Or is this a relatively new, Randy and Stanky related issue?
29 replies (most recent on top)
AT&T was not always hated. After the SBC takeover our company went to hell. The lack of respect for 20+ year employees has intensified the dislike for me. I’m grateful for the years I enjoyed but excited for my exit. All I can say is stack your money and plan your exit. It’s a sad day for T employees.
Obviously, with so many cycles of layoffs employees started looking for any information available on net and are landing on this due.
The benefits issue is only making it more sensitive.
"Got hired a few years ago and it's been the best tech job I've ever had. Great pay (and got a high scale early on for prior experience), home garage truck, and the crew is great. I hope to stay forever."
Who believes this is real? The image bots might be working from home but they working harder than ever. LOL.
I hate to say it but I think those who were around way back when may agree. AT&T didn't make this bad company. I started at Ameritech and it all went to $hit when "SBC" came in. Then SBC took over AT&T. I"m thinking this leadership is all about SBC Culture.
Stephenson earned a Bachelor of Science in Accounting from the University of Central Oklahoma and a Master of Accountancy from the University of Oklahoma,[3] then began his career in 1982 with Southwestern Bell Telephone in the information-technology organization in Oklahoma.
John T. Stankey (born 1962)[4] is an American businessman who is the former CEO of WarnerMedia (then Time Warner). In 1995, after Southwestern Bell Corporation became SBC Communications, Stankey served as the Executive Vice President of Industry Markets beginning in 1998 becoming the Executive President of Industry Markets in 2000.[8] In 2001 Stankey became the President and CEO for SBC Southwest.[8] Stankey served as CIO of the "new AT&T" after the merger of SBC with AT&T Corporation finalized in 2005,[9] becoming the senior executive vice president and CTO for AT&T from 2008 to 2012, Stankey held various senior executive positions within the company and in January 2012, Stankey became the CSO and group president of AT&T Inc.[8]
If your business plan stinks and you cant attract new talent blame everyone around you and push them out the door. This is what we get from the smartest man in the room? OMG with leadership like this it seems that AT&T is going the way of AOL, Hostess, Enron and Eastern airlines. Hold on to your wallets boys and girls....
I think back and regret I didn't leave in 2008 which is when SBC bought BellSouth and with it took over Cingular 100%. Things went downhill when SBC took over and Whitaker left Randy in charge. Went from a good company to the worst company I ever worked for and I didn't change jobs to get it. Now it would be too big a financial loss to leave so I do the landline shuffle: "stay low and take the dough" The more they cut benefits, pay and make us work in spartan environments the more I cut back my effort and work
At one point, AT&T was a GREAT place to work. Then Reagan and the DOJ broke it up. After that, the financial engineers got ahold of it and sliced, diced, re-assembled the pieces and bought and sold more pieces. Add to that good old greed, golden parachutes, and incompetence and you wind up with the mess you have today.
It's not everyone. The problem is there are many in the middle who waste all the time jockeying for position instead of developing their people to accomplish great things. If the leaders did what they're supposed to do, there'd be plenty of clout to go around. smh
The real question is: Why does AT&T hate its employees to the point of firing them?
SBC culture was Manure Caked Bull in a China Shop. Braggadocios people for the most part who had a bully mentality and lacked strategy or logic. Cingular made it's debut with a "Self Expression" campaign and a disastrous Super Bowl Series of Ads that weren't clever, funny, or remotely effective. SBC folks were pretty much hammer meet nail on anything and everything. Verizon wiped the floor with them from 2000 onward. Coverage was terrible at their own headquarters. Now clients just meet and see dirty and stick floors.
Stinky is abhorrent!
He rolls into meetings wearing his Att logo’ed out attire, which for starters is embarrassing, accented with his cowboy boots, and for a finishing, touch his famous s$$t eaten grin! He then tells everyone attending the meeting he’s “the smartest guy in the room”, demeans anyone who dares disagree with him, and literally screams and yells like a child if he hears something he deems negative. Who can effectively lead a multi billion $ company screaming at its employees?
Since early 2000s and the SBC transitions.
"Stankey has typically been held in low regard by all in the orgs under his dominion."
Stankey was always one of those prima donna bullies who'd roll into a market and expect to be treated like a king. It was disgusting. I can't even imagine what he's like now, it's got to be unbearable to be around him.
The BellSouth days were definitely better. Everything went downhill when they got in bed with SBC through Cingular. That's when the layoffs really started and it was clear we were going to be under a group of execs who only cared about the stock.
Anyone remember when that moran they had running cingular announced a bunch of layoffs on a Friday afternoon then went to an Elton John concert with a bunch of cronies in limos and bragged about it?
Customer service, employee morale, etc., none of that mattered once SBC took over.
Definitely got worse when SBC started buying up the rest of us about 15-20 years ago. The constant micromanagement, non-stop layoffs, and always unethical behavior of this company has turned this company culture into dog s**t. Not only do the employees hate this place, but so does the general public/consumers.
My favorite part of at&t is i only have to show up to get paid and no one cares about the customer. All anyone cares about is a sale. Which is great. Put numbers on the board and complaints get ignored. People comment on the surveys. Then yelp and now google. All fabricated. It’s just a paycheck. Even managers I talk with don’t care.
BellSouth was a great place to work. Fake-T&T (it’s really South Central Bell; the real AT&T was also a great place to work) is a horrible place to work, for anyone who has integrity and expects to be treated with integrity. Why are we whining? Let me tell you, they are stealthy and hide their inhumanity well. It takes lots of time, observation, and self analysis to discern the truth. It is hard to accept the gaping lack that’s at the center, but eventually, having explored all other possibilities, that’s what you’re faced with. And you think, that’s just this one person, or group, or decision, so you go on... and repeat the cycle, and arrive at the same conclusion, but you continue to think that it must be an isolated instance.... Rinse, repeat. Over and over again. Finally you are just constantly disgusted, mostly with yourself for not accepting the truth sooner, and you just do your job and plan your exit strategy. There’s so much talent they’ve squandered, mountains of money they leave on the table, incredible ideas they simply ignore. And they know it, and they don’t care.
I don't think it is hated. There are pockets of people who dislike it but generally people at least are meh about it. Don't use this layoff board as an example of anything.
About 7 years ago I turned down a job making double the money because I loved the people I worked with and the managers I had at the time. It was the best job I ever had. Since then, things have been a spiral downhill. New bosses every year. Each one worse than the last and knows less and less. I sorely regret my decision to stick around. I won’t make that mistake again. They can s— it.
Was an entirely different company pre-Randall. There have always been problems with bureaucracy and demanding, idi0t managers who couldn't do their employees jobs if their lives depended on it.
But the positives far outweighed the bad parts. Workers knew they had a career with good pay and benefits for life. As a result morale and pride were much, much higher. Voluntary turnover was non-existent.
The hatred started with the micro managing put in place by the same guy that put us into maximum debt with nothing to show for it.
Got hired a few years ago and it's been the best tech job I've ever had. Great pay (and got a high scale early on for prior experience), home garage truck, and the crew is great. I hope to stay forever.
People on this board don't want to hear this but NO it was not always hated, I started in 1985, was (and still is) a great company. Grass is not greener outside, I have had people leave and come back. Did they make some bad decisions on purchases, YEP, but overall if you show up, do your job , you get good pay and benefits. I was disappointed in the change in retiree benefit and Life insurance, but alot of companies making the changes to be financially fit. If you don't like it here leave, life is too short , I like what I do, I like the people I do it with and they pay me decently for that!
Some of us are old enough to remember the AOL Time Warner debacle, history is repeating itself in a bigger scale. Steve Case said "Vision without execution is hallucination."
The CEO's of Warner and DTV are laughing all the way to bank. RS and Stanky are big on ego and poor in vision, and there are plenty of hallucination in the executive ranks and BoD.
Pre divestiture it was like family.
Ameritech was a bit worse, but not bad.
When SBC took over, things started to go to he(ck)ll.Slowly, but after Whitacre left more rapidly.
Metrics, trying to fire everyone.
It really got bad in the early 2000s.
When SBC bought AT&T, all bets were off.
By 2017, when I retired, I didn't give a shat what the boss or RS or anyone else wanted.
Managers got atta boys for having folks on steps of discipline.
Few more will make it to retirement.
Nope. At AT&T was after Bell took over became about numbers not customer service and quality any more.
My personal experience....South Central Bell was great to work for. BellSouth was good to work for. AT&T pre RS was ok, during RS was bad, post RS is horrible. Randall wanted to be the King of the world and he mortgaged everything and everyone else’s future in his quest. Martin Scorsese blames people who know nothing about content who bought up media companies for ruining the industry. Wonder to whom he’s referring?
always been grumpy gripers at T, for over a century. some of them just lousy employees, and some of them had legitimate gripes.
in terms of steering the company directly into a very deep and painful ditch, RS will without doubt go down in infamy at the firm. up until him, for the most part T employees only had to worry about government regulators messing with their lifelong safe jobs. but RS stupidity in a mere few years has run the company into a totally new level of short term and long term risk, weighed down by massive debt load that never sleeps, 7x24x365, and debt doesn't care about families or healthcare or anything else.
in terms of stinky, jury kind of still out on him for the final verdict, but he was top RS copilot as he ditched this fine vehicle so horribly, so most people have very little optimism nor kind feelings for him either. he kissed the rear end for years of a woefully incapable leader, mistake after mistake. have a good day.
Stankey has typically been held in low regard by all in the orgs under his dominion. When he was a modest business unit officer, the range of his stank was limited but as he progressed up the corporate pecking order the coverage area of his aroma spread to taint AT&T as a whole. Randall was not well known outside of Finance and relatively well regarded within. But after Ed anointed Randall as the Chosen One, the inevitable hubris set in, especially after he set up shop in Dallas.
AT&T has 230,000 employees and thousands of contractors. It has 500,000 retirees. What we're seeing here is a very small cadre of repeat posters.
There are all kinds of jobs at AT&T. There is no "one" AT&T. Somebody's opinion is not "one size fits all".