Thread regarding AT&T layoffs

I'd like to stick around long enough to officially retire. It's been a great run, and I would like to finish what I started. With 20+ years, I only have a few more to go to hit the magic Rule75 threshold. With that, I'm eligible for subsidized medical benefits, plus it would give my retirement accounts a few more years to grow. Sadly, I don't think it's going to happen. This place just isn't what it used to be.

If I'm on Monday's list then I'm fighting to stick around. I'm in TechDev and we (IT as a whole) simply must change the way we do things. I see progress being made every week and I'm hopeful about the long-term culture shift required. If I can hang in here long enough the people causing the road blocks and issues will go away.

I'm also careful to stay on top of my skills and am thankful that I've had the space with the applications I manage to re-engineer them to take advantage of new technologies. This not only helps me with compliance and service availability but also keep me relevant in the larger market as a whole. Regardless of what happens tomorrow my applications are closer to sunset than sunrise and I've been planning for the future.

I'm sure some group in T could use my experience and abilities and I'm hopeful I can find this (perhaps mythical unicorn) in time. If not I know what I'm capable of, what the market is asking for and my ability to deliver value to that market. As long as I remain healthy I have no real concerns about my career, be it at T or elsewhere, for the next few years.

done** not down.

that little typo completely changes that sentence!

I'm actually hoping i get impacted.

I'm down with the budget cuts, the fear and worry.

If T was a person that we went to school with, they'd essentially be a bully by making us live in fear.

I really don't want to be here when the Layoff 2020 initiative ends. its going to be like the opening scene of ghost ship.

Warning: Gore and NSFW!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOIEepwjZCI

I was laid off in Oct 2018 with 30+ years, the severance for me was 50% of my salary less approximately 25% of that in taxes. It does not amount to much in the end, but grateful to get what I could. I believe you have to have 13 or more years of service to get the 50% severance package.

I plan to leave. The micromanagemt in ATO (at least in the orgs I’ve worked with, or been farmed out to) is so egregious that I am not sure why I was hired at all.

I left in December. I will not miss this dishonest corporation.

I am hoping they offer a VTP (Voluntary Termination Package) in Legacy "T". Within the District 4 footprint.

I decided to just put in notice recently. No where near the magic # for retirement and I will be a better person away from the company. I hate for my disgust to taint people still needing to hack it out a bit longer. There is a world beyond AT&T and I’ll be exploring that now. Life is too short to be somewhere you no longer like and would end up tarnishing those left. Let them come to their own conclusions on their path. Hasta la vista!

I will stay because I have 20 plus years in the company and financial responsibilities.....I like my job and I am fortunate to have a decent Manager after (5) re-orgs & (4) Managers in the past two years....I still have friends in the company that make the existence bearable and folks to commiserate with when things are tough....I am an honest, ethical and trustworthy person which does not always fare well working in the current environment....I do not know if it is the stress of potential imminent job loss and work overload etc. but everyday I experience behavior from colleagues and business partners that is downright nasty, unethical and deplorable at best. At times it is wearing and breaks my spirit as well as enthusiasm to come to work. I am appreciative to the company for my career and have always given my best and in return I have had an interesting career. I was hoping to be able to retire from the company but I am not sure if the odds these days are not in my favor. I keep my head up when those around me appear to be losing theirs. I I continue to treat others with respect and grace regardless of the unfortunate antics I have had to deal with on a daily basis. I echo concerns from friends and colleagues regarding the stability and direction of the company......

I plan to stay,I only have 6 years with T and i work in osp engineering (non management) I use to work in the private sector for 10 + years and it was brutal cut throat. I attendant school for engineering and love what I do. fortunately my area in in the thick of things with the new fiber footprint.

I am hoping to get surplused. Because if I don’t, I will once again have to take on the additional work load from those that do. Last year we lost people in my depatment and 2 of us had to take on tneir work, on top of what we already had. I want the severance, but think it is time for this one to retire. Have just had enough and I have better things to do with my life.

I've worked there for 20 years, would love to receive a letter on 1/28!

Peace....out!

I plan to leave.

I’m an excellent performer, I have been recognised by presidents and senior vice presidents of AT&T. I have even brought several positive changes at the national level.

There is no growth. Company is dead. Mules are managing horses.

I am not delusional, I know good high paying jobs do not grow on trees ... I will leave after I am done milking $84000 to $91500 base a year this IBEW contract. My Walmart greeter career will just have to wait for now!

Sincerely .... Obvious Management Troll

Take the severance and run. Also file for unemployment and get another $509 per week for 26 weeks (a little over $13K total). It feels so good to collect that unemployment check that T is paying. Try and hold off on accepting a job offer until you receive the max unemployment benefit. Or take a job and get paid under the table if you can. I’m milking the cow (AT&T) for every dollar I’m entitled to.

You would think that upper management would learn. Uh, no... After my group was cut in half, they tightened the metrics to such an extent that basically the only way you can look good on that almighty spreadsheet is to cut corners and do whatever you can to get rid of whoever contacts you for assistance. I despise our leadership.

"I’m good enough, smart enough and doggonit people like me." An old Saturday Night Live routine that I sense I’m reading on many posts....I hope your all right about that, cause management never has a sense of humor.

Good luck, and for those who actually enjoy what you do...."Be Happy in Your Work."

User @rmi said “I’m too late in life to voluntarily change employers.”

This is why I plant to stick around as long as possible.

I've been actively looking outside of the company but haven't found much, at 59 I doubt I will find anything close to this pay scale. The commuting is awful, stressful and expensive, the office is filthy (along with some of the people), the idea of collaboration is a load of lies. So I will s--- it up and ride this out, do as little as possible because I honestly don't care about projects, spreadsheets, conference calls or anything else. There is no enthusiasm within myself or anyone else on my team. Not much else I can do. I wonder if management sees this in their workers or if they do I'm sure they don't care.

If I'm not cut, I'm gonna volunteer at the first chance to, till then just do my boring a-- job fill spare time with training that leads to certs. It is time to change employers anyway, but they've put too much money on the table for me to just quit.

I am staying. And I am confident that I will still be here after Randall is long gone....

My husband got laid off by TW back when they were being looked at and needed to thin down. Now the parent company is thinning down. Ive been here for 25 yrs but due to hubby not having a ft job it puts me in a prediction. I am a FTW and we have downsized, sold our old family home, and moved further away from one of the major cities so it would be almost 2 hrs one way to office. If they remove FTW - it leaves me no choice but to bow out. They aren’t offering severance or I would have my hand up for this one. Wish we knew exactly what is being flagged for choosing who gets axed.

als. As someone who got a severance in November, I would say hope for a severance early in the year. The tax bite from an almost 50% increase in your annual salary late in the year is pretty bad. Otherwise your financial situation is enviable.

Unfortunately I stayed a few years too long and should have left about 10 years ago when I got a new boss who kept going ballistic everytime he was reminded I make more than him. He was petty about and a very incompetent employee to boot. The good old boy network kept him. Now I am hoping for a severance package and will leave. As an employer T has gone down hill the last few years. Pay, benefits and work environment were never top rate under T and significantly below where we were at McCaw or AWS, then they declined under Cingular and further under SBC/T. Today we are hassled with HVD which is unreliable, drop in work space in noisy and poorly equipped work areas, no desk phones and unreliable Skype, ever changing telecommute policy, loads of required worthless training classes including contingency training, never ending threat of layoffs with big brother monitoring when and where you log in and access buildings. It seems T is always behind in technology and pinching pennies to make you less productive. Hopefully I get a severance package near end of year now that I am retirement eligible. Luckily for me I am financially in great shape and have good investments which in 2017 were double my pay at T. The market slide in Dec hurt 2018 returns and I am adjusting from a growth oriented portfolio to an income and dividend portfolio so I can live off it and preserve capital. Looking forward to leaving and often hear from younger employees how they envy me being able to walk away from this mess. They can't because after 50 it is extremely hard to find work at comparable pay. Good luck to everyone at T in dealing with the horrible management. On Seeking Alpha there is a good article analyzing T vs VZ and management is our biggest problem.The poor management got us into this mess.

I am considered a top performer in my group and we fix broken things that millions of subscribers interact with every day. We are cut to the bone for headcount already and of the few of us that remain only a couple of us have true technical competence thanks to in house job saving personnel moves that placed people in our group that had no experience but were nice people. Yeah, they are that. But.....

I used to love my job but I've told my wife that my work life has turned to sh--. Huge pressure to shove incomplete unstable products and services out the door. Constant dread of the job axe. Perpetual strike duty training.... It seems like once a week our group loses access to another "tool" in the name of some corporate policy, making it nearly impossible to quickly diagnose and repair issues. And now I might get stuck in an environment where i have to carry my entire job in my backpack and hope I can find a desk and concentrate past all the noise on top of everything else? Work has gone from being fun and rewarding to "this s---s but I can tolerate it...." and now its sliding over toward "I think I would rather mow lawns in the rain" Its sad because I do fill an important role and if I pull the trigger and leave it will have a domino effect across the whole group.

Hell, I told wifey that if one particular coworker leaves then i am going job hunting too because taking up his expertise and slack on top of all of this will be a deal breaker. With all this collaboration zone c-ap going on it doesn't look too good for him. With both of us gone there is not one qualified person left to man the ship and it will run itself onto the rocks.

20 years and I am staying until they lay me off because I want the severance. For those of you about to get snarky, I had 2 job offers and I just found out I made it through this round. I refuse to leave the severance on the table though. So I will soldier on.

I plan to stay

I plan to leave

I'll considering leaving by May/June. Partially because of the atmosphere here these days, , but really more because of personal life circumstances and tiring of the 9 to 5 grind after 25 years.. . I'm going to be part of the FIRE movement, check it out .. For all those millennials out there, definitely look at FIRE (Financially independent Retire Early), definitely the way to live life.. old idea of waiting till your mid -sixties to call it quits, is very outdated and counter intuitive, life's way too short and the world is way too big.. best to all

I don't want to leave. I like my job and I am lucky enough to like the people I work with. I think the Co is trying to provide opportunities to remain relevant and I am trying to take advantage of it. Collaboration Zones are a huge mistake - a social environment is not ideal for getting work done. Bringing coffee back did more to increase collaboration and conversation. The thing that makes it more difficult to take advantage of the opportunities the Co is trying to provide is the lack of identity of the organization. Which way to go? I hope the company isn't shooting itself in the foot with the frequency of these layoffs- we are losing more good talent than we can really afford to. Ppeople need to be able to plan for their future which you can't count on here. Give us a reasonable place to sit and some coffee and people will come back to the office. Give us a direction and we will do our best to stay relevant. The Golden days are over but this is still a great company to work for if Leadership allows it to be. This is all just so sad...

Are you thinking about leaving the company right now?

No. I will leave when I’m forced to. I’m in a good financial position in my life to not worry about losing my job. I’ll contunue to show up and do my work and hope not to lose my job as I get paid very well and have decent benefits. I could make more with another company but I’m too late in life to voluntarily change employers.