AT&T

There are individuals at AT&T that are highly talented and motivated and among the best that I've worked with in my career. At the working level, you can do a lot, and the camaraderie is excellent. When we are trying to solve a technical problem, you are dealing with people who really know their stuff.

Upper management, and even mid-level managers who want to be upper management one day, are mostly clueless or actively evil. There are some good ones, but the malevolent presence of some devils in human form more than outweighs the effects of the good managers. I'm talking about 20-hour days in order to make a presentation that will be looked at for 5 minutes, and the only questions will be about totally unrelated topics. Who cares about all the work that was done? What matters is impressing the executives, who only care about impressing Wall Street.

Executives need to get out of their offices and go talk to the rank-and-file workers.

At another (admittedly smaller) telecom, I was in the cafeteria, and the CEO literally came to our table and asked if he could sit down and talk because he wanted to get to know his employees.

At AT&T, I'm surprised there's not a red carpet being laid under the execs' feet with every step and a band playing.