Well, the fact that VZ has not told you anything to calm down the nerves of the troops is telling in and of itself. They have no idea where they are headed with the company or how to execute the mismanaged plan they are frantically trying to get a handle on. They just don't know what to tell you. Each month that passes, and every target that gets missed just puts the final punctuation on what has always been their plan. To reduce headcount in areas not cutting the mustard, based on the impossible to meet metrics foisted upon everyone, and give themselves handsome bonuses at your expense. . Any reason for not making the goals is looked on as an excuse. So what if there was a blizzard and a few feet of snow were dumped on you. A hurricane tore up large sections of the network? Keep the work on schedule. You need to have planned for all of that. Stock up on salt, shovels, snow blowers and ice choppers. Make sure you have the resources to keep the projects on track while disaster recovery is in full swing on the "live" network. Don't think that you can get overtime for the extra work to dig out and try to salvage things. It was poor planning on your part.
Ever since the landline leadership took over, their first order of the day was to breach the hull of the once proud ship. You wireless pukes were making the rest of us look bad with your record market wins, your vast depth of technical expertise, and HUGE revenues filling the coffers. So they took it all down and brought everyone to the level they wanted, so no one looked bad. Parity...They forgot that wireless was fueling the whole shebang. T-Mobile, Sprint and ATT were sitting back in the weeds and eating our lunch, rapaciously. Subscribers who really were a lot more savvy then the leadership gave them credit for, voted for PRICE over QUALITY. All they need is an internet connection when they want it, to be able to send and receive their texts messages, and use their social media links to document their lives, all at the least possible outlay of cash as they could find. Revenue streams were diminishing. The cash cow was ailing. They offered the unlimited packages to try to staunch the bleeding, but alas, it was too late. One 1/100 of a percentage point just isn't all that much of a big deal to most people if they could keep an extra $20 a month in their pockets and keep connected to those things they wanted.
Then the work environment became much like the days of the galley ships, with prisoners chained to a wooden bench and pulling on an oar to make the "elite" ship go where they wanted, with management beating on a huge bass drum for the tempo they wanted. Fear reigned, being humiliated publically for their perceived lack of effort became common. The plan was flawed, and doomed to fail from the onset, yet management no longer wanted to hear that. Bottom line?? You are all being set up to fail, and you can't do a thing about it. Well, you can, but cutting the chains and abandoning ship is the only way out, and many can't see a way to make that happen, so they languish and keep pulling on the oar. So until you figure out how to make that call, what you are dealing with will be the norm for a long time to come. Remember MCI? Enron? Lucent? Others? Tombstones to large companies who didn't get it, and fumbled their opportunities away, and are now only footnotes to failures in business history. Road markers VZW managers, who in their arrogance, are choosing not to glance at or to remember them.
Wall street is already chiseling the VZW tombstone... end date after the dash is still TBD. I still have hope someone will wake up and salvage the company before it collapses under the weight of it's self-created mediocrity, but I am not optimistic they will succeed. Maybe the new VZ phrase that pays should be "EXPECT MEDIOCRITY, WE DO". Enjoy the terror ride while it lasts. Or grow a pair and leave before the tsunami washes you out with a lot of others at the same time. Take your life back, you only get one. Good luck to you all.
Signed,
Someone who found out there is still a pretty good life AFTER being at VZW.
Posted originally here @M0Qsfih-cwhw . OP nailed it, so I thought it should be more visible.