There's a lot of confusion and misinformation going around. Stankey rolled out this policy in such a chaotic manner that everything is being passed down in random leadership calls and meetings. This is more than just return to office. This is a massive layoff affecting thousands of people.
Here's what we know for sure:
- If you are non-management, this doesn't apply to you
- If you're outside the US, this doesn't apply to you
- If you are in a customer-facing or operations role that requires you to be in a specific location, this doesn't apply to you - so store managers, field managers, data center operations, etc. According to the Stankey email on 5/16 this is 60% of all managers who are out of scope.
- There are 9 core locations for the remaining 40% of managers - they are Dallas (including Plano), Atlanta (including Alpharetta), Los Angeles, San Ramon, Seattle, St. Louis, Middletown, Bedminster, and Washington D.C. This is all from the Stankey email.
- If you are in one of those 9 locations you will be designated as "Office" or "Virtual" sometime in June.
- "Office" designated people will need to be in the office 3-5 days per week, measured as 60%+ of non-vacation and non-holiday time per month in their assigned office.
- The 3-5 days rule for Office people applies starting 7/10 for Dallas and Atlanta and 9/5 for the other 7 core locations.
- "Virtual" designation will apply to less than 10% of people and they still need to be in their assigned core office 1-5 days per month. There is no zero days per month option.
- People outside the 9 core locations (15% of all managers according to the Stankey email) are going to get officially notified in June that they have to relocate by 12/31/2023 or they are fired. This is thousands of people who are going to be fired by EOY.
Within the Jeremy Legg (ATS) org, which has about 12K management employees today:
- 2,000 management employees (17% of the org) are outside the 9 cities and will be gone by December 2023.
- St. Louis, San Ramon, Los Angeles, and Washington D.C. are going to cease being core locations, and all managers in those locations (who aren't customer facing or operations) must relocate or be fired in the next 18-24 months. That's Dec 2024 to Jun 2025. This affects 1,200 more management employees (10% of the org).
- This means that 27% of all ATS employees will be gone in the next 2 years.
- Managers in any of the other locations could be told to relocate between other cities or be fired within the next 24-36 months. That's by Jun 2026. This will depend on the org within Legg, but for example some orgs are already planning on forcing everyone in Seattle to move to Dallas or even forced moves between Atlanta and Dallas depending on the team. This will lose an unknown number of people but at least hundreds more.
- These are software engineers and application support teams being impacted, so with 27%+ being fired many platforms and applications will fail and cause unknown impacts to AT&T being able to function as a company.
For all of these relocations, there will be no relocation package offered, it is move at your own expense. And you will be told where to relocate to, you don't get to pick the city.
There may be exceptions to the relocation requirement but I've heard that will apply to less than 1% of people unless you have a documented medical accommodation.
Other orgs besides Legg have similar impacts with the goal of eventually consolidating to just Dallas and Atlanta by 2026 but I haven't seen those communications to document them for sure.