Gearing Up for the Cloud, AT&T Tells Its Workers: Adapt, or Else

If you don’t develop the new skills, you won’t be fired — at least AT&T won’t say as much — but you won’t have much of a future. The company isn’t too worried about people leaving, since executives estimate that eventually AT&T could get by with one-third fewer workers.

Mr. Stephenson declined to project how many workers he might have by 2020, when the cloud-based system is supposed to be fully in place. One thing about cutting people in an aging work force, he noted, is that “demography is on our side.” Other senior executives say shrinking the work force by 30 percent is not out of the question.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/14/technology/gearing-up-for-the-cloud-att-tells-its-workers-adapt-or-else.html

Comment! It's anonymous!

11 replies (most recent on top)

If you want something more hands on than the PLE videos (might as well be slide decks) they should request to do a Nanodegree or pick a CELL.

Very few of the Skillport modules had much more than a quiz.

Don't waste your time on TOM, like at all it's a waste land.

Also remember that you are taking this training not for a future role at AT&T but for your next external job, so don't feel like you "need" to focus on what your current job role is. Maybe it will shift you into a different role but don't bank on it.

I know this is an old article but when their vision 2020 came out they forced all of us in our groups to watch the exact same video's. I watched them all in the "Technology Design Engineer" series and still didn't know exactly what a Technology Design Engineer was. No one knew either when they finished all 102 video's. The video's had nothing to do with writing code or with the cloud other than a couple of video's that were so basic they offered no value. I was let go last Sep in the lay off and they just started the PLE where you could choose what video's you wanted to watch. The problem is that the video's don't teach any skills. I took a few programming courses in college years ago and not one of the video's taught coding skills. AT&T should have just given people a certain amount of dollars and told them what courses they need them to take at a college. I know they give tuition aid but you have to fill out a lot of paperwork and it has to go through the approval process.

But I am very happy to be semi-retired but I wish they would tell the younger people exactly what courses they want them to take. Up until I left I still did not know what 'coding' language they wanted us to know. They just kept saying we need 'coders'. Most young people don't mind taking college courses at night so why not just tell them exactly what AT&T needs and stop with all the guessing games. Best of luck to all.

What's ironic is DTV built CRI in less time, with fewer resources and more functionality than AIC and pretty much everyone involved in CRI got pushed out the door

AIC, Another project facing failure.

Cloud tspace badge.

Funny to see a three year old article about the hot new cloud services.

How'd that end up working out? Don't hear a lot about it these days...

i work in a facility that houses a c-ap-load of cloud based infrastructure... more people are not needed. the whole idea of migrating to cloud based products was to dump bodies. you turn this stuff up and it just sits there and runs. you don't need crews of people to maintain it. hell, I could maintain a decent sized city of data center/CO based cloud infrastructure by myself. those of you who can't see that really need to open your eyes.

Are you from Atlanta? I ask because you seem dumb and out of touch.

That’s older than the crust in your underwear OP.

Late to the party

old news

Thread regarding AT&T layoffs

Gearing Up for the Cloud, AT&T Tells Its Workers: Adapt, or Else

11 replies (most recent on top)

Post a reply