's comical that majority of comments are from people complaining about RTO. Policy has been 4 days for a year+. And many companies (go check) require at least 3, many 5 days, now. So if that's the main gripe, good luck finding something. Comcast has many flaws. Many of which deserve to be shared on these forums. But RTO? Find something worthy to complain about guys. It's not like you're finding jobs elsewhere, or will find jobs elsewhere. Most pharma companies and finance in and around Philly are requiring in office at least 3 days a week. Can we find something legitimate to complain about

@h9 right. Look, I'm as cynical about this company as anyone, but let’s be real about the scale here. it's no Abercrombie (executives indicted for s-x trafficking), no Blockbuster (a beloved institution collapsing), and no Enron (precedent-setting fraud). There's no salacious detail that sells a Netflix show. It's just a poorly-run cable company going through slow-motion, terminal decline.

@et I'd seriously love to see you pitch that to Netflix. I'm not arguing that these things aren't wrong or don't happen. I'm saying that, like it or not, these kind of things happen in corporate America all the time. Big companies make big mistakes and they sink. Kodak, Nokia, Toys R Us, Xerox, Circuit City, Sears, and on and on. What's happening at Comcast isn't new, and it's certainly not different enough from the corporations that failed before it.

@bs even this site knows to assign you for exactly what you’re spouting - BS. I didn’t know we had a mind reader in the building who can speak for all those who were oppressed in silence or in fear of speaking out. Or maybe you conducted another employee survey we didn’t know about? Even before COVID, we had folks working hybrid or remote. RTO isn’t the main issue. There are bigger fishes to fry but leadership simply chose to keep fishing.

@et Comcast has literally been crowned America’s worst company before. The hook already exists.

A corporate giant with that reputation trying to reinvent itself in real time? That documentary writes itself.

People aren’t tuning in for org charts or another RTO debate. RTO is 15 minutes of episode 5. The real story is the reputation, the decisions, the customer frustration, the layoffs, the executive churn, the attempted reinvention, and whether a company this big can actually outrun what people already think of it.

That’s the series. RTO is a subplot.

@f1 you think it would be too boring then congrats to you for not being one of the many mistreated employees.

@et probably too boring for a Netflix doc. More like a Harvard business school case study. Doubling down on all the wrong moves and technology and now facing existential threat.

@ea because it wouldn’t be about just the layoffs. It would be the best cautionary tale about how corporate greed and cr-ppy culture led a major company to plummet. Not to mention this is the tip of the iceberg on how they treat employees. Have you not read the pie in the face lawsuit? The heart attacks from this job? The accounts of constant employee abuse swept under the rug? And that’s just from people willing to speak. A company doing this badly has a larger iceberg to hit under the surface that would make for better TV than the Abercrombie documentary or Blockbuster.

@a2 why do people keep bringing up a Netflix documentary about this? This is barely even a back page news story and you think Netflix will drop millions on making a documentary about a bunch of people in corporate America pi---d about not being able to work from home?

@OP Perfectly said, the company found a way to blow an unbelievable competitive advantage they held for 5 decades - ive worked for one of the divisions and 2 regions during my time with the company and the employees are not the problem - stems from much higher up. Hoping for the best for everyone

@bs incorrect. Prior to the pandemic, managers had discretion over how to manage their individual teams. Many people were working from home either full or part time, at the manager’s discretion. I worked with people that were full-time working from home before VHOB was ever a thing. As long as work got done appropriately, mgmt really didn’t care where you did it from. After COVID and then RTO, all that changed. People that were hired specifically to work from home were suddenly required to go into the office.

@bs before COVID, I worked in Center City one day or two days a week; after COVID I was forced to commute four days a week and sometimes five days a week because the geniuses in this “tech company” can’t even figure out how to take PTO days into account when counting in-office days.

@bt You’re confusing people needing a paycheck with people being happy. Calling the complaints a “vocal minority” doesn’t answer them, and the people staying quiet haven’t appointed you to speak for them. This is exactly the attitude people are tired of from leadership, dismiss the feedback, assume silence means approval, then act surprised when trust is gone.

@bt you sound more like a Comcast champion and delusions like this are the reasons Comcast has been ran into the ground: believing that what we’re saying are wrong are just “minority voices.” Comcast has a terrible reputation in the community for how it treats its customers AND employees. Comcast is the most active company on this site because it tops being dysfunctional. Maybe you’re a leader still wearing your rose colored glasses and prefer the self-comfort of minimizing years-long concerns as “minority” or gaslighting that if any comment doesn’t adore Comcast, then assume they must not work at the company. That is delusional and minimizing which is one of the many complaints as to why we’re here now.

@b5 agreed. Before COVID everyone came in 5 days and no one complained. Now the babies are crying about 3 days RTO.

@b5 okay leader who ran the company into the ground

@az Parker pushed Comcast leadership to invoke the RTO in hopes that other companies would follow suit which they did

if you’re complaining about the 4 days in the office mandate then tbh i have zero sympathy. this has been the requirement for the last 2 years. grow up

@ax I think we should separate what we know from speculation. Philadelphia absolutely benefits from Comcast employees being downtown through wage taxes, SEPTA ridership and spending, and the city has publicly encouraged employers to bring workers back. But I haven’t seen evidence that Comcast’s tax status requires four-day RTO or that Philadelphia or Harrisburg is forcing this policy. Comcast itself implemented four days before Parker’s city RTO push. If there’s an actual tax agreement requiring attendance, post it. Otherwise, “the city is making them do it” shouldn’t be treated as fact.

@OP i'm not supportive of the company's RTO fixation but the more time passes, the more city hall (and probably harrisburg at this point) pressures comcast to get the employees back into the office spending in the city. even septa is on comcast's a-s. the company can lose favorable tax status if it fails to do so. and of course the company can't make this policy just for philly, so it has to be everywhere. not making excuses for the company, but i think it's a separate issue. the optics are terrible, and they should work out a deal with the city to ease up on this pressure until the company gets its house in order. this is a terrible time to be riding employees over this stupidity.

Why does wanting better automatically mean someone should leave? I’m sure they’ve probably tried the surveys, huddles, managers, and feedback channels and felt like it all went nowhere. That’s usually how you end up with a post this pent up and frustrated. People don’t get this worked up because they don’t care. They get there because they cared, spoke up, and felt ignored long enough.

It’s sad because there was a time when leadership felt like a badge of honor something earned through judgment, responsibility, and actually taking care of the people you lead. Now too often it feels like complacency, insulation from consequences, and accountability that somehow stops before it reaches the people making the biggest decisions.

They’ve become so desensitized to people’s livelihoods that the human impact barely seems to register anymore. Thousands of people can lose their jobs and it gets reduced to a line item, a target, or a transformation milestone. Those are mortgages, health insurance, families, stability, and people’s sense of security. At some point, that level of detachment stops looking like leadership and starts looking deeply dysfunctional.

If accountability is really the goal, it should apply upward too especially to the people making the decisions that created the mess in the first place. Do you not understand what happens when people feel ignored long enough? This cannot be the timeline we’re in, because apparently common sense has left the building.

@ap It’s interesting that this keeps getting reduced to RTO. RTO is not the core issue. The bigger issue is leadership accountability. Some of the same senior leaders who helped create the problems we’re dealing with are still avoiding any real accountability for the outcomes. Changing where employees sit doesn’t fix poor leadership, bad decisions, or a broken culture.

Sounds like someone who is bitter and doesn't want to come into work. Leave.

@ad We know what tax loss harvesting is. You’re explaining how to manage a loss to people asking why leadership keeps delivering one. For employees paid partly in stock, that’s compensation losing value. A tax deduction doesn’t make them whole or answer the accountability question. But thanks for following up the unsolicited tax advice with a farmers market joke. Really brought the analysis together.

Plenty of us here have shares in 30s and 40s, probably even more have been buying harder in the low 20s. Talk to your tax guy/gal about tax loss harvesting if you're concerned that it won't get back to the basis of some of your costs.

Now go buy something overpriced at the farmers market

Yes! “Every executive in the office five days a week, plus weekends as needed, until the stock is back up.”

@a2 The saddest part is we know how this movie ends because we've seen it before. Kodak, Blockbuster, Sears. Every one of them had smart people inside waving their arms and leadership too busy managing the optics to listen. Different logo, same script. At least Blockbuster let people work from the couch.

This has all the ingredients of a Netflix corporate downfall documentary! Ignored customers, leadership churn, strategic whiplash, shrinking subscribers, layoffs, and a bizarre fixation on badge swipes while the business burns