Thread regarding AT&T layoffs

Yes the market moved away from our products. The reason is more complicated. GM executives only drove GM vehicles, provided free with free gas. They didn't understand why everyone shifted to more fuel efficient cars as gas prices rose. They also didn't pay for repairs or have a long-term experience. https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102316176

ATT executives are insulated from the industry too. They receive new company devices and someone makes sure their service works everywhere they go. All employees get $10 DTV and forget that it's nearly $200 a month for everyone else. And they forget that the product isn't worth $200 a month.

Probably the worst corporate management in the country. Sad. Very sad. Stanley is a clown.

We could all cry that the marketplace is to blame for AT&T's failures except for one thing - our competitors are doing just fine. The well managed ones at least.

What do AT&T, Frontier and Windstream have in common? P1ss poor management and foolish management decisions. The only advantage T has over the other two is size. It's going to take longer for this Titantic to finish sinking.

I wouldn't really call what we have as being leadership. They are just some highly overpaid bodies that lucked into positions of which they aren't required to produce for their pay. Anyone of us could have caused this damage without any formal training and for a lot less money. They have literally accomplished nothing in the last 10 year time span as far as building value in the overall company.
Every turn they take is wrong ... and now we are back full circle to " we need to deploy fiber everywhere" ... yea, ya think !?!

Definitely leadership.

i have various close friends with multiple industries whom were interested to get in on AT&T's network (SDWAN, IoT, Wireline) .

getting Sales to talk to them was a pain, it looked like they never wanted the businesses (mind you we're talking over 50M each)

and when they did talk to my mates, the feedback i got was sorely disappointing. Nvm the "premium" price for the name. but the SMEs were so NOOB that they couldn't address the needs of the clients. Yet other providers were offering half the prices and with free premium services (dedicated service management, etc)

We could have been hungry - gaining market dominance first but they chose to sit on laurels and be "premium" no wonder we're bleeding customers.

and just look at the ridiculous acquisitions they made... kept telling employees and public its the right move but we're obviously the ones being laughed at now!

As the old saying goes, "...can't manage a two-hole outhouse in an Ex-Lax factory" applies here.

Leadership - markets always change so you will always fail if you use that as an excuse. you have to have direction as a company and not buy your way to success but your success should be organic.

CNN S—s!

Both. The only thing RS and JS have been consistent on is failure.
Not even the shareholders are getting rich, despite the dividend.
A leadership change would be great, but it will not save this place, because its operation and product support have all been chopped up and parcelled out to contractors, the company cannot function anymore.
Even if the decision was made, it would take years to bring everything back in house and take control again of running the company. We got sold out and hollowed out to the lowest bidder just to save a buck on American labor cost.

I keep seeing people say this was once a "great company" - this is incorrect, it never was.

All "AT&T" is is SCB after it ate up a bunch of other baby bells, they never had an idea how to grow the company with better products and service - the plan was to get big enough so customers hardly had a choice between them and Verizon. This all went to he11 when they got into a bunch of businesses they knew nothing about - home security, cloud, satellite, streaming. Then TMobile snuck up on them and clobbered the mobility side.

Someone please show me the period of "greatness" in this company over the last 10-15 years.

Things have steadily declined from the time SBC executed this plan, simple as that. It started bad and got continuously worse.

The senior management’s vision to become a media giant outweighed their ability to compete with their market adversaries! They took their eye off the ball of doing what they were good at and it’s been an uphill battle ever since. They won’t be able to climb out of this hole unless they sell off some of their assets and even then it will take years just to get to a manageable debt load! Prepare for a much scaled down company getting back to square one where they should have been focused instead of buying technology that people had grown out of not to mention sick and tired of exorbitant monthly bills!

I, for one, am immensely grateful that they never acquired Netflix. They'd have ruined it, without question. I get HBO Max for free. I checked it out on launch day. I haven't been back.

only a mo–n would try to buy tmobile and fail, give them the spectrum and ~$6B in start up money to come back and destroy the same company that tried to buy it.
next, who pays for direct tv, a dying industry at a insane multiple
then, take ~3 years to buy a content company at a huge multiple and fail to integrate and offer so many competing products even us employees cant figure out our offerings
no, this is about a failed company with failed management, worse than that randy and john and complete mo–ns responsible for many layoffs and i personally know of some s–c-des because of these decisions

If they had acquired Netflix, they would promptly get rid of whatever leadership Netflix had, and put in someone from Telco company. Netflix would be ruined. They acquired HBO. The best content of any studio in Time Warner. Yet they got rid of that leadership that made those cable channels and studios what they are.

The only thing AT&T should have done, and should do now, is telecom. Sell the content stuff and go back to build fiber to home and wireless networks.

Leadership's only responsibility is to make a profit for the shareowners, Nothing else. And this company has been very profitable for the shareowners for a very long time. It's big business, some things fail fast as they taught us, and some things soar.

Telco mentality+dinosaur CEO+ Derangement syndrom= bye bye AT&T

Leadership is responsible to driving the company taking into account market changes, technology evolutions, etc.... this requires competent visionary leaders , not Randall, not Stankey and not the minions who have been in charge of this great company. This is the company with a remarkable past: Bell Labs! Transistors, UNIX, Voice recognition and voice synthesis foundation and so many other great inventions that changed markets and lives. Unfortunately, Stankey and the poor leadership of AT&T the past few decades ruined the company by wasting money with poor acquisition (DirecTV is a great example) - I was there when they had a clear opportunity to acquire Netflix (its stock was less than $10) - but these geniuses voted against it. What a sad story. Yes, I blame everything on poor leadership of AT&T and lack of vision. They not only ruined this great company, AT&T was, but in the process, ruined lives of thousands of smart, hardworking AT&T employees. In the US, we need to have a system of accountability and punish people like Stankey and Randall instead of rewarding them.

Simple answer - Yes.

The market has changed. Leadership is to blame for not predicting the market changes.