Thread regarding AT&T layoffs

There is a sign in the rr asking people to please not leave 💩on the the seat. Welcome to your collaboration zone.

I have nothing to do with what Millennial's say about themselves in a poll. I'm not drawing any conclusions or making any scientific links other than exactly what they say. It doesn't preclude them from changing their mind in the future, but you have the evidence right there. You ask one generation a question, get an answer. You ask the other generation a question, get an answer. If there's a huge difference, it clearly shows different thinking concerning the question. I didn't state one answer was better than the other, or make any causal links.

What does any of this have to do with AT&T layoffs? Waste of time. But good entertainment.

"Technically I think there are, "draft dodging Millennials.” Polls show that 40% of them say they would dodge a future draft. "

Be sure to wipe well after squirting that out.

I stopped believing in Polls, with any certainty, a couple of years ago. This morning, on GMA, a “scientific” research team found that 17% of people that slept with a nightlight, or tv on, gained 11 pounds (on average). Wonderful, important stuff.....but what does it mean about the other 83%? Polls are ok, but with a grain of salt.

I’m a Boomer and it would be easy for me to beat up on Millennials but this poll that tells us how many would serve in a war is something I can’t buy into.....each generation has its own real life circumstance...let that be the real life judge.

Technically I think there are, "draft dodging Millennials.” Polls show that 40% of them say they would dodge a future draft. Other polls show only 15% of Millennials willing to join the armed forces to fight a war, where GenX were twice that, and Baby Boombers 6 times that. Then you have the military saying 71% of fighting age youth don't qualify for military service. So right there their body and actions have betrayed their intentions not to serve. Then you have the 9% of them who break the law and don't register for Selective Service. That's draft dodging right there.

@3ymh, “draft dodging Millennials!” Really? Now speaking as a “Boomer” I would say that would be a really good trick.....considering that the Military Draft was suspended in January ‘73 and became an All Volunteer Army in April of ‘75.

Everyone, just understand that complaining about the generations that lag behind the next, or the ones before us, is a commonplace happening.....it’s not unique to T. The only difference was that when I p-ss-d someone off, he didn’t put it on a “thread”or memo, because he would be standing right in front of me telling me to my face....and vice-a-versa! No violence, but a heart to heart and perhaps even a few beers afterwards.

@5pqv you are spot on. Wear us down to thin the herd.

I heard a few years ago that AT&T was going to pressure the work force in various ways to determine their skill and will. Skill to do the job and will to put up with the pace and working conditions. The current environment makes me think the testing continues.

@ZpJ8CLI-3rix - who started calling names here? you target all millenials and when we bark back, we're this and that? Yes, I have no problem being laid off as I can find a job somewhere, it is a FACT. There's life outside of this company. Learn how to read and see who is the REAL antagonist here. Some dinosaurs below me started targeting millenials. I am not bothered. I am giving my opinion. If you're bothered with my cursing, not my problem you can't handle it.

Draft dodging millennials are too busy maintaining their tattoos and piercings, taking fentanyl or antidepressants to do any work. They always get someone else to finish the job.

@ZpJ8CLI-2nsv I think you proved all the points about Millennial's. You are gleeful about someones impending death, call people names and use foul language, then say you can get hired anywhere being so self centered you can't even see the point the senior person you're talking about has more experience and already still has a job, or full retirement benefits, which just proves the persons point about bad reading comprehend. And here's a tip, people who are "not really bothered" don't post rants giving away how bothered they are.

ATTrition look it up

I retired at 57. I’ve a ways to go.

Enjoy starting over at new companies every few years.

I’ll enjoy my lake home and my cabin.

Yes, att may lay me off to be outsourced somewhere, but with my credentials, i can easily find a job somewhere.. and by the way.. remote work isn't just in the USA.. companies all over the world can hire me with my skills so im not really bothered.. im just proving my point.. so keep sweating (no offense to anyone) just this ignorant a--.h.a.t. acting like an id10t about millenials being lazy. Enjoy your retirement and funeral as ur next destination.

Maybe if millennials learn to read and comprehend english instead of popping prozac, they wouldn’t get surplussed everyday. Just a thought.

LOL at 1qzd enjoying his benis in retirement! I totally read that wrong. Benefits, man, benefits.

Compare a traditional cube, work remote location, workplace 2020 shared space, does it really fundamentally change the way you do work? Does it really change the way you work with other people? I would say majority instances, the answer is No. They took assigned cube and phone away and gave everyone a IP phone headset and open seating, you still attend the same number of calls and WebEx meetings. BTW, we are not eliminating the telecommuting policy, you and everyone else just can’t be on it, very slick.

Management can refer to calling everyone back into the office is dealing with evolving business needs. Well, they are too lazy to truly transform the way work gets done. Too lazy to do some real organizational design and cut out the redundancy, checkers checking on checkers, etc. How many ways can you count the same widget, amazingly many and numerous powerpoint to show for it.

There has a been a huge hype over using BOTs, to reduce manual data entry for management employees. Sounds great, build automated process to copy/paste data from one place to another, saving tons of effort and money. The real question is: why the hell would you need to copy/past data all over the place? BOTs is another way to hide all the innate structural problems, everyone and their grandma wants to own their dataset and they can generate their version of PowerPoints. Meanwhile, management is crying wolf about needing to cut cost and stay competitive. You can only produce “x” number of widgets, no matter how many times they appear on PowerPoints, hahahaha.

ZpJ8CLI...

I did have to sweat, get dirty and drive to work every day.

See outside techs can’t be offshored.

You brag you don’t sweat, etc.

You can and are being offshored.

I retired after 39 years last year.

You won’t.

Enjoy your A/C and collaboration.

I’ll enjoy my pension, benis and free time.

To the poster upthread- what makes you think donovan is leaving or being pushed out? I would love this to be the case!

Post ID: @ZpJ8CLI-1eoc For a lot of us the almost guaranteed employment with the pay and benefits was the draw. By no means saying that there were numerous options for the same thing. Get on and stay with AT&T and you were insured a reasonably comfortable lifestyle no matter your background and circumstances. Surplus was typically taken care of with extra incentives for people to leave. You had 2-3 job options without having to relocate. Understand that the old business and those options are things of the past plus no one signed a contract guaranteeing that work environment until retirement.

I think it’s funny that the company that invented and got where it is today because of the telephone, then helped create the modern internet for even more collaboration, now tries to convince us that face to face everyday is the only way to work. We literally invented real-time cross country collaboration, but here are leaders who would have you think that’s not a good idea.

@ZpJ8CLI-1nxe - lazy millenial? Do u know what it takes to do programming and have a degree in cybersecurity? Html, c++, python, ruby rails etc.. etc... do u know the trainings i had to go through? Classes and certifications i had to pass for Cisco? And yes, i can do all of these remote. I don't have to milk the cow or sweat to type commands, program and code.

This is hypocrisy at it's finest...company has never spent a cent of their money for "collaboration" as in travel to even meet the folks that work for you (I've had employees for 10 years I've never even met) but want us to get into the offices they just got done cramming little desks into after taking away our cubes/offices because it's so important to have face to face contact . If they really believed that we'd see the travel budget explode as well (not happening).

The town halls are another joke - first half is how great we're doing and winning in the marketplace, second half on how our work structure isn't good enough so lets piss off everyone and treat folks like we're flipping burgers. Now that we are on top, let's screw up the recipe that got us there - what sense does that make? Frankly I think the leadership has no idea what they're doing - so they come up with this c-ap to look like they're "leading" - we've put "diversity" and AT&T ranking in "Diversity Magazine" rank above everything else (who's every even hear of Diversity Magazine? Is that even real?) - including competence.

On the empty town hall, those things are always a joke anyway. They spout some feel good nonsense that ends up being meaningless and doesn't actually answer anyone's questions on important issues.

@ZpJ8CLI-1qfo Yes, quit and go take the job with that other company that is guaranteeing a job for the next 26 years. I don't blame you. If I had a job offer for high pay and a 26 year guarantee I'd walk too. Funny how you describe that the oldest employees who can retire just stick around the longest. It must be because it's so bad here.

As a younger employee, I saw what was happening to people with 10-16 more years than me and decided to leave the company. In case the business didn't notice, the oldest employees stuck around while those who needed 10 more years of work were surplus. I'm not sticking around for the company to surplus me in my 50s.

Upper management decided it’s the best way to get rid of lazy millennials who won’t break a sweat unless their daily fentanyl dose is late.

Think control and envy.

Millennial here and when I was hired, i was told i could telecommute 2x a week so i accepted the position even though the location was far from where i live, i told myself the flexibility is there and i could work it out... then a month ago in my department, with no notice, we were told to report 5x a week. So i quit. I majored in cybersecurity and have background in programming. Got hired somewhere else for full time remote work. Works for me.

Upper management doesn’t give a you know what about how this affects the productivity or morale of employees. In addition to financial impacts on their workers, stress & the overall noisy, dirty working conditions we face.

Dear Seems fairly obvious, My ENTIRE ORG has been pulled back into the office regardless of productivity or anything else! Even those approved to work from have been pulled back. It seems fairly obvious that you are not in tune with what is going on.

Old school corporate mentality, they do not trust the workers and feel the need to overtly control everything they do, micro-management at it finest.

The funny part is that it more projection than anything else, upper management is lazy and dishonest and assumes everyone else is like them.

Also, since they struggle to compete strategically in the market they just fall back on the typical management trope, the problem is the workers and we need to crack the whip harder.

Highly paid, incompetent B-rate management in the C bubble.

Interesting responses. I think @cau came closest to the reason I am thinking. Its a way to get rid of people without 1) paying severance (the frustrated will quit) 2) the persons making more (and older) are more likely to be living far from the office. The newer employees (cheaper) are more likely living closer to major company offices so they are probably less likely to be significantly impacted by forcing them to come to the office. The problem with that thinking is millennials are more likely to want to telecommute. So .....

Seems fairly obvious from an angry post, that someone (@rqc) got turned down for the WFH program, your boss looked at your productivity on site and made a judgement call. My boss did the same, I WFH and I earned it.

Dell, Intuit, Toyota, Amazon, United Healthcare, Aetna, Merck, to name only a few, and hundreds more offer this benefit. Companies like this do it because it has proven very successful in cost cutting, increased work productivity and employee satisfaction...it’s plain to see that some of the screamers didn’t make the employee satisfaction list.....I’m sorry, but that was your Managers choice, not mine.

To the one poster I would say, “maybe you’re lazyness (spelled laziness) will be rewarded” but I doubt it. You will need to step up your game, starting with the all important ability to spell.....Managers pick up on little things like that....and you can’t blame spell checker for that goof!

Personally it s---s, as someone who current doesn't and never has done telecommuting. There isn't a lot to go to in my area in the company but I don't have any interest in moving to some expensive city.

I always considered maybe finding something where I could work in a group managing remote equipment or coding something. I don't even want to work from home, I would be fine with going to an office or cube in some CO somewhere everyday to work, I just have no interest in moving, especially not to some hub city where cost of living will be 3x, none of my family is around and traffic/parking is unbearable.

My feedback- Donavan is a control freak and once he’s gone, many things will change. He’s in way over his head for years now and the board is waking up and that whole team will be gone. And I’m not talking years. Ill bet replacing the Johns and Randall are in the works along with several others. It takes time but I believe it’s been in the works for awhile.

@uhy is 100% correct. I have been around a while and I recall hearing about how Donovan had a nutty years ago when he walked through an office and there was literally no one there.

It's a cycle, At some point it will turn back and telecommuting policy will come back. New leadership with reservations on managing people from afar. Old a-- culture from 1895 phone company. I remember Donovan telling us he could care less where we were as long as the work was done, and you were available. Worked on team I feel we had best collaboration of any team. Q chat room all day, multiple calls on WebX, or AT&T Connect. we talked all the time. and we were spread all across the country. Managers just need more training in how to manage people who work remote, to reduce any abuse.

They found a metric that covers most of the people they can't openly discriminate against. The ones who started around 15 years ago are vested in a pension and have enough tenure/age to pull a good salary. Can't drop them based on that because that goes against the 200 + hours of BS diversity training they pretend to believe in. Those folks started when the SBC folks(who embraced telecommuting) were in charge. It's an easy way to push them out the door without paying too much (financially or legally) to do so.