Thread regarding AT&T layoffs

This all was just from the marketing org. Nothing about the other organizations. I've heard nothing about "dialing back" from ATS.

Its bull.

"You act as though work can only be done while sitting in the office."

That is what the marketing person implied with her use of the word "freeloader". If you are not in the office you are a freeloader. What a CUN+.

@fp doing this shouldn’t matter though. You act as though work can only be done while sitting in the office. The exact same things can be and are done from home. Just at a real desk with some peace and quiet where you can actually focus.

There's still plenty of freeloaders. I have a coworker who only goes in for about 4 hours a day, then goes home.

@bj cancel RTO and let me WFH again like I did for over a decade before Covid and I’ll start working 12 hour days again. Until then it’s 8 & skate

I’m fully indoctrinated into the Culture of “8 & Skate, it can wait!”.
Only reverting to hybrid might change that. Might.

So when are they firing that incompetent reporting team

Was there some policy change that wasn’t communicated? This talks about mgo but what about the other parts of the company.

"Core work hours from 6 am to 6 pm will the expose the free loaders."

LOL -- my 12 hour days are over. It will never happen while I am required to 5x8 RTO. 8 & Skate, it can wait!

"Freeloaders” as if these people WEREN’T going back home and getting on calls and working "

And a marketing leader chose to use that term . . . you know, someone who is supposed to be schooled in messaging. So, either she really believes the freeloader thing or she is too stupid to be in her job. Either way she should be out.

Basically they are admitting that forced RTO was an attrition tactic without severance.

Gross.

Doesn't matter. There are people who are taking commute time out of AT&T's rear ends. Got a two hour total commute (hour there and hour back)? They are not working for two of the 8 hours they are told to put in. They do their jobs. They do what needs to be done. but they are true 5x8. Want something done after the 8 hours is up? Nope. Not happening. People are beyond pi---d. They are making AT&T eat it one way or another.

We are FAR beyond frustration..it’s to the point of complete indifference's of rage.

Paywall bypass:

https://archive.ph/1wqyt

Core work hours from 6 am to 6 pm will the expose the free loaders.

The brink? Lol… We are way beyond the “brink of frustration”. I’ve never seen this many people this pi---d off in my 20+ years here. Everyone knows RTO is a charade to promote self-termination via misery, and to appease the Blackrock overlords by keeping their corporate RE portfolio propped up at your expense. We were never required to be in any office for any amount of days or time before Covid. The only thing that mattered was delivering results. Of course you had to show up when there was a legitimate reason to be present, but those days are few and far between. That’s why there’s zero actual in person meetings or “collaboration”. Nothing will change here any time soon. Just the c suite painting a false picture to the outside world because they’re viewed as toxic.

Sadly this won’t change anything. They are just trying to cover their as--s because they can’t attract any new talent.

This company su-ks and is a toxic workplace. I feel sorry for all employees that are being micromanaged a working under surveillance

“Freeloaders” as if these people WEREN’T going back home and getting on calls and working past 5pm. It’s that belief that if you’re not in the office then you can’t possibly be working/contributing that is T’s master display of idiocy.

Glad they at least recognize the reports are poor and will possibly stop using them.

Don’t let this give you any hope for change to 5x8 RTO

Unless this is a revert to 3 days or fully virtual then this means absolutely nothing.

He-l ya

Yeah I haven’t seen my bosses address this yet. Still actively tracking it like a hawk. I’m a results person, either I deliver or I don’t. If you aren’t delivering, get rid of those folks. Doesn’t matter if I’m in an office 5x8, wfh, hybrid whatever, I get paid to deliver a result. The result is what matters. Some people take 10hrs to do that, some can do it in 3. Think of this way, you hire a contractor to build your house, one does a fabulous job and completes it in 3 months, the other take 12 months and it’s just ok, cost is the same. Which contractor are you hiring? Workers are like that, some people are very knowledgeable, efficient and can get it done, others take a long time and eventually get it done. You don’t treat those people the same.

AT&T uses an automated system that tracks employee compliance with the company's return-to-office policy. Pau Barrena/AFP via Getty Images
Sep 12, 2025, 9:57 AM UTC

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AT&T is dialing down its use of a controversial attendance tracking system for enforcing its RTO policy.
The so-called presence report uses a combination of inputs to log employees' time in the office.
The company's CMO says its goal of finding "freeloaders" has been met, though trust issues remain.
AT&T is reducing its reliance on an employee-attendance tracking system, admitting to workers that it hasn't been fully accurate and is "driving people to the brink of frustration."
The system, known internally as presence reporting, automatically tracks the hours workers spend at their assigned office. Most are required to log at least eight hours a day, five days a week, on-site.
The telecom giant is one of several companies, including Amazon, JP Morgan, and Microsoft, tightening return-to-office mandates and using new tech to track employee compliance. Executives at these companies say the moves boost collaboration and productivity.
In a meeting last month, chief marketing and growth officer Kellyn Kenny said her division is reducing its reliance on presence tracking in response to employee concerns about the system and its accuracy. The system was originally introduced to identify employees who weren't showing up in the office.
"We recognize that there's things about the report that are not correct," she said, according to audio obtained by Business Insider. "It is not something that I expect anybody to be looking at on a daily, weekly, or even monthly basis."
AT&T is also deemphasizing use of the tracking system for salaried employees companywide, a person familiar with the matter said.
CEO John Stankey indicated in a memo to staffers last month (reported exclusively by Business Insider) that AT&T was shifting its use of behavioral data, such as presence reports.
John Stankey in front of a red background
AT&T CEO John Stankey. John Lamparski/Getty Images
"We analyze patterns of behaviors from broad cohorts," he wrote, "to determine if the behavior being evaluated is consistent with our stated priorities and employment expectations."
Stankey said that an individual's data must differ "significantly" from their peers before their name is attached to the behavior.
"Some may view this approach as a matter of trust, and that perspective is understandable. In several forums, I've expressed concerns that past data indicated more outliers than we'd like," he said.
Kenny said during the August meeting that the employee survey (which prompted the blunt memo from Stankey) had "lots of feedback" about the presence reports. She said the survey included critiques from workers who said they were struggling to make it to doctors' appointments without running afoul of the system, for example.
Read more about Stankey's memo.
Read AT&T CEO's frank response to employee feedback about a 5-day RTO mandate — and much more
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Here's what readers are saying about the AT&T CEO's memo
AT&T just made it official: Workplace loyalty is dead
AT&T is directing more managers to relocate or face layoffs
While the survey does not appear to have included a direct question about presence reporting, it did ask whether employees agreed that AT&T's "policies and systems support me in delivering my best work."
Kenny said in the meeting that roughly half of the respondents in her organization said "no," and that many voiced their concerns about the RTO mandate and presence reports in the freeform response.
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"I now understand the level of anxiety that this report has created," Kenny said. "I also now understand how the fact that it is inaccurate is driving people to the brink of frustration, and it's creating distrust."
Business Insider has spoken with roughly a dozen employees from multiple divisions of the company this year about the system and its impact on their workplace experience.
A spokesperson for AT&T declined to comment for this story, instead citing Stankey's August memo.
AT&T isn't the only company cracking down on RTO compliance

Multiple employees told Business Insider that the system doesn't just log badge swipes at the entrance or exit; the presence report uses laptop network connections and mobile device location data to infer the hours an employee was at their assigned office.
The tool was rolled out in response to the RTO push that began two years ago, and its usage ramped up as the attendance policy grew increasingly strict.
Other companies, like Amazon and JP Morgan in particular, have also closely monitored employee behavior at work. Amazon previously used categories like "inconsistent badger" or "zero badger" depending on an employee's compliance with a three-day in-office mandate. The company ended up nixing the labels in favor of providing raw badging data to managers to use at their discretion.
A recent survey by commercial real-estate company CBRE found that more than two-thirds of employers track employee compliance with attendance policies, and more than a third have taken some level of enforcement action.
A person is silhouetted in an office building.
RTO mandates have led some employees to leave their companies. EschCollection/Getty Images
Enforcement that is too strict or error-prone can cause other headaches within an organization — pushing out experienced employees, making it harder to hire new talent, or undermining motivation and trust within the organization. Amazon's internal documents from last year indicated that its RTO policy was hampering its ability to recruit top AI talent, and a Harvard leadership expert said Meta's abruptly shifting RTO effort in 2023 was likely to cause a "huge amount of distrust" in the company.
At the AT&T marketing and growth team meeting, Kenny said that the system helped leadership identify "freeloaders" who showed up for 30 minutes or two hours per day.
"There were people who badged in for 10 minutes, got themselves a cup of coffee, and then left," she said. "The report was good for identifying the people who were abusing the system. We do not need this report for that purpose anymore, because we took action on the people who were the free riders."
AT&T did not specify how many workers have been disciplined or dismissed in connection with their presence report information.
Tighter rules risk backfiring with workers who pull their weight

AT&T workers told Business Insider that apparent glitches in the system could also be a hassle for employees who were pulling their weight.
They said that in the first few months of this year, while the five-day RTO mandate was phasing in, their reports could be wrong by as many as several hours. In addition, briefly badging into an AT&T facility on a day off could trigger a person's daily average hours to drop below the mandatory eight hours for the week.
"It was at its worst in March and April," one worker in New Jersey told Business Insider. "Sometimes you'd step out for lunch, and then it would stop counting."
Though there were no immediate consequences from an incorrect report, employees were concerned the erroneous data could make them targets for layoffs.
Some other business leaders have said RTO mandates have "encouraged" workers to quit voluntarily, allowing companies to avoid more expensive layoffs.
AT&T previously told Business Insider the goal of its in-office rules is to foster better collaboration. It has also undertaken a multiyear effort to shrink its workforce. The company started this year with around 140,000 employees, down from more than 160,000 at the start of 2023. Telecom competitors Verizon and T-Mobile started 2025 with 99,000 and 70,000, respectively.
AT&T's corporate headquarters in Dallas.
AT&T's corporate headquarters in Dallas. Ronald Martinez/Getty Images
Stankey has said that the company is looking to cut some $6 billion in costs as it decommissions its legacy copper-based network in favor of new fiber and 5G technologies.
One worker in Georgia said that the presence reports changed the workplace reality for many salaried managerial workers, who aren't used to such detailed tracking of their workday.
"We're supposed to be able to work a more flexible thing as long as we get our work done," he said.
Another effect of the crackdown on underperformers has been the erosion of motivation for some higher performers to put in extra time.
"The attitude has shifted," the New Jersey employee said. "They only count eight hours, so I'm just going to work eight hours."
The AT&T employees Business Insider spoke with said their presence reports have gotten more accurate over the past few months. One shared their report with annotations that showed such an improvement.

"driving people to the brink of frustration."
that was the plan all along otherwise it would have been targeted

Stank and his comrades are looking for PR cover.
A term that is often used as of late, don’t pay attention to what someone says, pay attention to what they do. Their cruel and antagonistic ways are in their DNA, nothing will change. The “leadership” micromanagement will continue despite their public statements. It’s not like they have never been caught telling lies before. Remember when Stank stated that “generous” relocation assistance would be available for RTO related moves?

Non-paywall: https://archive.ph/PXIkr

Be nice if it wasn’t behind a pay wall. They tease the stuff you want to know to see the details that matter.

Found the article,,,, https://www.businessinsider.com/att-system-for-tracking-employees-rto-compliance-2025-9

Nothing will change. This is just them trying to cover up their public black eye.

What kind of relief?

What article?