Well, since nobody has created a thread about it, and I am directly affected by the news (I work for BellSouth), I thought I would ask everyone their opinions.
Personally, we've seen this coming for a year or so, but none of my friends saw it happening so quickly. We're just now going through a "management work force reduction" period (cutting 1,500 Executive, Director, and C-level management jobs) that ends in a couple of weeks. They have put off our raises until May 1 (usually they hit Jan 1). Both the cuts and the raise delay were in place before the announcement. We thought we'd be bought after May when the new raises took place and the company would know what our total annual salary costs could be easily calculated.
So, what does it mean to me? Well, they announced that 10,000 more jobs would be cut once the merger is done. I figure 2,500 will be union jobs (linemen, etc) and the rest will be management. Lots of overlap in the two companies at the managmenet employee layer. Am I worried? Not really. I recently changed jobs to become a Technical Integration Architect but still have a long background in IT Security, so if things here get screwy, I can go find employment elsewhere.
Will this change anything for our customers? Probably not for a few years anyway. We may start selling true customer-VOIP since ATT has a commercial product. IPTV - still on the way. Faster DSL - also still on the way. Cheaper DSL - maybe, SBC (now ATT) sells much cheaper DSL and we might start matching their pricing. Cingular will be renamed ATT Wireless.
What do you guys think?
-SpyderGST
Personally, we've seen this coming for a year or so, but none of my friends saw it happening so quickly. We're just now going through a "management work force reduction" period (cutting 1,500 Executive, Director, and C-level management jobs) that ends in a couple of weeks. They have put off our raises until May 1 (usually they hit Jan 1). Both the cuts and the raise delay were in place before the announcement. We thought we'd be bought after May when the new raises took place and the company would know what our total annual salary costs could be easily calculated.
So, what does it mean to me? Well, they announced that 10,000 more jobs would be cut once the merger is done. I figure 2,500 will be union jobs (linemen, etc) and the rest will be management. Lots of overlap in the two companies at the managmenet employee layer. Am I worried? Not really. I recently changed jobs to become a Technical Integration Architect but still have a long background in IT Security, so if things here get screwy, I can go find employment elsewhere.
Will this change anything for our customers? Probably not for a few years anyway. We may start selling true customer-VOIP since ATT has a commercial product. IPTV - still on the way. Faster DSL - also still on the way. Cheaper DSL - maybe, SBC (now ATT) sells much cheaper DSL and we might start matching their pricing. Cingular will be renamed ATT Wireless.
What do you guys think?
-SpyderGST