Thread regarding AT&T layoffs

I'm in Bedminster and just as many stressed out and miserable folks there these days also....

Under Summers, anyone who was full time VO (no office assigned) must now report to an office, but it must be where your value stream is part of. So some folks will have to move (on their own dime) to keep their job, maybe. Contractors 5 days a week, employees 4 days a week, I heard Ward Chewning said no flexibility but some managers are more lax than others. Never saw so many miserable people in one place than the MT office.

I regret I did not take the last MVO. The last re-org put me in a career-killer position.

Yes they are targeting management Full time employees who are remote workers. AVP for ATO/CDO announced this in a town hall in Dec. Telecommuting was trendy for a while, but now the focus is on ‘face to face’ in the collaboration locations. If you are near a main location, such as Dallas, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Bedminster, or... I forget the other one... you will likely be told you need to be in the office 4-5 days per week. (Even if your team is spread across the US/world) Anyone not near one of those cities, or unwilling to move - on your own dime - will be a target to be phased out and if a replacement is needed, they will be hired in one of the Collab cities.

I heard the same thing about 100% teleworkers... also heard they were going to remove teleworking totally but this all sounds like troll work. People at work can sometimes get addicted to rumors and the drama of it all. If they do these drastic moves, then they do. I can’t control that. But the rambling about uncertain facts on the internet just creates worry and uncertainty that may not even be true. Hope I’m wrong.

Who said they were targeting remote workers? Do you mean full time remote workers or anybody that works remotely?

Which org is that in?

2ziy - what benefit does DevOps offer? We just went through an exercise of onboarding in our group & it was a tremendous amount of work which the developers had to do. Our group doesn't fit in the SAFe roles at all, we merely maintain the system. We are all unclear how we would fit into any agile role at all. Perhaps we'll all be let go, who knows.

2afd, your group sounds like the exception to the all-day Connect session teleworkers. Unfortunately DevSecOps will force groups like yours to relocate to collaboration zones and take DevSec responsibilities too. You will also become part of the collocated agile release trains, over the next couple of years.

24x7 system support roles are definitely best suited to telecommuters.

In response, I took the volunteer offer (Management Volunteer Offer, MVO) and had no regrets on going out on my own terms (was retirement eligible). Later when the non-volunteer / surplus hit in 3rd Qtr I apparently saved someone else from getting hit as my leaving counted towards the reduction in head count. However, later during the force reduction, a peer had indicated they had no issues if they too were surplused and was actually granted their request and layed off with severance as well. So letting management know informally of your interest does not go unnoticed, provided they can justify it.

I hope they do take volunteers because I'll be first in line if so. Time to do something different anyhow. Been a good ride but past year or so helped me realize it's time for something fresh and new. If they don't take volunteers that would be unfortunate. I could be mistaken but I have always seen volunteers taken either formally or under the table with each layoff. Just let your manager know you are interested I would think. Help save jobs for those who want to stick it out until the next round.

2afd- I agree 100%. Are the AVPs forcing this because they know how layoffs are going to work? All remote workers first in line for lay-off? Just a thought, still ridiculous either way.

To 2qrz our group was all telecommute, we do not collaborate, we support a system & it's users. We were NEVER hard to reach, we were available 24/7 & we were on the phone a lot with users & production support. We were told we can no longer work remote so now we sit in an office and do the same darn thing we can be doing from anywhere, just to placate our AVP, and still no collaboration. We are wasting our time & money commuting. Please don't slam telecommute people, we worked harder at home than in an office.

"We were told in our org that they were not taking volunteers." - Can you tell us which org is this?

We were told in our org that some telecommuters are needed based on job functions. We have folks that are supporting production IT systems and also working at night so they need to off shift to get their work done.

Makes sense to target teleworkers. They are always either hard to reach or talked with so little that they have nothing to do all day except constantly set up calls. Wouldn't be a problem except everyone else is collaborating in person and does not have time for full day of calls.

We were told in our org that they were not taking volunteers. They were going to target the remote tele workers irrespective of performance rankings. Anyone in Atlanta, Dallas or a handful of collaboration zones would not have the “volunteer” option officially or unofficially. I hope they are wrong as that makes little sense. Who knows, rumors and misinformation seem to always preceded anything official from the execs. Wait and see I guess...

AT&T will not be offering buyouts when they can offer six months. Surprised it hasn’t been reduced with all that’s going on. Good luck.

I think a lot of people are so disgusted that they are gonna milk the cow and ride the train until the BITTER END- no longer giving AT&T a 100% effort. They will be lucky if they get 50% effort out of me and I plan on sticking around until the bitter end. I’m burned out from the 60-80 hour work weeks and missing family events. I’m not doing that anymore going forward. They can stick it.

Steve get real. Not even vz offered 2 years in their recent package.

When an employee in my org let's me know they want to leave I give them priority for involuntary layoffs. I don't need employees who don't like working given the reductions it is hard enough without someone complaining they hate working here

If AT&T offered me 2 years I’d take it.

As far as debt issues are concerned, quite a while back, AT&T announced their benchmarks on reducing the debt, including one at the end of 2018. So, it's not going to be long before we see whether or not they are succeeding in reducing this debt on their previously described schedule.

As far as any layoffs is concerned, it is rather old news called something like the "2020" initiative, that AT&T was going to reduce force in tandem with retiring the landline network. I suspect that they'll run into regulatory problems in mothballing landline, but, we'll see.

a lot and i mean a lot of people are waiting on a buyout.