One of the problems with AT&T, is that there are too many services in our portfolio, most of which we do not have the technical expertise to design and operate. Consider our sad Cloud product. That thing is broken more than it works. Also look at ECOMP, SD-WAN, Software Defined Networking, and countless others. You just cannot successfully manage the lifecycle of these complex platforms with the employee base that we have.
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Too many employees is more like it
It sounds like you’re on the business side. I do agree there’s way too much in our portfolio and it’s either stuff we half-arsely built or resell from a vendor. If we wanted to compete with big tech so badly why didn’t we take the $80B wasted that we used to buy time Warner and build out a competitive offer to AWS?
The other thing is it’s not just the business product portfolio, there’s an entire team of people putting new reseller agreements together to make custom deals that are low margin. Or we lose money on all the added stuff just so we can get a few new wireless lines. Then we send out an email with some made up TCV spread out over the course of however many years, then call out what great wins we have.
It’s fundamentally broken. Officer and VP level leadership needs to be held accountable for these bad decisions
The problem is our leadership keeps trying to justify their existence by creating and/or buying new shiny things that have nothing to do with the core business. Then they change jobs, and the new leader starts pushing their agenda in a different direction. They keep throwing stuff at the wall, hoping something will stick.
Too diverse with too many products is what ultimately hurt GE. GE is in to consumer electronics, home appliances, aircraft engines, lighting, electrical and on and on, just an enormous portfolio. Look at GE now, their stock has been in the toilet for several years and struggles to get back to where it was. T needs to focus on its core business more!
I was an expert in what I did, then was a surplus victim, and JOG into an area I knew nothing about.
Doing the best job I can until retirement.
All the smart, technical people are long gone from AT&T. All we have left here is the underachievers, and 60 y/o’s riding it out until retirement. Of course these folks cannot begin to design, build, and operate complex systems. AT&T is a joke.
Too many products for your simple mind to comprehend.
Isn't that why we're eliminating so many products? It's no secret that the portfolio is under review for at least the last 12-18 months.