Thread regarding T-Mobile layoffs

@a8 When I found out Sievert was making $39M, I was appalled! I was totally underpaid for the roles I've been in over the last decade! They had me in a hybrid role, doing very specialized work separate from my teammates with the same title, and never acknowledged that work in my title or pay. I never had the guts to speak up, unfortunately. My severance would be a little bigger if I had.

@a8 I was one of them. A well-known, well-liked, very versatile employee in my department, and I was still let go after over 20 years of never leaving my team except through a reorg. I could have easily gone into several roles within our department. I just had my annual review last week with nothing but positive feedback from my manager. Definitely is their loss! I think my manager was either laid off too or reorg'd. I have no clue but I know half my team was laid off and the other half reorg'd.

I've heard Mint Mobile is a much better deal and they are on the TMO network. I'll be switching when my layoff is official.

I worked for T-Mobile for nearly a decade. I was an exemplary employee, moving up the ranks and getting awards and accolades for my achievements in customer care. John Legre took the company from 15 dollars a share to 150 dollars a share in less than 10 years. That kind of growth was made possible by being the "un-carrier" and bucking back against the big corporate system that other companies utilized. We were making so much difference. I was a little sad when they announced that they raised the starting wage in my area, but i was already almost getting that much, so i got raised (after 7 years) to the same wages as someone who was just hired. That su-ked, but i dealt with it because that meant that everyone was going to be making more. I kept my head down and kept pushing. I even got a temp position in the dept i wanted to work in. Applied for the position to make it official and was just waiting on the response.

Then the merger happened. John Legre retired, and Mike Seivert took over. The CFO? Surely he wont try to run the company like its a balance sheet, right?

Okay, we are just growing? sure. Promises abound that nobody is going to lose their jobs, we NEEDED more employees to cover all our new customers that we were going to have. Promises of promotion opportunities happened everywhere. Growth and change were constant. Special projects kept going around because new sites were being opened every few months and they needed people to travel on the company's dime and train all these new employees!

Then, it happened. One day thousands of people came in to work to find out that their jobs were liquidated. "We have dissolved your role," those lucky enough to not be in an interim position like i was, got offered a severance package or a pay cut and a demotion. I just got told to go back to the phones. okay. sure. i still had a job.

Suddenly all those promotion opportunities were frozen, "we are waiting for feedback on our numbers" or "things are changing right now, just ride it out and the opportunities will return."

Entire departments were let go. every day you would hear about another group. "we are moving this department to a national site, we dont need all these people at the center" People left the building crying. Leaders who had been paragons of positivity were giving heartfelt "i know we are all working hard" speeches. Suddenly, metrics we hadn't seen since the beginning of the uncarrier announcements were being discussed again.

Systems that they had gotten rid of because "it just doesnt work" returned. I persevered. sure, i had lost the opportunity to officially have the title of the position i was temp working in. I had been told that we were just waiting for the promotion to be listed, and it was mine. I had gone through 3 rounds of interviews and i was already actively doing the job while i waited without a raise or benefit increase. That was gone now. i was back on the phones, but thats okay because i was good at the job.

Then my team got dissolved, and i was moved to a new team, and then another, and then another. As teams dissolved behind me i kept moving forward, keeping my head down, and working. This company for so many years had always "made it right." a year and a half after the initial purge, they brought back "shift bidding" every 6 months. You had to bid for the shift you wanted, and the people who had the best stats got to pick first.

My stats were destroyed because i had been shifted around 4-5 times since that purge. I still have the plaque from when i was in the top 1% nation wide. i had several awards for contributions to the company. But i didnt have 6 months of good statistics.

i didnt have 6 months of good statistics because they hadnt bothered to give us goals in several departments that had been created and dissolved in less time you would give to deliberate on what to have for dinner. Oversights, we were told at the time, wouldnt have any effect on us. we went almost a full year without having goals for several departments, so we couldnt be measured on our success or "percent to goal."

so there it was. i couldnt be quantified with everyone else. neither could any of the people that had been in the same boat as me, so we picked last. i ended up getting the only shift that was left at the time i got to pick. the one nobody wanted. the nearly impossible to leave shift because of constant negative scores the representatives got. the "i cant go out, i have to work" shift. the, "i dont get to see my family because they are asleep when i am awake and i am asleep when they are awake" shift.

So i started making noise. I got told to be grateful i even had a job. there were tons of people that would ki-l to be paid to work here. There was a line out the door.

When i informed my boss that i didnt feel like that was an appropriate response to a legitimate concern, i was advised. "You do what you feel is necessary"

so i quit. no notice.

i was told, "you wont be re-hirable" and "this will follow you and you will struggle to find work," "you dont want to be unemployed in this economy" and many other things. I got a call from my leadership, telling me that they would forget all about this, put in my time off as pto and i could come back. I told them i had made my decision.

it wasnt easy and yeah, we struggled in my household. But a weight was lifted.

one week later they laid off 5000 people. that was 3 years ago. they promised that it was not going to happen again. But now, after the ceo changed hands again, suddenly all my old friends are posting facebook status updates about their "next chapter, outside of the magenta T"

Tmobile is not the same company it was under John Legre. Tmobile is not the same company it was 5 years ago, let alone 15. Tmobile has joined the unfeeling corporate machine. They were always a corporation, they just had a sliver of humanity. But that has been slowly and deliberately removed over time to make more space for profits for investors. Mark my words, you are going to see a stock buy back in the next month, just like they did 3 years ago.

Profits are all they care about again. They have mangled what made tmobile great. it is unrecognizable. When it finally collapses, nobody will be surprised. But the shareholders will get an extra 0.025% increase.

Stop pretending you care about the people T-Mobile. It leaves a bad taste in the mouth of everyone you employ and everyone that uses your services. You ARE the villain you set out to destroy.

You're stupid if you ever actually believed T-Mobile was the uncarrier. It was and always has been nothing more than a marketing gimmick.

@dc You were definitely in a cult if you are just now releasing this and quite frankly, still sound brainwashed.

I was at TMO for 13 years before being laid off 2 years ago. We all bought into this dream of “uncarrier” and doing things our way. They preached “culture” and because of this we went above and beyond, we evangelized the brand.

We worked outside of what was required, cancelled PTO, missed family events. After the layoffs, many struggled to cope with life outside of TMO, it really was like being part of a cult.

For the last 2 yrs, I’ve wondered what I was missing by not being part of the magenta. I missed, the culture, the relentless pursuit of our goals, the commitment to professional development and servant leadership. Business magazines wrote about what we had.

But the belief in Frontline First was just a mirage. It hasn’t existed in a long time. The Sue Nokes, C.ustomer E.mployee O.wner , the Uncarrier/Slow Cooker Sunday Legere, Callie Field proclaiming we’re acquiring Sprint but we’re driving and they’re sitting in the back seat days are long gone.

TMobile has become what we once fought against. I hope all the big wigs in Bellevue look in fondness of what they’ve destroyed.

All the three major carriers are far too expensive. I finally had to switch to a MVNO.

Ai wrote this

That third bullet is exactly what’s happening. They just did a price increase on the regulatory fees and they’re moving everyone off of tax inclusive plans to tax exclusive plans so that they can charge more money and turn around and say it’s taxes and fees, the bill up and the plan rate. It’s all a fu--ing scam. if you have a tax inclusive plan and you move to a tax exclusive plan that’s the exact same cost. Your bill is gonna go up because you’ll be paying for those taxes and fees. They aren’t making this obvious in stores when selling plans. They also don’t let the tax inclusive plans qualify for the large promotions that are 800 or 1000 off phones. This is meant to encourage customers off the tax inclusive plans.

"Challenger to Champion." Srini is showing us how champions behave.

Best post of the day.
Despite posting massive profits T-Mobile did a thoughtless layoff today. Many talented people were let go for no sane reason.
This is corporate greed at its worst. The top leadership of this company should be ashamed. How do they sleep at night?
Sreeni Gopalan and cronies, why should your customers trust you if corporate greed is all what you stand for? You have damaged the lives of 5000 employees and their families for your greed.

Well said! Great post. I don't know what intentcx is but 100% I agree with everything else.

It’s been over for a long time they haven’t done any thing un carrier in years

@OP T-Mobile is absolutely disgusting.