Stankey is doing what’s necessary. His predecessor is to blame for stock, wasted money, inadequate leadership, poor purchasing decisions, etc..
Stankey has a solid vision and no,
It doesn’t include retaining everyone one currently payroll. He is making moves to streamline AT&T, drive up stock and be a top tier provider. Yes, people will be surplussed, that sucks but it I what it is. Ideally the stock will grow and 401ks with grow with it.
OP = John Stankey
When I hear Mr. Stankey I can't help think of Mongo from "Blazing Saddles"
Stankey has no vision, every single venture he attempted has failed miseribly. The only thing he is successful at is getting raises and bonuses from the BOD. I know, I know, he will tell you he knows more than anyone about everything!
This is like a mu---r saying I'm sorry and all is right.
Stankey had a lot to do with the failures and should be held accountable.
Cut all even # layers of management.!?
Anyone claiming Stank shouldn’t be accountable for past acquisitions hasn’t been paying close attention. Elliott is the driving machine behind what’s going on, not Stank. Stank is responsible for excutingthe new path. Sadly, many layoffs will be forthcoming as we automate and streamline the business. The fair and right thing to do is what Verizon did, they offered 1.5 years if totally free healthcare and 6 months of pay in addition to the addition of the years of service and age. T won’t do that because they have zero value for employees unless your title ends with VP or above.
At&t covets the Goose that laid the golden egg. They overpay for the goose. Then beat the goose to lay more eggs. And when the goose fails to produce more eggs and even less due to the disruption and stress, they chop up the goose and sell it's parts to various butchers. All at a huge loss.
T has multiple problems
Agree the track we are on is the right one, but yo say he had nothing to do with the failed mergers and decisions is categorically ignorant.
This is a person who told wWM he knew more about TV than they did, fired so much of their great staff, lauded how he gets to sit around and watch TV as a job. CNN+ didn’t fail because of Discovery.
While yes, we are on the right track NOW but to say he’s not to blame for the disasters to get BACK here is ridiculous.
Just make me an offer, PLEASE, make me an offer just to see if I'll take it? If T would adjust their headcount the fair and equitable way, employees wouldn't feel so threatened every day they go to work! Unfortunately, T doesn't see things that way, they just make the cuts where they think the business is too over-staffed. Perhaps, we'll all be surprised and T won't reduce headcount nearly as much as anticipated since we're only hearing speculation at best on this blog!
A lean and agile T would be 150K employees.
To address Elliot Management concerns they brought in a consultant. Basic recommendation was to be more like Verizon. That is what is happening in terms of business focus and also productivity. At that time AT&T revenue per employee was 25-30% more than VZ. So expect to see changes all over till we hit or exceed VZ metrics.
You must remember, Stankey was chief strategy officer all the years decisions were made on those acquisitions. It was his suggestion to buy all that cr-p. I'm sure based on valid points at that time and directions from the board.
AT&T needs to get under 180k employees, and under 60k in management!! Overhead departments such as Legal, Marketing, Finance and HR need to be cut drastically. AVP and above should be cut by 50%.
Stephenson was the captain of the titanic , Stankey was the id--t who steered it right into the iceberg.
Don't forget who put Randall Stephenson in charge when he retired -- Ed Whitacre. Clearly this was an ill fated decision with disastrous consequences. Sadly, I've never heard any of our so called leaders own any of their mistakes. The closest thing to an apology you get from John Stankey is "market conditions have changed". Isn't part of a CEO's job to anticipate possible worse case scenarios before pursuing an M&A?
I agree with @xhs - Stankey is the poster
You can't rewrite history. Sure, RS may have started the "video is the future" strategy, but Stankey was all over DTV and TWM, and giddy with excitement over the prospect of getting into bed with Hollywood. RS started the journey and bailed when he saw the ship sinking. Pompous, egotistical Stankey desperately tried to keep paddling, throwing thousands of employees overboard while he and his equally misguided executive leadership team continued to rake in millions while making poor decision after poor decision. He should have gone down with the ship long ago. Total failure.
Stankey was vision behind DirectTV purchase. His reasoning? With scale AT&T could negotiate better prices for all those channels that uverse could not. Meanwhile forgetting the streaming tsunami coming.
He is definitely not blameless. I 100% agree with other commenter, Elliott forced the issue.
Stankey needs to go and McElfresh should take over. Or someone from outside.
Stankey was vision behind DirectTV purchase. His reasoning? With scale AT&T could negotiate better prices for all those channels that uverse could not. Meanwhile forgetting the streaming tsunami coming.
He is definitely not blameless. I 100% agree with other commenter, Elliott forced the issue.
Stankey needs to go and McElfresh should take over. Or someone from outside.
Stankey was there with Stephenson when T-Mobile deal was attempted, DTV was purchased and Time Warner was purchased. In fact. for some of that he was in charge of strategy and he ran DTV when it was first bought and the same with Time Warner. Stankey ran out a lot of good talent from TimeWarner with such stupid statements as telling HBO exec to quit pushing back on him as he knows more about creating media. T blame it all on Stephenson and praise Stankey shows the OPS stupidity (to put it mildly)!
I notice Stankey hasn’t let any of his cronies go.
I'll bet the OP is John Stankey, thanks for pointing the finger, John!
Maybe unpopular, but also uneducated and incorrect. You’re blaming everything on Stephenson? Sure he bears a lot of the blame, but to act as if Stankey was an innocent bystander in all of the poor strategic decisions, especially over the last 5 years, is just ridiculous.
I would disagree with the OP. Stankey was the #2 guy behind RS. If it weren’t for Elliot stirring it up, we’d still be hearing about how great DTV and WM are doing. Elliot forced JS to do things to increase shareholder value. This is nothing but JS being pushed. ATT is the least held mega stock on the Dow. How do you drive value when nobody wants your stock.
This isn’t an unpopular viewpoint. Massive cuts are expected and necessary.