Sorry that were all here again trying to figure out how these decisions are being made. Ive been here 20+ years, worked for a lot of leaders at the top (some currently still there) and without giving out too many details -- unfortunately this is far too common in the tech industry. My peers and I have survived some major ones since 2015-- (some were impacted, relo'd, VSP, Rif'd --lots of great talent that was lost in the last decade) This happens pretty routine with some being larger when we changed leaders/strategy since the days of Lowell McCadams... Anyways, I've had a couple of discussions with several groups and take this comment as an educated guess (some claim they heard this from some decision makers) and if it helps you predict your outcome so that you can decide on next steps, then great-- but also remember that at this point-- all those decisions have already been made so "try" not to let this consume you (I know much easier said than done!) but just trust that you can't change that outcome so hopefully you can make peace with whatever happens from now until Thursday. That being said here's what I've heard
If you were asked to work from home this week -- you may be impacted -- this makes sense as to try and not have a huge emotionally charged situation happen in office on Thursday-- it may impact you or your overall group
Band 5 and up were suppose to be notified today, Band 6 (ADs) notified tomorrow, and the rest on Thursday --- Seems that some people are notified today so this seems to be likely as well
There will be guidance on who is rif'd to prevent law suits. It wont be random or get rid of x people, it most likely will be based on the following - Anyone on a performance PIP or write up, anyone tagged as "home based" and not near an office location (may be department specific) --- Everyone knows that theres a push for minimum 3 days in the office and BAU prior to covid... so if you moved, or aren't near an office then they may offer you the choice to move but with the interest rate etc. this option may not be likely for most-- *again this make sense just based on the direction of employees being hybrid or in office preferred. Not to say no departments/jobs can work from home, but that being the norm will change to the exception --FYI this is 14,500 emps alone across the enterprise (I have the exact number but don't need more people poking around how I know that!)
no Brainer- redundancy will be eliminated-- And for consumer it will start with the Sales leaders hierarchy-- This is not new folks, it will mean Indirect/Retail Market leaders will be consolidated starting on the sales side (heard this went from 6 to 4 today, but I haven't confirmed and someone from CSO told me this, but haven't checked so if someone can verify here thanks)----> which means DMs/managers,reps, store closures or plans to convert those to indirect, then their support teams will be consolidated which are field ops, field enablement, training, merch, HR, talent acquisition etc) and marketing groups that got beefed up again will get consolidated **more on this on #5, but this is also not a new way to make these decisions so it overall makes sense. When Krista left and Market leaders were stood up-- they just followed suit generally to the prior markets -- but we had a larger hierarch of AREA and consolidating it from 6-4 MPs make sense to do the same task with less people and just spread the out more.
5.) this one is a little bit more specific/niche to department/job function that's tied to the consolidating of Sales MPs --- this is general educated guess so it may be completely off-- but there's always been a move to group Retail and Indirect together in one umbrella-- which started even back in the days when Kevin was here before he came back. -- SO again not a new way to "consolidate" this means that strategy and operations needs to align-- which typically means Finance supports enterprise budget/data and these are your aggregated info/data folks (some consolidation may happen here also) but generally they don't support a particularly niche but support enterprise-- so everyone uses their info since thats what the leaders get, then you get the folks below them that take their info and break it down to dashboards and data, analysis for leaders tasked with managing people's performance/KPI and metrics -- these are probably your GTS folks, developers that get a jira, data scientist, data visualization, business intelligence roles (think MeTREX, tableau dashboards etc), groups managing resources that are EDW based, GCP developers etc-- (again may get touched but depends if theres overlap and redundancies---- )
But then theres other "rouge" reporting/strategy groups that do similar roles/functions but are either niche, or specific to a group--- back in the days, this would be your region reporting folks not in a finance umbrella or reporting folks that are with non/reporting titles and are in none data groups--- Making the choice on how to consolidate this will probably entail more than general guidance-- (back then it was streamlining titles, departments, or number of employees a manager has etc.) but if you're supporting more of a niche- then it may not align with overall strategy so you may also be impacted. This is probably the most vague--- but if you think Finance is the law with the numbers, then there are groups that support that that under that umbrella-- the further you get away from finance and move into supporting data/ops specific to a leader then this is most likely unnecessary redundancy--- (formatting colors, creating specific market reports etc) <<--- again this is speculation but in the past has been pretty common way to reduce headcount. Yes, a leader may want the report to look this way, and they dont want to go to 2 dashboards to get what's being consolidated for them, but this is now a nice to have and not a necessity
6.) lastly, this might be the main/first wave ,but most likely once the dust settles there will be further refinement in 2026--- Q1 to determine what is redundant or no longer needed. This could also be when they take salary into consideration (which would be terrible since I'm at the upper end of my band) but from what I heard Salary at this point may not be the main criteria but may be used later since most likely it's not just related to "bodies" being reduced, but savings in overall cost.
That being said-- feel free to chime in if you heard similar things... Having gone through so many of these and lost countless talented coworkers (most went to FAANG companies or other major tech ones!) one thing about Verizon-- if you've been here long enough-- then you are most likely highly skilled, trained and able to transfer those skills to multiple industries so if you are impacted-- I'm hopeful that your experience will be appreciated in other industries and you will eventually land somewhere. But it doesn't get any easier-- there's some really amazing talented folks that are always impacted by this and survivors remorse is also very real. A lot of us in 2015, even though we made it, still felt a heavy burden seeing our friends/co-workers be impacted. I know this isn't saying much-- but having personally worked with Kevin (and NO I am not a Kevin stand) from what I know he is a good guy and I don't think at least for him at his level this decision is easy and I also know some of the people that work under him and the ones I do know, in the past this has weighed heavily on them. I don't have much of an opinion on Dan but whats right for the investors may not always be great for the work culture but it's something thats gotta be done and for better or worse it happens in all tech industries-- so if this is not something you want to be in year after year maybe use your severance to decide what you want for yourself career wise next time --
Good luck everyone and hopefully I will see some of you on the other side of this!