Can AT&T Retrain 100,000 People?
Rapidly changing technology has ravaged the American workforce. But AT&T is determined to teach its old workforce to use its new equipment. The result is one of the largest challenges in the telecom titan’s 132-year history, with national implications.
Nathaniel Meyer’s old office was nestled in a sea of high-walled cubicles in a hulking AT&T network reliability center outside Charlotte. In 2013, at 32, Meyer was working at the same facility where he had started when he followed in his father’s footsteps and joined the company, then BellSouth, at age 19 as a technician. After more than a decade with the telecom giant, and several promotions, Meyer’s work still revolved around the same basic technologies. He spent his days monitoring the massive switches that ran an old-fashioned telephone network scattered across more than 20 states, testing new equipment remotely, and updating databases with any changes.
Increasingly, though, Meyer