The princess parade show continues marching on. The newest headline....
Lumen CEO on Seattle Tech, AI, Lessons from Microsoft, and cloudifying Telecom.
KJ's on the GeekWare podcast and we're geeking out!
I just threw up a little in my mouth, ok... it was a lot!
Aren't we all just trying to make a living?
Unions, love em or hate em... IDK or even care, but the UAW gave away concessions a number of years ago to help save the auto industries along with the big government loans the big 3 received, which I believe were promptly repaid. Not sure if, how, or why the UAW never received those concessions back. That's an issue.
The media has focused some reporting on a few instances of low pay, but i don't believe that's the norm. Most of them to my knowledge are making incredibly great wages with amazing benefits for placing widget A into slot B over and over and over all day. Let alone being able to double over for time and a half or double time or working holidays at triple time. During plant closures for retooling and retrofitting, or during strikes, they receive in excess of 90% of their normal hourly wage, or at least they used to.
What we need to think about is all the fall out from the strikes and plant closures on the hourly workers who work at the smaller mom & pop subcontractor companies that provide parts but aren't union represented and how their livelyhoods are negatively impacted, sometimes permanently.
College degrees and accounting, sales, management, & hi-tech jobs aren't for everyone. Younger people move into these auto worker and steelworker type jobs because of this and they make great pay/benefits and end up making a pretty good life for themselves and their families. Some say they are trapped there because their skills and education do not transfer well to other jobs where the can make the same salary.
From my view of lumen on the enterprise side and not the consumer side where the unions & represented employees are located, we have little to nothing in common with union workers from a job perspective and that's ok.
But I'm sure we are ALL tired of pi-s poor performance and incompetent management of this company. I'm afraid that our future is not as bright as our name implies, with out some major changes. Book clubs and ERGs won't do it.
I'm not a FAN BOY of You! 😆
I'm just trying to make a living.
We have it lucky. Go look at UAW workers.
From a previous comment: "These days some knuckleheaded directors believe they need to invent busy work for folks and that certain updates no matter how bogus are ok. we're lost in the minutia and stupidity. What are they going to do at review time with the "star players" who feel it's too much extra meaningless work because they are busy doing real work or that it's beneath them to manufacture bogus entries?"
Well I'll tell you what they will do, fire those who actually do the real work!!, It's that simple.
First, ALL they care about is the bottom line metrics, so it doesn't matter how good or bad technically an employee is.
Second: It appears to me that if your good at what you do and have advanced skills, your out! Upper management only wants employees who can be bullied into submission and blamed for things they didn't do. Generally people who are good at what they do and are confident are a threat to most management here, they are less likely to be bullied into submission.
RE: Metrics. In my humble opinion, metrics are the lazy managers way to manage. Management personnel rarely have to do any real managing, just let the automated processes kick out stats, write ups, and disciplinary actions. All the manager or immediate supervisor does is pass on what the automated processes kick out and that's it.
This topic on conversation just made my pants feel tighter. WOW!
Boy oh boy, never a truer statement was made about metrics. I recall a few years ago someone showing me how to do nothing for a certain group of metrics and by doing that nothing it actually satisfied the metric. D-mb.
These days some knuckleheaded directors believe they need to invent busy work for folks and that certain updates no matter how bogus are ok. we're lost in the minutia and stupidity. What are they going to do at review time with the "star players" who feel it's too much extra meaningless work because they are busy doing real work or that it's beneath them to manufacture bogus entries?
Oh yea... speaking about review time..... what's our review mechanism for this year, the stupid ole 9 box or something else? I believe KJ promised something new. Shouldn't we be working to align our behaviors towards that new tool so that we can go yet another year without a merit increase?
Here's what to do:
The leaders of the angry biotch ERG.
I have ZERO confident in "kate" and her completely mad friend Ashley to turn this nightmare of a company round.
Going to the cloud makes zero sense, since the company is 96+% Oracle and spent over 30 years getting there. Going to the cloud only makes certain IT execs rich, and further scatters the data and won't be completed in under 20 years.
Whenever you want to make money? Let me know! Global Crossing!
What do we want? Provide service to customers and compete with our competitors. End the nonsense about being a tech company and embrace being a service provider/networking/telecom company. Set 100% fiber as the end stage, not more failed targeted marketing. Stop trying to fu-k our customers over on what they are being sold. That would be a good start. Clueless Kate isn't going to do it.
What do you guys want? The company is in the sh--s and needs to change.
When the worlds is going AI, the web site still talks speeds. Relevant? Yes. Commodity- abso f'nlutely yes.
What is she supposed to say- its all good and be laughed out the door?