Thread regarding AT&T layoffs

I waited a bit to post this.
I was surplussed this year. At first I was disappointed and worried as at my age i was concerned about finding another job (age 55) . I was not yet ready to move on as my side business was not generating enough income to replace my ATT pay. I had enough time in to retire so my goal was to retire in 2025. Then this happened. As soon as I got the word I immediately started job hunting. I contacted people, in LinkedIn etc. I contacted recruiters (the worse), went on company web sites etc. I got a lot of hits and calls (mostly from recruiters some of whom spoke poor English and were clueless). I had interviews with 5 companies internal recruiters and 3 hiring managers. Three companies sent me the “thanks but no thanks” messages, one hired me. It took me 8 weeks from my last day at ATT to my first day at this company. I will name it at the end. I got the thanks but no thanks from a number of other companies. Some of the jobs I thought I qualified for (who applies for jobs they are not qualified for huh?)., some I had most of the qualifications but lacked a few hands on like cloud, SD-WAN. I am guessing that these areas I lacked hands on experience was key to the positions. This week Monday I started at one of ATT’s competitors. The culture there is so much different from ATT. I didn’t to sense any doom and gloom from anyone (Its early yet) From simple things as access to systems and the network to the level of trust I sense, now its early and I may learn things later that may have me change my mind however, the things I am seeing in WRITING are so much different than ATT. At ATT for simple things as expenses I felt I was not trusted, here that is not the message being sent. Even pay, ATT management employees get paid up to 6 days after they “earn” the money, here they pay you bi-weekly and you get your check/direct deposit the Friday of the second week you earn the pay. You know like how ATT USED to pay us when we were semi monthly. I will see how this plays out but for now I am thankful/grateful I am here. I was out only 8 weeks, I did not even start spending my severance to pay on bills and I am back on a payroll. As for 5G, I think ATT is in trouble with that. This company is very serious about 5G and they are not playing games like ATT. You know like calling LTE “5GE”. I hope they fired the id–t who came up with that garbage. This company is doing the same thing with 5G rollouts as it did with 4g. By now you all probably have guessed what company that is, if not its Verizon. I wish all of you the best. Take care