Big swath of T received "management voluntary offer" this morning. Last week, many retirements of senior leadership announced and management reorg; two days later, some groups still don't what their new reporting chain is. No info yet on what kind of volunteer sweetener is being offered. This is moving much faster than typical offers in past.
27 replies (most recent on top)
“manager except when I was't” I’m sure you’ve had a very colorful career as a wire technician manager, the emphasis is on had. You are expendable because of your idleness. Cheers
"Small group" depends on what you think of as "small". Rough numbers from a friend in HR are
Sax 4800
Kat 1720
Lip 970
Fin 350
Ren 540
From the ACEA, 7411 are eligible and 635 are ineligible. I think the ACEA is required for release by government regulation, otherwise we wouldn't have ever seen those numbers.
Not gonna help you make a decision, but interesting.
@2xic
I have some very recent experience from both sides. For four days, I didn't carried little water, but I did carry plenty of tools, JDSUs, access points, cable spools, and the like. And yes fear was involved, but not of the job; rather for myself that a lifelong respect for picket lines that had to be abandoned in order to keep my job "attending conference calls".
As for those conference calls: yes, there are plenty of them where our time is wasted. Even worse are town hall or department meetings or LWD sessions where we learn waaaay too much about the personal successes and vacations of our senior leadership. But between those conference calls does come real work where we suss out exactly how well our sellers are producing or products being adopted. Some of it involves a lot of code in Excel or MSSQL or some proprietary tool for which there is no support. Then we have to carefully craft explanations and justifications for our leadership's allotted five minute slice of the next conference call, if we have any hope for funding for next year.
So yeah, we managers couldn't find a good pair in the corroded pedestal filled with spiders or remember exactly how to confirm a signal on the JDSU. Understood. I respect our field staff enormously for keeping the plant running. The ones I talked to reacted to the idea of spending six hours after dinner debugging a macro as onerous as I did to working on a ladder in 97 degree heat. To each, our own, but respect to all.
@2egz, you drew first blood Bunky. "The problem with management is they sit around and consider conference calls work." Men & Women on this side of the office pull long hours, just like you, no more but certainly no less!
Thousands of management don’t look down at craft, on the contrary, we’re saying "damn, glad I don’t have to do their job!" By explaining what many of us do, at any given stretch of time, I was hoping you got the gist of it all...guess not!
Those were your exact words, SIR.
Never said that, it’s just the job. Those in Management , like those on the Line, deserve respect for just doing the job. If you wish to look down your nose at someone, head for the beach....
I guess thst makes you a real man letting the company make you wotk all hours of the night
@2fau, guess I can’t argue your points, being a manager myself. I’m afraid of heights, not especially good with my hands and damn I’m outta shape.
And as for those conference calls you look down at, many are a useless exercise, I will admit, but when I’m pulling together a project in Japan, or Malaysia, the UK, India or Brazil (among only a few) and am working at midnight to put a call together that involves multiple countries. Or a deadline for a deployment that gets me up at 3am so i can get the UK on the line at 8 am their time, to seal the deal....where might you be? We all know the answer, don’t we? Not all of us keep daylight hours my friend!
It’s not your fault really, some people just have that Archie Bunker mentality and what a Real Man does for a living.....but try to slip into our line of work and you’d be lost, and carrying our water.
The problem with management is they sit around and consider a conference call work. When the minimal strike happened in SE the managers proved they were unable to carry water due to fear and inability to perform actual work. Upper management has seen through this charade and decided accordingly. Goodbye.
I used to be skeptical when people say their posts are censored. I had two posts yesterday not show up. One did have a cuss word in it, so what? Are there kids on this board? afraid someones feeling will be hurt? it was not even directed at anyone on this board but critical of ATT. I feel like I am on facebook. Pathetic.
@1uns, 5 years ago I would have called your advice reckless and stupid, job security had a different meaning then. So two years later I got Surplussed, dusted off a very dusty "black book" of old friends, contacts and upper managers and got back in....to old to search new employment and too young to retire.
If you have the ten year gap, between retirement and a new employer, that’s about right....they will still give you a look, but the older you get the tougher it is. If you are thinking of making the leap, consider your age and what value you can give to that prospective new boss and promote it!
Nice. Time to clear out more deadweight. This company is too management heavy.
It’s pretty much the same package as rolling the dice...
Maybe.
If you're within striking distance of retiring it makes sense to hang on. If you have more than a decade till retirement however, it might make sense to take a known 6 month payout and find something new vs risking getting outsourced and losing the severance package entirely. With that much lead time, it's almost a given you won't make it to retirement under AT&T.
“It’s pretty much the same package as rolling the dice”.
100% correct. There is no incentive for someone that has been here for a long time (with a good salary, lots of PTO, etc.) who is not ready, or yet of age to be able to really retire to take these offers.
If you were hoping to retire anyway, good for you, now you get a severance too. Those are the only people it makes sense for.
Me? I’m going to keep getting paid until you lay me off.
It’s pretty much the same package as rolling the dice...
The days of a "sweetener" are gone. You either take the voluntary offer and receive 6 months, or you roll the dice and potentially become selected to leave the payroll via the terms of the severance policy.
All Tech Dev did not receive the letters offer or not eligible.
Everyone, buckle up, because if they don’t get the numbers they are looking for through voluntary, we all know what happens next.
Another offer that only makes sense if you planned on retiring anyway. Otherwise, sit and wait for them to lay you off. If they would get serious about this and just sweeten the severance a little bit, say cap it at a year instead of 6 months, they would get a lot of takers.
It was sent to the following orgs:
Katibeh
Saxena
Lipari
Finnegan
The only "sweetener" above the benefits of getting laid off is that it includes 6 months of subsidized health care ("CEC") which would replace your first six months of COBRA otherwise.
Did not hear of anything in ATO Mobility.
Does anyone know if this involved Mobility?
Is it the standard offer or is there any extra incentive?
The following non-sales groups got the offer
Business Marketing, Global Operations & Services, Network Sourcing & Integration Services, and IBM and Global Systems Integrators.
Good ole Johnny D got a multi million dollar golden parachute, why not give the little people 12 months?
I heard that all of Tech Dev that was re-orged under Mo Katibeh got the offer. Not sure if AT&T cast its net wider than that.
What big swath? Seems like it’s only one small group. Do you know something different?
BYE BYE to all future firings... another Day@att swamp,