Thread regarding AT&T layoffs

I am not sure why this post is trending, Google is run by engineers, while T is all about the ilusion to be, never was, nor will be

Innovative companies treasure and encourage their employees.

Companies like T think that employees are low value interchangeable pegs on a board and upper management is the real source of innovation.

Upper management at T is largely dinosaurs who think workers should be forced to come in to a dirty crowded office to work so they can "collaborate", not understanding what the word really means or how innovation occurs in the modern world.

They want to evaluate people using bell curves, a flawed concept that set Microsoft back 20 years ago.

Old, proven wrong ideas that the T dinosaurs think are new because they themselves are so out of touch.

Whats next, require people work to wear neck ties to work, white shirts, and buzz haircuts?

Agreed, you can't buy innovation, this power resides within who achieves, not T material for sure

Re the "risk taking" comment Randall embraced all this, he coined it "failing fast". The problem is that he and his minions think they can lead with buzz words. There's not even a perception of true skin in the game. Many tech leaders don't even take a salary or take $1. Obviously they stand to make billions with stock valuations. But perception matters too.

Randall is allowed to blank check book his way to shiny objects, pay with job cuts and still incentized with the same cyclical bad behavior as is his minions.

part of his future comp should be tied to new sector earnings -everything that he's used car selling.

People mention the trifecta in these conversations (G, A, and AZ) like they're mythical unicorns. I can name many that I follow and know people who work there. The Trifecta isn't the only group of companies that have cornered the market in innovation and good culture. FB is another, Space X/Tesla, Salesforce.... the list is longer than people beleive. And leading these companies isn't rocket science. They spend a lot of time protecting and guarding their culture so that folks whove been enculturated in places like T (who aren't invested in changing or were never true outsiders) stay out.

I worked on a team that had some pretty heavy hitting creative tech folks. But two of them made some very pointed remarks about the direction of our group. It was respectful and they still did what they were told, but the message of the change in direction was consistent. It annoyed the Director (who was on his way out) guess what he did before he was replaced. Targeted the high performers. Long story short both are at high tech companies making way more money. One almost double.

I hope one of the guys writes a book. No one would beleive the level of stupid at some of these Director and above levels. I think ole Randy would be surprised. You've gotta work pretty hard to fail this badly.

my appeal to all of you AT&T's senior management , if you want to continue playing by “big company playbooks”: unless you are constantly innovating, building an entrepreneurial culture where risk-taking is encouraged, valuing your workforce and hiring diverse teams of smart people who are entrepreneurs at their core, even if they don’t quite fit the company mold or create a sense of uneasiness and disruption into their more conservative peers, you all ultimately risk heading to the corporate graveyard.

For those who have not idea what is to be a Tech company today

Companies like Apple, Amazon and Google don’t get enough credit for continuing their meteoric growth since day one of their businesses, all the way into becoming multi-billion dollar companies. They are clearly exceptions to the rule, compared to most other businesses. They each made long-term commitments to innovation, as the core driver behind their decision making, regardless of the near-term consequences to their profitability or investor desires.

The one common thread to these companies was the fact the CEOs who founded these businesses, all stayed involved in senior management during their company’s growth.

Unlike Randall Stephenson, Innovators like Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos and Larry Page who all have entrepreneurship wired into their DNA, and would never be held hostage to their investors or let their teams or company culture become too “comfortable” in their success or too conservative in their thinking.

unfortunately, for every Apple out there, there are companies like AT&T , that lost their vision somewhere along the way. Companies that once “ruled the roost” to only get knocked off by more innovative competitors and come crashing down, leaving their future to pure CHANCE, Their downfalls did not happen over night, it happened over decades. But, the writing was on the wall the minute innovation got suffocated out of their businesses.

Google is winning though

Goofle is a tech company trying to be a telecommunications company. AT&T is a telecommunications company trying to be a tech company.

G and T are different probably more so than alike but Randall said he wanted T to be a high tech software company.

G is a search, software, cloud computing, hardware and a content provider who knows how to leverage....content.

Guess things fall apart when u throw stuff at the wall without the culture, infrastructure or talent to behind it.

your comparing apples to oranges. google and att are different in many ways.

Google is the most impressive tech company in the world. They constantly roll out new services and while some don't work out, the ones they do change the industry. Google Fiber is a million times better than AT&T's service. AT&T wants to compete with Google, but Google is an engineer heavy company while AT&T is mostly people who push paper while the vendors do all the work. Seriously, I didn't realize how much I didn't do at AT&T until I was laid off and went to a real company.

i happen to like my att directv wireless service on my phone and then get home and watch directv at home. I pay for convenience not more apps. google can go to hell

Kudos to google, All environments, android, , Web, Business Prod , media/ Cloud , platform, Geo,spatial, search engines, home office Add W/ G suit, Apps, Social, Fiber, Web TV

And this is how it's done...google already a goldmine in content with YouTube so it'll be interesting what they offer from there.

That is how supposed to be done, "if you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough", have you heard T CEO lately? All BS no substance