I’m a L2 and saw the report when it first came out. Very limited - just shows if you badged in 3 days a week. No time in office. And if you took 1 PTO day the week was grayed out.
For those with access - has that changed? Can they see how long your laptop is on the intranet? Does it still block out PTO weeks?
"network modernization T has no intention of eliminating headcount the next 3-4 years with regard to those supporting the network swap." How funny, you think modernization gives you job Secuity? Not hard cutting PO's to supplier (Ericsson) to get this work done. Hold on to the dream job for the next 3-4 years!
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Leadership is making their list for the next big cut. Accelerating HUB relocation dates to get folks off the books quicker. If you're not in Dallas or Atalanta within the next 6 months, consider your job at risk. Time to live your destination people and accept the policy change.”
This does not apply to the majority of T employees who work closer to the customer. These employees are market based and focused or in more regional positions supporting various market organizations. Dallas and Atlanta are primarily employees with national functions. Particularly in the wireless network organization the abundance of employees are market or regionally based. With the scale of work coming due to the network modernization T has no intention of eliminating headcount the next 3-4 years with regard to those supporting the network swap.
Garbage stock back below $17.
Management’s plan seems to be working out well.
Leadership is making their list for the next big cut. Accelerating HUB relocation dates to get folks off the books quicker. If you're not in Dallas or Atalanta within the next 6 months, consider your job at risk. Time to live your destination people and accept the policy change.
And look at that drop today, this is why you dump it til executive management is changed.
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Chris Sambar absolutely did not say what has been posted below. It has been posted before and called out for being incorrect.”
Wrong he absolutely did make that statement on a townhall as witnessed by employees. Afterward many were double checking with their managers to verify they hear it correctly and it was as verified. Chris most certainly did state that PTO, Vacation days etc were considered the same as being in office. ie if you took 1 vacations days you didn’t need to get into the office the other 3 days. Believe what you want and spew any bs what you want but Chris absolutely said it and it was backed up by HR on the very same call.
None of it is good for the company long-term and once hiring in tech picks back up finding talent will be even more difficult.
Any tech hiring will be done off shore or by H1Bs, so RTO won't be an issue.
There are 2 different versions of compliance on the report. One counts vacation as in-office, the other does not. Your SVP decides which policy to apply.
And they wonder why people keep asking for clarification on the policy, to which they never answer causing another round of asking.
Good thing I refuse to use public bathrooms and definitely wouldn’t use the nasty ones in the office.
I sell all company stock granted and RSU’s the second they vest or hit my portfolio.
It’s a toxic asset.
“ I heard the same thing but we are told my our lower level managers something different. This is why RTO is insane - there is no consistency, even among the same organization. I believe it is because possibly this is being tied to performance achievements for manager's so many of them want to be 'overachievers' -- to the detriment of the folk who work for them. Thus, helping to further enhance the toxic culture being created by a toxic layer of management”
This reply from another poster about sums it up. Happens every minute of every day here at AT&T. Wouldn’t surprise me at all that executive pay and bonuses are being tied into RTO compliance volumes in each org all the way down the chain of command. That’s why it seems so chaotic and uneven in its application across the enterprise.
“If we can measure it, we can we-ponize it”. That’s the underlying theme with RTO.
There are 2 different versions of compliance on the report. One counts vacation as in-office, the other does not. Your SVP decides which policy to apply. It is all so powerfully stupid that no sane investor should be buying our stock.
They are installing door chips on all bathroom doors. You need to chip in and out. All bathroom time will be subtracted from your hours for that day.
Each chip in will also trigger the TP dispenser to dispense 3 squares.
I mean, isn’t that kind of the point though? If a company wants to have this skilled labor, and it wants this skilled labor to live in expensive areas, then they need to cover the bill.
If they want me to relocate cross country and continue to work on systems only a handful of people at the company know, they should foot the bill. I can do my job remotely, if you want me somewhere else pay for it. Other companies pay for it - why aren’t you?
It doesn’t matter whose fault it is, Democrats, Republicans, Martians, the company wants to perform a pointless exercise, so it’s on them to provide the resources otherwise they’re going to lose talent which is already happening as evidenced in other posts on this board.
It is T’s fault though that they are requiring people to move who have done their jobs from safe lower cost of living areas for years especially when they were originally hired in these areas.
I don’t get where all these people are coming from who are backing up forced unpaid relocation and all these other draconian measures Stankey is implementing. None of it is good for the company long-term and once hiring in tech picks back up finding talent will be even more difficult.
Sounds like a quitters mentality to me.
THEY MAY TAKE OUR RTO BUT THEY WILL NEVER TAKE OUR COFFEE BADGE!
Yes, that is correct. In fact Chris pleaded with people not to be so d-mb and to simply report to the office 3 days a week regardless of sick, caregiver, PTO, etc. days used during the week. Those days do not count as in office days.
Chris Sambar absolutely did not say what has been posted below. It has been posted before and called out for being incorrect.
Get back in the office yah losers.
“Why do people need to WFH? There is no pandemic.”
T is requiring people to relocate to failing cities.
Crime is rampant.
Cities are more dangerous than ever.
Stores closing due to shop lifting.
Housing prices higher than ever.
Interest rates through the roof.
In most of these failed cities $200k a year still gets you basically a closet.
The solution? Allowing people to work from low-cost of living safe areas remotely.
And you wonder why we don’t want RTO?
You can thank the democrat voters
“ PTO days and anything coded in Infor are represented on the report, but they do not exempt you from that week. For example, if your organization mandates that you work in office 4 days and you take vacation on a Friday, you need to be in office Monday thru Thursday”
"This is not an accurate statement. Per Chris Sambar on two seperate occasions with an HR rep confirming during townhalls, if you are required to be in 3 days per week as example and you take a vacation, sick day etc, that is considered an in office day since you did not work from home. You do not need to than make up that day. The question was asked and answered emphatically by Chris and HR."
I heard the same thing but we are told my our lower level managers something different. This is why RTO is insane - there is no consistency, even among the same organization. I believe it is because possibly this is being tied to performance achievements for manager's so many of them want to be 'overachievers' -- to the detriment of the folk who work for them. Thus, helping to further enhance the toxic culture being created by a toxic layer of management.
Wish the company would focus more on meaningful things such as preventing data breaches, network outages, and the ever-constant and increasingly accelerated flow of talent and knowledge departing the company.
Nah, I’ll keep milking the $200k a year, lie and say I’ll move, milk it another 6-8 months while doing the bare min, and interviewing, then leave.
“And you wonder why we don’t want RTO?”
Then leave. Now. Bye.
There is no fixing these cities.
People shouldn’t be forced to be crammed into tiny boxes in dirty, smelly, crime ridden cities. Lots of us can do our jobs from anywhere and deliver as much value as we do on-site.
Those with vested interests seem to believe that making everyone go back into the he-l-holes will fix the problems, it won’t. The problems are deeper than tax revenue, or foot traffic to prop up the failing businesses in them. The problems are policy problems and only time will make those instituting those policies realize they’re failed.
Or we abandon them and let them fail and become third world.
T is requiring people to relocate to failing cities.
Crime is rampant.
Cities are more dangerous than ever.
Stores closing due to shop lifting.
Housing prices higher than ever.
Interest rates through the roof.
In most of these failed cities $200k a year still gets you basically a closet.
The solution? Allowing people to work from low-cost of living safe areas remotely.
And you wonder why we don’t want RTO?
Why do people need to WFH? There is no pandemic.
To the last poster: It’s different for each organization. Some orgs (mine included) have been told PTO, holiday, sick time, etc do not count as in office days. If we take 2 days off we have to go in the other 3.
“ PTO days and anything coded in Infor are represented on the report, but they do not exempt you from that week. For example, if your organization mandates that you work in office 4 days and you take vacation on a Friday, you need to be in office Monday thru Thursday”
This is not an accurate statement. Per Chris Sambar on two seperate occasions with an HR rep confirming during townhalls, if you are required to be in 3 days per week as example and you take a vacation, sick day etc, that is considered an in office day since you did not work from home. You do not need to than make up that day. The question was asked and answered emphatically by Chris and HR.
The solution is simple. If - and it is a big if - they start logging LAN vs VPN, don’t do any work outside of normal business hours. If you have dedicated space or a secured location, keep your laptop plugged into the LAN after you leave for the day. Don’t even take it home. Work from your COU if absolutely necessary.
If they are going to micromanage us and treat us like hourly workers, that is exactly what they will get. Good luck after 5pm. I’m not going to be available to bail any leader’s ignorant a-s out anymore outside of normal business hours, and they can deal with a report showing me on the LAN 24x7.
DOWNVOTE!
Where’s the fun in that though?
Because I don’t like being micromanaged and forced to go into an office no one on my team even works in to just sit on teams.
This is a pointless exercise, purely performative, and only exists to make Stankey happy and prop up commercial real-estate values in failing cities.
"There are even ways to spoof vpn connections "
...and other elaborate methods. Why not just go into the office like we are told to?
If they're spending that much energy and effort into micromanaging us to that degree this company is more doomed than anyone has imagined.
There are even ways to spoof vpn connections to make it look like you’re at the office when you’re not called double tunneling.
Have a machine at a physical location with the certificates your work machine uses to connect, copy some software over etc set it up right. It’s plugged into the network via one network card.
Install a third party vpn software like wire guard on it, and have that broadcast over a second network card using some wireless internet connection (like cell).
You connect to this tunnel from home via third party vpn software and it appears you’re using the connection at the office but you’re at home.
All traffic is routed from office network through cell to your laptop at home.
If they had a database of all employee MAC addresses they could, in theory, somehow fetch this information when you connect via some means and identify machines that way but you’d then also need everyone to register the MAC addresses of any hardware they plan to connect to the work network with.
Alternatively you could just log vpn login times via the PANW vpn, but it’s using OIDC global login and I’m not certain what info Palo Alto networks captures - the vendor would need to make this information available to ATT or we would need them to alter the solution to log more info if we’re hosting it internally.
It’s not a trivial thing to solve, and it’s a bit silly they’re wasting so much time and resources trying to for no real gain.
How will they know the IP of the location you’re connecting from?
Ip’s aren’t static, you’re thinking of MAC addresses, which all hardware interfaces are assigned from the factory.
This would assume they know the MAC address of every employee laptop (they would need to know the Mac of each network card and WiFi card), have a database of them, and this isn’t account for things like lan addresses.
You can have a different internal IP based off which Ethernet cable you’re using and these IP’s can be assigned dynamically.
The only way they can really track this going forward is if they’re logging vpn login time, user, and then somehow tracking when the user stops using vpn. This also doesn’t account for people who use the vpn in office due to connection or certificate issues (very common).
They have software on Windows machines that facilitate tracking, not on Mac’s.
Reasonably technical people will probably be able to get around this stupid requirement if they want to.
"I’m hearing they won’t have capability to track time accurately on a Mac.
Get a MacBook while you still can and avoid all this nonsense."
Mac machines still need an ip to communicate. If they are looking at logs that associate ips with login id's then machine type won't matter at all. Be careful about believing that you can avoid tracking with a Mac.
I’m hearing they won’t have capability to track time accurately on a Mac.
Get a MacBook while you still can and avoid all this nonsense.
I have heard that they can track lan vs vpn but it’s so unreliable they aren’t pulling the trigger yet. Once they open that box it will discourage people logging into the network when they get home which is what many of us have to do in order to manage our workload.
We were told that they are going to start using LAN/VPN access also. I know that in our building they have done that in the past. When CRE was making a determination about which people and groups get permanent seating they used LAN/VPN as the meter. Being connected a certain number of hours a day to the LAN vs VPN was needed to get a permanent spot. This was in ATL before the pandemic. The point being, unless something changed when they pushed out the new LAN connection and got rid of Cisco, then they have the ability to check your time online based on connection type.
Just to add to the previous post (who is 100% correct): the report only pulls Infor data 1 time and locks it in. So if you change your vp or anything else after the fact it doesn’t update the report.