MSOC is the b–tard child of Lean Six Sigma. A scam from the beginning, I cannot blame it for the failure of AT&T but it certainly played a part. Part of the downfall of General Electric. https://sixsigmafails.com/ge-six-sigma-failure
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LMAO yeah that data-driven analysis concept is super crazy, isn’t it? Much rather lead and change based on emotion only.
Every year they’d issue an “anonymous” survey to employees and every year I’d tell them they were f*cking up and exactly how.
Every year my supervisor would get pi---d once the “anonymous” results g-b-smacked him, and every year nothing would change except for the worse.
MSOC is still in the SE. They cannot divide two numbers properly to get the correct efficiency.
I looked up MSOC and AT&T just for kicks today.
As I read through these posts, I cannot help but reflect and laugh about the absolute failure that is the AT&T culture. I resigned in 2009 because I was fed up with the monsters MSOC created within the leadership of the west I/R district in Houston. I grew weary of being forced to beat down techs every morning because they spent an extra five minutes replacing a drop the day before, or because the trend charts changed trajectory on a particular day. I can agree with pretty much everything above and will say that my experiences with AT&T are a driving factor for why I pursued a career in Industrial and Organizational Psychology. Now only two years from earning a doctorate, oh how I wish I could do my dissertation on the company now. I have frequently thought about applying for Bell Labs because the incompetence at AT&T is so fascinating, but when I review the job-board I begin to feel disgusted and abandon the idea for another six months to a year.
The reason the company gets away with the poor treatment is that most people have nowhere better to go. Where else does a high school graduate go to make $70k - $100k+ per year? For people like me, it was even worse because I only had a GED. After twelve years at the company, I made the decision that work/life balance was more important, and I have never been happier. I worked on my education and am now earning more than six figures as a VP in the transportation industry. With COVID, jobs are tough to get, but trust me when I say there is a better way.
For those who hate your jobs at AT&T, I hope you can derive some satisfaction when I tell you how I went out in a Blaze of Glory.
I wrote a letter outlining my disgust for the treatment of employees and express how sad I was that after giving twelve hard-working years to the company, this is what it has come down to. I dropped dirty bombs all over my 2nd and 3rd line, then I used “phone” to find the email of every single person in the chain of command up to Ed Whitaker. I sent the email to everyone EXCEPT my 2nd and 3rd line, so they would get the information from the top down. According to my coworkers, the 2nd and 3rd lines last their minds as the heat came down. At least one area manager (not mine) resigned in the wake. From what I remember being told, my area manager and district manager were soon moved to California and Dallas, respectively.
Obviously, I can only speculate about why they were moved, but hopefully, it was not by choice.
Before MSOC they sent folks out with us while we worked to do time studies.....most of them folks sat in a chair and fell asleep! NO JOKE!! Lol!! ATT hires nothing but the best!!
GPS might have started for that reason but after that news station in the Midwest started following techs and did the expose’ years ago the company was pretty frank about its purpose.
Every tool or policy change that comes out becomes disciplinary.
- GPS started for emergencies & safety
- MSOC started for quality
- New buzzer in vehicle started as a driver improvement tool by big data
- Local safety has become onerous due to mangers having to come up with an “action plan” after any incident. So they keep piling on unnecessary local policy. 3rd cone on passenger side, 4 chocks, magic vest, chin strap hard hat that is small and heavier etc....
MSOC was a Bellsouth program that got forced down everyone’s throat. (Smith was a Bellsouth guy and once he took over it became law) If that was the original intent then the Bellsouth people who did the training and implementation were unaware of how it was and would be used.
You mo–ns ..when SBC bought Bell South ..MSOC came with it, it was originally a Quality program designed to retain customers and attract new ones. ATT deployed MSOC poorly and soon it became an abused discipline tool..... moral has never recovered.
MSOC is still alive. TFS/IEFS are accountable for numbers, it treats its service orders and repairs the same. This is a technical job, not an assembly line ie.. Nut A on bolt B indefinitely. Too many variables/roadblocks on each job, even though the basic components are the same.
This is why customer service is failing & we can’t do a quality job because bonuses and rankings are counting on it. We aren’t maintaining the facilities anymore only putting bandaids to try and repair 40 year plus old cable in a lot of cases. String by & bypasses are the new cables of the day.
Technicians are told to do whatever it takes to make these numbers or discipline including, up to termination will follow. So, pi$$ on Customers, they aren’t important.
Those MSOC coaches were a complete joke. The company pays some id–t who’s never done the job 80-100k per year to tell people how to do a job they know nothing about, which only ends up making the employees do their job slower. Every cent spent on an MSOC coach is a complete waste.
I would overhear the MSOC guys talking to ("coaching") our Field Operations managers in the office. Every time that I did I could not believe that those MSOC positions were a real "thing". And they would send these guys across state lines and put them up overnight to have a couple hour meeting with these folks. Complete lunacy. Not sorry that this particular person I am thinking of got canned.
We can only hope they are embracing “fail fast”
Does msoc still exist ?
Focus on doing the basics right. Take care of your customers. Take care of your employees, because they're the ones taking care of your customers.
I don't blame AT&T for Six Sigma, but I do blame them for being clueless enough to still be using it.
6-sigma
LoL
They could give a c-ap about the copper plant for the most part. 600 pair cables with maybe 100 workers. And even if it gets damaged only a few customers care enough to call in a report unless it is a business in the sheath or it has Uverse services.
I personally Love that this Sigma clowns went out of business, out the door, fired or layoff,....Karma is a B–ch! NEXT is SCRUM BS
one of the ongoing problems at the company is the mail-order MBA's running things have low sales resistance to whatever the latest management fad is. A few years ago it was a bunch of web-based Harvard Business courses, now it's the ENPS.
These dummies don't seem to understand that if they offered a better product at a better price with better customer service, a lot of these things would take care of themselves. Employees don't recommend T services because they're expensive and bad. Employees don't recommend T as a place to work because they're expected to hold up a collapsing business then being blamed for not being able to support a rotting structure.
As the old saying says if you don’t take care of the customer somebody else will....
Spot on...our plant and customer service from the business office and some of the techs have suffered because they don't give us time to fix things properly and pressure emlpoyees into selling things to customers that they don't even want
KarmA