I am a new employee via contract and 8 months in my observation has been WTF since month 3, when I really got the lay of the land. Beyond the share price decline and lost market value, the organization lacks unity and accountability. There are way too many mid level people actioning work who are not great at what they do or have been told by their boss that they are not accountable for keeping to a reasonable level of standards for collaboration across teams. I’ve seen senior people refuse to collaborate and throw their peers under the bus. I don’t know the history of the company’s decline/ drama but when I joined I had friend at Amazon, Chase and other solid places say it’s a great company- these are good friends BSers. I am curious if anyone here would like to share WTF happened or if it’s always been kind of a mess.
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Greed of the Stockholders
hmm where to begin -- my opinion is coming from the wireless consumer side. Probably started with being overly confident in our network back when we first merged. Originally CDMA network was reliable so its was a clear industry leader when VZ was formed - we didn't care that there were cool nokias being sold by other carriers around 2002ish and we didnt offer AYCE plans and our plans were more expensive. But we had a lot of growth cause we were reliable for service. We didnt even care that we didn't carry the iphone when it first came out because Apple wouldnt negotiate with our terms (I cant remember the details but had something to do with frus and servicing the phone in house versus sending them to the genius bar but I could be remembvering this wrong -- but bottom line we focused on Samsung) -- so i would say prior to market crash of 06 we were huge and overly confident that consumers would adjust to us.
sometime around 06-2015 consolidation of the competition -- Sprint/Nextel, Tmo, ATT etc but we were still well positioned but we weren't really adjusting to consumer demands for product offerings, devices, pricing-- people saw us as the dinosaurs-- one Director we had said we were the "old white male board room" demographic. So we tried to rebrand- new branding, no more button up shirts in store, We hired Diego (LOL omg jcrew really?!??!) and we wanted to be more hip-- meanwhile other carriers network got better- so we adjust pricing, we started to lose market share in key areas while we were trying to grow our base. I remember people laughed when Tmo did their loyalty perks stuff (i think it was free pizzas) and jumped on the pokemon go thing-- but we thought it was stupid to go to fads but then we launched the loyalty award on the myverizon app but it was too late-- we ignored how the market was changing and the stuff we invested in to be "disruptors" in different industries set us back.
GO90, aol, yahoo-- we wanted to be an advertising company? a VR company? no clear strategy -- spent millions on that and time only to sell it and have nothing to show for it-- Then 2015 huge layoff-- prior to this the biggest one. Got rid of all the area employees so that shifted the culture and mass exodus and its be re-org after reorg ever since. Theres more to it than that--- but employee work culture has changed drastically-- i do think we need to adjust and remove positions etc. from time to time and I dont have the answers-- but esssentially we didnt adjust soon enough-- whether it was pricing, devices, perks, product offerings etc-- we wasted time and money on ineffective strategy. Every year when we do the employee survey feedback-- i respond with "sustainable jobs" attrition affect everything-- and everytime we try to close the gap we pivot to another strategy-- combine care + consumer org-- under Krista, then pivot again to split us all up again, and now this-- *not saying some of these aren't necessary and I dont have the answers -- but bottom line if you have a sh---y work place culture without a clear defined strategy that addresses the demands of our target audience-- its going to be a hot mess.
After this reorg-- this massive one, they need to make sure people in their roles can transition to other roles, give them those tools--- and if we are going to be a disruptor -- pick something that is real tangile IP.. i know our network is solid-- but thats not really tangible to consumer because our competitors have that also--- maybe not as good, but good enough. How do you grow the stock price if we dont a product that is tangible-- again-- i dont have the answer to what the solution is for that- but the issues are the employees arent invested in the outcome -- were invested in our teams/coworkers-- but were all uninspired because even though what we do adds value to the current strategy-- will they change that again and get rid of our peers-- I know so many talented folks that would have gotten vz tattoos at one point (kidding) because we would do the work, do it for free (many late nights!) but when you cant trust the company, the leaders-- we do the work because were invested in our teams but we dont get the big picture. i can go on and on about this-- had to do some case studies for attritiion-- but employees/work force -- we do what our leaders tell us to do and im pretty sure we all do that well... We need direction and resources to ensure we're not a niche (most of us aren't) but these constant restructuring due to failed strategies that are implemented is exhausting and gains very little momentum to close the gap with out competitors
@a3 This is sad and really too bad. A failed leader f*cked so many people for years to come.
Verizon lost actual people leadership when Hans took over. Tons of riffs almost quarterly if not quarterly across all BUs. Ppl got promoted bc they were solid individual contributors but mostly based on favoritism and no one followed through with proper management training. From that point on it became a sh-t show they all only watch out for themselves or their favorites on teams and very few actually know how to lead people. They all want “work” to be safe with zero regard of how to work with others or actually do the work.
Spot on. $hi! show for as long as I can remember.
OP her sorry for grammatical errors- typing fast in my cracked screen!