AT&T

Good pay, and the folks that actually do the work are great at what they do.

IT organizations are constantly changing senior leadership and structure. Senior leadership lurks in a distant cloud, unaware of who is truly working towards real results and has no real idea of people's roles and actual responsibilities. This is evident by the number of fire drills called out, asking what people actually do in their roles and what projects/activities they are involved in.

Direction of the business areas is determined by the popularity of the work rather than need, and the people involved are determined by a popularity contest. The actual need for work is rarely determined by business need and is typically justified after it is started, rather than at the onset by an actual business need. Nobody knows or understands the cost of doing business (CODB). Budgets are handled in slush funds at the senior executive level with no allocations made below.

Threat of layoff is constant, and they occur weekly and have been for years now. With an organization of a few hundred thousand, it is even necessary to have a team whose primary responsibility is layoffs. Outsourcing and off-shoring of jobs are becoming more and more commonplace. Benefits are on a rapid decline. There is more of a buddy system and politics at this point in history than ever before.

Your job is only as secure as your very last review, and it determines if you are on the next layoff list. Your immediate supervisor has sole and final discretion over your evaluation and ratings, with no oversight. Past evaluations and accomplishments serve as no baseline or influence to the present. If you are not given any key projects to lead or work on, or your supervisor pays no attention to you, or perhaps dislikes you, your evaluations/reviews will suffer. Ratings have quotas. No team or organization can have all people meet, exceed, or far exceed expectations. 10% of the team must fall below expectations and will ultimately be laid off.

When I started, and for 10+ years, this place was fantastic. With every merger/acquisition, things get worse. The company has reached critical mass, and things are not as managed or structured as they once were. After the SBC and AT&T merger, things just never worked quite right or at all.

Stop looking at people as a commodity and laying them off. They got you to the point you are. You would be better off to use them to provide support and increase value by creating better and/or more products and services that will generate income.

Outsourcing and off-shoring only provide short-term gains and aren't the answer. Ultimately, you are going to run out of people in this country (USA) with income sufficient to utilize you as a service provider.

Good luck, Stankey. Stephenson left you a mess.