John Stankey built his entire career on exactly the kind of institutional loyalty he now tells 130,000 people is dead.
He joined Pacific Bell in 1985 straight out of college. He has never meaningfully worked anywhere else — Pacific Bell became SBC, SBC acquired AT&T, and he climbed every rung of the same organizational ladder for 40 years without ever having to compete in an open market for a job.
He didn't get to CEO by being market-based. He got there by being loyal, patient, politically savvy, and present for four decades in the same building. He is the living embodiment of boomer corporate loyalty — and he abolished it the moment he reached the top.
That is not irony.
That is a specific kind of moral corruption that comes from people who pull the ladder up behind them.