Thread regarding AT&T layoffs

"I love the down votes on my traditional wireless is in decline. If you don't think it is you don't have a good understanding of it."

Whatever your understanding of what "traditional wireless" and "landline" is, that is irrelevant - cuts will be made company-wide, any distinction of what parts of the business are "safe" is only relative, every department is going to take a hit.

I love the down votes on my traditional wireless is in decline. If you don't think it is you don't have a good understanding of it. IP direct connect between wireless carriers is being pushed hard and has been for a few years. What this does is reduce the connections by 10-20x maybe more. Less connections = less people to monitor those connections. Wireline will be around for a long time. Why? because no one is pushing a new technology to get rid of it. It will continue to decline but the IP wireless direct connect will end traditional wireless before wireline completely goes away. It has nothing to do with the number of customers or growth of wireless side. the connection reductions will cause headcount reductions.

@1bju - that's the kind of myopic thinking fueling AT&T's move to become a vertically-integrated content-maker and distributor.

@oml - "Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook (all companies that millennials want to work for btw, not T). These companies are innovators and have services and products that millennials want and desire."

The leaders of these companies are smarter than any leader at T hence their stock values are worth more than T will ever be. There is reason they don’t have their own broadband infrastructure...the cost to maintain and build it is expensive. They are utilizing what is already there, paying a small fee for it and are making a ton of money for themselves and their shareholders. Seems like a smart business model doesn’t it?

Actually the whole company is being hit!! All parts will be affected including the Mobility side which is making the money for the company. Good luck on Monday to all

Traditional wireless is a declining business and will disappear before landlines. They will be hit as well.

"Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook (all companies that millennials want to work for btw, not T). These companies are innovators and have services and products that millennials want and desire." Without wireless carriers and ISP's, they are nothing. Why do you think they take great interest in net neutrality? Haven't heard much in the news lately about efforts to deploy their own broadband, like what Google tried out a few years ago.

Most of the times AT&T tried to chase higher and faster profits by trying to "transform itself" and ignore its core businesses, it has stumbled - anyone remember when they bought NCR to become a computer maker? Talk about expensive makeovers trying to become a beauty queen, but ending up looking like a beauty school dropout ...

Millennials are changing the way corporate America does business. T is only now adapting to this and is late to the game. Look at Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook (all companies that millennials want to work for btw, not T). These companies are innovators and have services and products that millennials want and desire. What does T offer that has millennials lining up for? I can’t think of any hence the need to reduce Ts workforce. It’s about supply and demand, and when consumers don’t demand your services or products layoffs are inevitable.

Agree, let's be real , a company the size of T has lots redundancy, supporting organizations., Inefficient or unessential projects etc... It's not T's fault it's just the nature of being a big enterprise, a division's roles and importance in contributing to the bottom line change over time.

Go look at the boards for VZ, GE, IBM , Intel and youll find a lot of the same issues. Older established corporations are adjusting to a more modern digital world where you can do more with less (employee) , Even Tesla announced a 7% headcount reduction.

I'm willing to bet the vast majority of folks here are 45+ in age and are hanging on to an illusion of yesterday, something tells me millennials are all to aware of how the modern world works.