Hearing rumors the entire site will be shut and roles relocated/outsourced. True?
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Someone said there is a 99 year lease on that place, so who knows. It should be phased out, it was mostly empty anyway & it's not exactly a place folks will feel safe working in, now more than ever.
Is Middletown closing or no?
The old AT&T did have central offices with facilities /fiber from coast to coast so to say the acquisition was a waste is a little disingenuous Let’s not lose site that upper management screwed everything up in a major way
85% of the applications/platforms that run the business came out of Middletown, NJ
To anyone who believes this, I have a beautiful bridge that can be yours for a song
85% of the applications/platforms that run the business came out of Middletown, NJ and although there were many attempts to replace them they still have not. Take a walk through the AT&T Science & Technology Innovation Center at AT&T Labs in Middletown as this speaks volumes of what inventions came out of Bell Labs and ATT Labs. There are still some real original Bell Labs folks left in Middletown albeit most have jumped ship or retired by now. These are folks with "real" technical degrees from prestigious Universities.
Tall Lankey dudes only since 1983....
I used to work out of Middletown and I agree with the general comments regarding internal politics. Anything at the director level and above invariably turned ANY technical discussion into a turf war with focus on ownership rather than delivery. I still recall the dog and pony show to convince Donovan to keep the place. The ECOMP/ONAP boondoggle is a classic example with people wrestling to take control, limit information and report 'decks' to leadership while focus on actual product usage was/is minimal.
Wouldn't be surprised from a purely financial view if Middletown was at least trimmed down. Way too many empty offices (people leaving) and many people generally just going through the motion, biding their time (which is not surprising given the total focus by upper management on trying to control everything to their benefit ).
Donovan wanted to can NJ, although he was talked down.
I hate to compare Middletown to a cesspool, but at least a cesspool serves a useful function. Middletown merely plays internal politics and delivers fake "innovations". Nothing useful in the past 30 plus years.
Middletown used to be AT&T property, was sold to AT MIDDLETOWN NJ LANDLORD LLC back in 2012 for around $100mln , now the AT&T just leases it, they signed a 10yr lease back in 2012 with the new landlord, but rumour is that they want out of the lease before it ends in 2022 and gave the landlord a deal he can't refuse. So yeah it's likely a phased closing will happen.. COVID simply moved things along..
The AT&T purchase was a terrible business decision. They (AT&T) failed at every turn since divestiture. They kept trying to buy companies (NCR for example) and spin-off different companies (Lucent, Avaya, etc.) and re-invent themselves but everything failed while the baby bells were stable and growing. The ONLY, I repeat ONLY reason that S.W.Bell bought AT&T is because Big Ed's lifelong dream was to be the CEO of AT&T. That is the ONLY reason AT&T was bought. There was no value in any of the AT&T business, only in the name. Randall must have had something on Big Ed because Randall had only ever been an accountant, never any business savvy or understanding of the business (but he can make numbers say anything he wants). That must be the reason Big Ed turned over the company to an accountant. Now if you will look back in this post at all of the mistakes AT&T made to bring about it's downfall that is the same scenario that has been happening since Randall. When you know the business you do the business, when you don't know the business you merge, buy, re-invent and run around in circles and eventually fail miserably.
I came from Legacy T - the old AT&T, and yes we were totally foundering and probably would have turned into a Bain Capital k–ling plan. That being said I don’t remember AT&T calling the shots afterwards after the merger. Randall came from SBC with Whitacre’s blessing and as well as Stinky I believe, and the descent has been horrifying ever since. Not trying to defend the Labs as breakthroughs have been almost non existent. But please do explain how piss poor decision mating over the last 15 yrs is The old Legact T’s fault
Middletown is a huge part of the problem. Tons of old ATT baggage that should have been cut when SBC bought ATT. The old ATT managed to ruin a sure thing. SBC kept those id–ts, and they helped ruin the new ATT. Good riddance! ATT Labs was relevant about 30 yrs ago. Meanwhile these id–ts are still in NJ!
Straight up fake news.
You might as well come to this forum with phrases like:
DID ANYBODY ELSE HEAR JEFF BEZOS IS LITERALLY A CYBORG FROM MARS BUT ALSO THE FUTURE?
Just get rid of the entire old Fete Finance org - completely useless. Did any of those jokers from NJ who relocated to Dallas survive? Addition by subtraction.
Phased shut down ... is there a time frame for it at this point? Starting now...? July....? Next year?
There goes our retirement.
Plan is for a phased shut down.
I doubt they'll shut down the entire building, but they should consolidate who wants/is necessary to be there and rent out the other buildings. It's been an empty waste for years.
More Fake News
My g/friend works there. Feeling very sad now.
Yep All Gone