You can blame management all you want. If you have nothing but legacy telecom and internal systems skills, you’re going to have a problem the day the axe falls on you. You can waste time blaming your coworkers instead of ignoring that and making yourself better. They’re not going to keep you employed to support dying/dead technology. Telecom is changing rapidly. The only talent they care about retaining are those who will be needed when the transformation is complete. They’re outsourcing jobs that support customers on soon to be legacy technology (ie can easily be eliminated). They have thousands of customers that are costing them more money than they’re bringing in. Telecom companies are making less money and need to make it up by cutting huge amounts of costs. Network. Talk to people. Take classes. Get skills. Start your own business, or start one with other people. You have no one to blame but yourself when you find out that the labor market doesn’t need you anymore. I still work at Windstream and I worked at Nuvox. I’m making changes happen now. Who cares about the CEO? He doesn’t have to stay here and neither do you.
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The problem with tuition reimbursement is if you quit you owe everything they have paid for the last year. If you get a buyout or laid off you dont have to pay anything back. So in essence you are stuck for another whole year if you take their money. Just something to think about
It should be common sense these days - if you are working for a company for 5 or 10 years - what do you have to show for it once you get booted? WIN still re-reimburses their employees (I think they still do) for up to $5000 per year for college, or certifications like CCNA. Lot of WIN employees I know took advantage of this and they have up-to-date skills, even though they are working for a dinosaur company.
Just having on your resume you worked for WIN for 20 years don't mean jack anymore if you don't show you continued learning newer technologies. Udemy and Udacity offer lots of low cost training classes - really no excuse to be caught unemployed with legacy skills that nobody needs.
You can make excuses for not updating your skills - then your resume will be sent to the trash bin by companies you apply to because your skills are outdated.
You have to do it outside of the company. Take classes. Learn things that will make you useful as an employee. Some of you have been working here way too long and you’re not paying attention to what’s going on in the outside world.
Training? Oh yeah, Windstream University! Those classes will really make me stand out from other applicants.
Ain't no training here man. Even something as important as fall protection and rigging is now going to be a CBT on WinU.
How about thinking of the company the way they think of you, as a tool to be used up until it’s no longer needed. Get as much training, pay, vacation, contacts with other companies that we work with, for, or provide services to. Then stick around until the company is no longer useful to you and move on. You are not special To them.