I cannot believe that due to all the poor financial and investment decisions made by R. Stephenson and then continued with J. Stankey, they continue to play with peoples livelihoods. Stanley and his clones say how important employees are, only when an employee survey is eminent, but then turn around and continue to play with our lives. They truly don’t care and are two faced. Worst decision I ever made was to come work for AT&T. The top just cares about themselves and filling their pockets with cash while the worker bees continue to lose their jobs after many, many years of pouring their sweat into this horrible machine.
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You are under the false assumption that your work is valued.
Randall and Stankey are untouchable and unaccountable!
I’m really sorry. I can tell you from personal experience it isn’t just ATT that’s like this. I am currently at ATT but I’ve worked at other enterprise companies, as well as small (< 3k employees) and micro (~ 10 employee) companies. The micro businesses IMO are the WORST: constantly changing directions, the goal posts for variable comp are always in flux (when the company is doing well all of a sudden bonus was NOT based on revenue, but rather variables I had little control over, etc. and then it would flip in the other direction in a bad year), they’d “offer” benefits but when I went to exercise them all of sudden there were t&cs never mentioned before, etc.
My advice is always be looking for work. Always keep your resume up to date. Network (have fun in with it: but do it); keep in touch with current and former colleagues, your amlmus association if you went to a college; get on LinkedIn asap and contact to any and everyone you can think of; volunteer at orgs you care about (you’d be amazed how many executives I’ve met thru volunteering who’ve either offered me work or a “Hey I maybe know someone who can help you…” connection), and just take as many phone interviews as you can. Even if it doesn’t lead to a job, you may be able to toss the ball to someone else (eg “You know this doesn’t seem like the right fit for me, but I have a work peer you might want to talk to.”).
Most important lesson here: interview always and stay in the loop (because, trust me: you do NOT want your first phone and/or in-person interview to be when you’re under the g-n and stressed because you’re out of work). And do NOT worry about “leading a company on”, because, trust me: their bench of candidates is deep. No company expends time on just one potential candidate , they have a good 2-4 lined up for executive roles, and 10+ in line for, say, PM roles.
If all this seems too much/daunting due to having only worked at T and/or your age and/or you’re a craft employee, then I’d highly recommend a government job: local or federal. There are some awesome ones out there! And they offer lots of security, a pension, guaranteed raises and lots of federal holidays. You may be furloughed once in a blue moon, but there’s a lot of security in the those roles.
Just please don’t let this eat you alive. NO company (no matter how awful it is) is worth the resentment and stress that could end up making you sick with cancer.
Just try and stay positive, and move forward and don’t look back. You’re gonna be OK. Virtual hugs to you!
Does anyone else see this as targeting a certain age group of tenured employees who are not willing to upend lives to move to a hub city where there is as good of a chance that you will be surplused in next year’s layoffs?
Maybe you should go start your own company. This is a business.