Here is a brief missing AT&T layoff survival guide - this is to be used by IT workers, other professions may benefit as well (e.g., Finance, HR, etc.) : Learn from us experts that have already gone through what AT&T putting you guys through as it gradually replaces each of you domestic counterparts with cheaper offshore workers. 1. Don't write any code comments, or if you do, don't explain how things work 2. Create silos of local work groups and work face to face.. No email on how/what you've done. 3. If overseas teams ask you how to do things, give a broad brush overview, no details. 4. Write more complicated code that is more difficult to understand, provided it does not affect the underlying performance/reliability. 5. Don't write complete design documents. IF you write design documents, write enough to get management to think it's done, but not enough for engineers offshore to do anything useful with it. 6. Occasionally, take a vacation day off on short notice, and let things just "blow up" after you hand off your work to offshore teams. When you come back and things are completely not working, send lots of email about what a terrible job people have done... 7. Always blame problems on offshore teams, no matter how small. 8. Always blame the reason why you problems can't be fixed earlier is because there is a 15+hour timezone difference between headquarters and those remote offices. 9. Hold meetings at times that is convenient for you but in the middle of the night for those offshore teams. 10. Make sure your meetings you conduct locally are as efficient as possible and make your local U.S. totally in sync and ahead of the work schedule before you even meet with the offshore team. That way, it makes them look incompetent. 11. The best meetings are the ones held at 5:00pm PST on Friday, since that will be Saturday overseas, so the ones that most won't show up.And the ones that do show up, end up having to take time off their personal schedule to do it...Make sure this is a reoccurring weekly meeting... 12. At the last minute, reschedule those meetings for the next week (but continue to meet locally and carry on your business). 13. Make sure you send out a meeting notes to senior management, indicating who attended and more importantly, who didn't attend... 14. When someone screws up overseas, always make sure you take the initiative to fix the problem, and make sure you send out 5+ emails telling management how you fixed the problem, describing in extreme detail how things got so screwed up and how you fixed it. And most importantly, if you're going down, you might as well create as much havoc internally inside the company as possible. Nothing is worse more than a company has so much internal conflict that efficiency and productivity comes to a halt..It's 100x worse than any sort of external competition....And that's the predicament corporations and will put the company in when it starts trying to just save on "cost" by offshoring....
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This isn't a layoff survival guide - it's a sabotage guide that enumerates the specific behaviors within the organization that the company is targeting for layoffs!
Yes, AT&T is a nameless faceless corporation that cares more about maximizing shareholder value than it does about you individual contributors. Get used to it.
Stop whining and begin formulating your Plan B. Can you code? Great - then start finding people outside of work to start a business. Are you able to do networking? Same thing - find some people who can sell and market and do finance and think about forming your own small business.
If AT&T has such bad processes, why are you not making suggestions on how to improve those? What processes in AT&T would you copy in your business?
If AT&T has such bad tools then why are you not making suggestions to improve or replace those? What tools in AT&T would you copy or use in your business?
If AT&T wants to replace you with low cost contractors or offshore your job, then why are you not preparing by creating an alternative way of earning a living while you still have that AT&T check deposited into your bank?
The attitude exhibited in this post is pathetic. Why would AT&T want to keep people who conspire to sabotage the company that pays them a salary, benefits, provides them security, and encourages them to train and grow (whether it's valuable or not)?
And, yes, I work for AT&T and I'm doing all of the things I just laid out here because NO ONE IS SAFE.
You're lucky you get to code. I used to write programs for AT&T, but they were all discarded because my boss only wanted things done manually.
Sounds more like sabotage. You forgot the disclaimer, "This guide is for entertainment purposes only."
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