T-Mobile to cut about 7% of workforce, mostly corporate roles

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-08-24/t-mobile-to-cut-about-7-of-workforce-mostly-corporate-roles

by toomuchtodo • 3 years ago

34 95 3 years ago

bloomberg.com

toomuchtodo3• 3 years ago

https://archive.is/fxes6

impish9208• 3 years ago

https://archive.is/DGlrV

blahyawnblah• 3 years ago

Oh yay. Infinite captcha

thedigitalone• 3 years ago

Same here, frustrating.

xfour• 3 years ago

Interesting, they just gobbled up the Mint Mobile MVNO for something like 1.35B which was already using their network and of course there's the Sprint for 26B and now are cutting jobs to save half that.

I wonder how much of this is the articles cable company wireless deals, and more just consolidation of jobs around the new megaco they've created.

bombcar3• 3 years ago

Isn't this the cycle of cell companies now? They have customer service go to shit, then an MVNO pops up with low prices and good service using their network, and then they got bought, and then it goes to shit and the cycle continues?

candiddevmike2• 3 years ago

Why does the market "reward" that behavior?

criddell2• 3 years ago

“It is clear that doing everything we are doing and just doing it faster is not enough to deliver on these changing customer expectations going forward,” he said in the memo.

So getting rid of 5,000 (out of 70,000) employees will help deliver on customer expectations?

toomuchtodo3• 3 years ago

They’re desperate to juice margins. Same reason autopay discount is lost if you don’t switch from credit card to ACH payments.

defulmere• 3 years ago

T-mobile: (data breach noises)

Also T-mobile: Give us your bank account info.

Yeah, no.

elzbardico• 3 years ago

Well, their customers probably have pretty low expectations from T-mobile.

toomuchtodo3• 3 years ago

Customer service is meh but the mobile service is great (even works on the Playa at burning man). I’m paying $150/month for 10 lines, and have been with them for 23 years. Of course, due to their data breaches, my email address with them is an alias and my physical address is my mail processor. Money goes in (I prepay a year at a time with a credit card), mobile service comes out. Prepaid service would mean they collect and retain less data, but you get lower priority on towers.

If you need service occasionally where TMO doesn’t provide, I recommend a Visible (Verizon MVNO subsidiary) eSIM.

indymike3• 3 years ago

So getting rid of 5,000 (out of 70,000) employees will help deliver on customer expectations?

I'm a T-Mobile customer via Sprint acquisition. My experience post merger is that they simple view customers as monthly payments that T-Mobile is entitled to, service delivered, or not. They do not back the equipment they sell, they make it nearly impossible to bring your own phone (if you are on a former Sprint contract), and their people have zero discretion to do the right thing. It's a dystopian hellscape.

onlyrealcuzzo2• 3 years ago

This sounds like AT&T and Verizon, too.

dehrmann2• 3 years ago

make it nearly impossible to bring your own phone (if you are on a former Sprint contract)

I had no issues switching to a new, unlocked iPhone.

poulsbohemian2• 3 years ago

Moved from Verizon last spring because it seemed like T-Mobile was investing more in their network in our area and Verizon's account management was a mess. Never received any of the new account credits we were supposed to receive and it was like a light switch that places in our area that had solid T-Mobile coverage suddenly didn't. Planning to go back to Verizon for the better coverage but not looking forward to it. Not clear how a staffing reduction is supposed to help.

delfinom• 3 years ago

I had to stop using Verizon because their fantastically incompetent management start pushing merging "Fios" and "phone accounts" together.

Except my phone was on my parent's plan (since single people get scammed by the carriers) and my home internet was my own fios subscription. It kept trying to merge my personal home plan, located 300 miles from my parents home into my parents cellular plan account.

mullingitover2• 3 years ago

Don't go back to Verizon, the grass is not greener on that side of the fence.

I was on Straight Talk, which was great because you could pick any carrier by simply buying the SIM for that carrier. I picked the T-Mobile SIM.

When Verizon bought them, you no longer had that option and you were suddenly just shunted to Verizon. When that happened, my 5G speeds in the city dropped significantly. Meanwhile, the coverage outside major population centers is not better. My wife still has T-Mobile so we have an easy way to compare, and T-Mobile's network is beating the pants off Verizon these days.

poulsbohemian2• 3 years ago

T-Mobile has become so bad in our area that we upgraded our internet just so we can do wifi calling. We tried the T-Mobile "trial data plan" before we switched, but once we actually made the move, the coverage has only degraded.

bastardoperator• 3 years ago

This is the reality of every cellular provider. Everyone has a cell phone so growth is almost nonexistent. I worked at Verizon and they were claiming this over 8 years ago, trying to pivot, and failing big.

nradov• 3 years ago

There is still huge growth potential beyond cell phones for cellular data connections to wearable devices and IoT. But the carriers seem to be fumbling this opportunity by not partnering effectively with device vendors or offering service plans which make sense for that use case.

mdasen• 3 years ago

There's still a good amount of growth. Over the past 5 quarters, T-Mobile has added 1.3M to 1.8M postpaid customers each quarter (8M customers total, an average of 1.6M per quarter). Even if you're just looking at postpaid phone customers, it's 500k-900k per quarter (3.8M customers total, an average of 760k per quarter).

AT&T has added 2M postpaid phone subscribers over the past year, an average of 500k per quarter.

Over the past year, Verizon has been basically flat adding 106k postpaid phone customers, an average of 27k per quarter. Verizon is flat, but the other two are getting 5M new postpaid phone customers a year.

baz00• 3 years ago

Never work for a company which is large enough for you to be a statistical acceptable loss.

iamleppert• 3 years ago

I got rid of T-Mobile after my phone would randomly stop working. They have major issues across the board. I would go to the store and they would reactivate my phone and there would never be any explanation of what happened.

I would have to call in every few months because the bill would magically start creeping up for no reason.

The final straw was when my phone stopped working while I was traveling. I called them and they told me they couldn’t fix it over the phone, I had to go in again. The nearest T-Mobile was an hour away and I literally had to take an Uber there and back.

On the way back, in the Uber, the phone stopped working. Like no service at all. There’s nothing wrong with the phone, it’s some access issue. I had to take yet another Uber back to the store (called via WiFi). I complained and was offered nothing.

Every time I went to the store the place was completely empty but the staff was still rude and seemed to be checked out and visibly struggling with the T-Mobile IT systems & complaining about them.

I switched to AT&T and have had no issues whatsoever. A few months ago a T-Mobile rep called me to ask why I cancelled and I told her the story, she said she could see all the problems in the account history and still had no explanation. She asked, “What would it take for me to be a T-Mobile customer again?” I said “How about covering the Ubers I had to take?” and she laughed and hung up the phone. A few days later I got an automated survey about how T-Mobile is doing and I actually took the time to do it and never heard from them since.

What an odd, dysfunctional company.

daedalus_j• 3 years ago

just to n=1 in the other direction:

We had tons of issues with AT&T. Incorrect billing, getting random charges that weren't ours, and a huge pile of "you have full bars, but absolutely no data and calls can't go through" issues. (during the early iPhone days I worked at the Apple Store, we had a standing policy in several local stores of sending one of our sales reps to the AT&T store across the mall with a customer to get issues resolved because AT&T lied to customers so often to try and upsell them to something else, or out of sheer incompetence.)

After switching to T-Mobile we've had great service, no billing issues, no problems with international roaming or surprise charges, and a couple of cold-calls with offers to update to a new plan which was actually cheaper. The only issues we've ever had have turned out to be hardware related.

I think the truth may be that mobile carriers, much like ISP's, are a complete crapshoot, and reliability/service may entirely depend on which market you're in.

lotsofpulp2• 3 years ago

I think the truth may be that mobile carriers, much like ISP's, are a complete crapshoot, and reliability/service may entirely depend on which market you're in.

The customer service is always a crapshoot, which is why I do my best to avoid dealing with them, which is why I never go to a store (whether it be ATT/T-Mobile/Verizon).

I just paid full price for an iPhone at the Apple Store, took it to a T-Mobile store to add to my mom’s T-Mobile plan. Next month, my mom ended up being charged a monthly fee for the iPhone itself, as if she had bought it on contract from T-Mobile. Had to tell T-Mobile they would have to prove in court that they sold my mom the iphone, and we had a receipt from Apple showing the serial number.

soupfordummies• 3 years ago

I had so many horror stories with managing corporate IT accounts with AT&T at a previous job. So much so that they are one of my only hard-true-boycotts.

For a time I knew how to get free iPads from them due to an exploit in their horrendously long shipping and failure to activate them without several layers of phone calls.

Not to mention endless hours of hold time with support to fix their mistakes such as totally illegal unagreed-to upsells and charges.

Can't tell you how many times I would specifically decline something like "mobile device insurance" only to see it on the bill the next month.

op00to• 3 years ago

I have not thought about my T-Mobile phone for years. The price has been the same for years. The service just works in the NE US where I am.

foobiekr• 3 years ago

The amazing thing is that for 5g, T-mobile has, by far, the best network. And that's not just the radio network but the interior as well. Friends with t-mobile report the problems above regularly.

AT&T has an absolutely terrible network - janky glued together hell - but I've never once had an issue in over 20 years.

mechhacker• 3 years ago

I personally haven't had much of a problem other than where I now live doesn't have the best service indoors.

Another thing that I really liked was when I was traveling in Europe, I had free basic internet and texts. This was NOT the case with when I had Verizon. They just send you a text when they detect you there, tell you what is free and what costs extra, and you can use your phone like normal.

I even got a local esim with them when I was in Europe more long term (it was surprisingly cheap to get a dedicated European line). I originally got a phone that could handle a physical sim and additional esims for this reason.

Don't know much about the company other than that.

BeetleB• 3 years ago

Also in the other direction:

Been a T-Mobile user for over a decade, and never had technical issues.

The store staff are beyond useless. I always get help from their phone support personnel - but I almost never need to. It just works.

Their online portals are beyond crap. Example: I used to have one prepaid plan and would log in to make payments. Then I switched to another plan and I could no longer log in to manage it - my email address was tied to the prepaid plan I no longer had, and everyone I spoke to said "Our IT folks say they can't do anything and that I should just create a new account with another email address".

In order to avoid manually making the monthly (prepaid) payments, I set up automation with them - it would automatically charge my card each month. Except they could never align the date properly - so for about a day every month I could not make calls. They could never fix it - the problem just went away when I switched plans.

tapvt• 3 years ago

I have Verizon for my personal phone, but opted for T-Mobile for my home (5G) internet and a new iPad. I made this decision after using T-Mobile for my company-paid phone with zero issues.

Aside from a janky customer app on iPhone, I'm quite pleased. That said, I've never been to a physical location.

mrbonner• 3 years ago

I have been with Tmo for more than 10 years. I don’t have any problems per sẽ. But their reception is bad near my house. I only have 1 bar and the nearest tower is less than 250 yards away. I called them numerous time to complain and even escalated to senior tech guy. They all said there was weird issue with tower assignment and my phone was hooked to one 2.5 miles away. They couldn’t do anything to help. It’s been like this for 4 years. Please let me know if you know how to make this work.

xp842• 3 years ago

I decided to try postpaid for the first time in a while, signed up with T-Mobile and traded them a year-old phone for about $800 in bill credits.

They didn't send me a label for my phone for a couple weeks, so I reached out to them and a rep sent me a UPS label, which I used. (Apparently their ecommerce website had simply eaten the part of my order where I declared a trade-in.)

The bill credits never showed up, so I started reaching out to social media customer service on Twitter or Facebook Messenger. This is the only competent arm of their whole CS org. And they're actually empowered to follow up independently so you don't have to keep calling them.

Anyway as far as I can piece together my phone was sent to their returns center instead of their trade-ins place, and after being signed for, it was never seen again. (I assume somebody recognized it didn't belong there and made sure it fell off a truck).

Eventually the reps got a supervisor to okay a solution, which happened to be in my favor -- they just credited the full amount they owed me against my installment plan immediately, so I only owed like another $150 on the new phone at that point, paid it off, and had it unlocked.

I think I stayed about a year. I got lucky with my issue, but they are definitely not great overall at their one job of providing wireless service.

AT&T's prepaid service runs on an account/billing platform and website that is straight out of 2003, but the plans themselves are great and the service works well in my part of the country (T-Mobile sucks in most of the West by comparison).

gotaran2• 3 years ago

I know many engineers at Meta and Google. They all say only chronic underperformers were laid off, and some chronic underperformers weren’t. It’s a different story for recruiters and middle managers, which were super bloated anyway.

So this is a good thing.

TulliusCicero• 3 years ago

Riddle me this, Batman, but if that's true, why wasn't I laid off?

saagarjha3• 3 years ago

No you don’t. If you knew any people at those companies they’d tell you the layoffs were haphazard and confused.

gotaran2• 3 years ago

5 of my close friends work at Meta, and 2 at Google. All engineers.

I visit the NYC Union Square and Hudson Yards offices regularly for dinner, and even the Seattle Westlake and MPK ones whenever I’m visiting. The mood there is much much better post layoffs. Possibly even better than it was pre COVID.

alphanullmeric• 3 years ago

That makes no sense. If I had to choose between two people to lay off, why would I get rid of the person that performs better?

neilv• 3 years ago

I don't know whether "only chronic underperformers were laid off" is true or not, but...

It sounds like a meme that a big company might want to have internally, if they were trying to both reduce regretted/uncontrolled attrition, while also lighting a fire under people who the company thinks are complacent.

But the company would not say that publicly (nor want employees to say that too loudly), because that would be a big liability, defaming tens of thousands of people while they are job-hunting. Also, a jerk move.

Regardless, I'd normally expect any big company layoffs to likely include people that the company or some layer of management has wanted to get rid of (for various reasons, not all the fault of the employee). But layoffs will also hit people based on what project they're on, what department, what role, and simply because their manager was given a target number to reduce.

I also know of multiple high-performers who knew/assumed layoffs were coming, and already wanted to leave, so quietly put in a word with a trusted manager/exec, that they would like a severance package when the time comes. (And then the manager could keep another person or two they would've had to reduce otherwise.)

avgDev2• 3 years ago

Celebrating layoffs is some end stage capitalism.

rjbwork• 3 years ago

T-Mobile home internet is my only option for internet in my area.

Starlink just launched, but I can't get it due to the topology of our location. Or, well, that's not entirely true. I could spend tens of thousands of dollars cutting down trees or installing a massive antenna mast for the dish. T-Mobile home internet works well enough, but does go down or get really slow periodically.

roamerz• 3 years ago

Sorry to those employees. Pretty sure it’s not an even 5k though and each individual one matters. In contrast to a lot of the service level bashing comments my experience has been great with T-Mobile since I switched from Verizon 4 years ago. Great speed and reliability and top notch customer service when needed. Not so happy about having to give my bank info but that a financial choice not a requirement for service.

gustavus• 3 years ago

Already being discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37249002

dang• 3 years ago

That one was posted later, so we'll merge it hither. Thanks!

steno1323• 3 years ago

Elon was (sadly) right. His cuts were painful but they produced a much leaner and more productive company at Twitter. They actually ship now.

Nat Friedman once said on Twitter that tech companies are 2-5x overstaffed and everyone knows this.

I hope the same positive outcome comes out of T-Mobile, and not just people losing their jobs. And I hope they find new jobs soon.

profunctor• 3 years ago

Since his cuts Twitter seems like it would be worth a lot less than he paid for it. And twitter shipped before him.

steno1323• 3 years ago

Hard disagree. What's the last major feature Twitter shipped before Elon? Keep in mind they had 8000 employees

Just in the last one year, we've gotten: Twitter Notes, long form video, checkmarks for everyone, subscriptions for creators, edit tweets, see # of replies and likes on a tweet

Yes, Twitter is worth less than he paid for it. He's partially responsible, he's been too erratic. But I'm optimistic with this shipping velocity, in a couple years the company will be worth much more.

cramjabsyn• 3 years ago

Ship what exactly?

TurkishPoptart• 3 years ago

I think he means it functions just as before but with a fraction of the staff.

steno1323• 3 years ago

Twitter Notes, long form video, checkmarks for everyone, subscriptions for creators, edit tweets, see # of replies and likes on a tweet

And that's just in 1 year

jzb• 3 years ago

"And I hope they find new jobs soon."

Where, exactly? If everybody is 2-5x overstaffed and is cutting people, where are all those people going to go? Form startups to sell things to people forming startups because they were laid off?

People like Nat and Musk want people burning themselves out with overwork and blame organizational and management issues on people not working hard enough. The truth is at most tech companies the real organizational waste is bad leadership and poor direction, people not having clear goals and work, and burning too many cycles trying to compensate for organizational dysfunction.

henry2023• 3 years ago

Twitter once was a profitable business that had 8,000 well paid employees. Now it's in the path of bankruptcy.

Hurray Elon

mikece• 3 years ago

Why doesn't T-Mobile adopt the Mint Mobile approach of allowing customers to pre-pay for a year of service? One billing per year instead of 12, no frills, service that Just Works: you could slash a lot of personnel overhead in the billings department and end up with a better product in the end.

CharlieDigital• 3 years ago

Sticker shock.

Same reason car sales people focus on the monthly payments instead of the total cost.

yomlica8• 3 years ago

I only use prepaid phones because it allows me control of billing and I can avoid hidden fees. I'd imagine the byzantine billing nightmare is a money making feature.

bradyd• 3 years ago

T-Mobile owns Mint Mobile.

lotsofpulp2• 3 years ago

Price segmentation/discrimination. You can earn more if you sell at the maximum price that each customer is able or willing to pay, assuming it exceeds your cost of goods sold.

There are only 3 mobile networks in the US. But using MVNO, they can sell the same wireless broadband infrastructure to different people at different prices.

There is also QCI. You pay more, you (ideally) get higher priority.

https://www.reddit.com/r/NoContract/comments/tn4733/qci_leve...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QoS_Class_Identifier

pseudotrash2• 3 years ago

mostly corporate roles

Middlemanagers that failed to Left-Shift LOL. Good riddance ... the only time T-mobile ever makes the news it's because of their terrible management practices. Or for missing the boat on Security and data breaches. Or for selling customer data to advertisers. I recommend a copy of "who moved my cheese" and a best of luck.

alephnerd• 3 years ago

Corporate roles include normal Software Engineers and Electrical Engineers. Telecom is extremely software heavy as 5g is deployed via K8s.

BetaDeltaAlpha• 3 years ago

5g is deployed via K8s

Why is this a requirement of 5G and where can I learn more?

pseudotrash2• 3 years ago

We are talking about Nokia or Ericsson or the actual provider? Since 15-20 years now the provider doesn't build anything. All that remains vaguely interesting is managed by subcontractors and externals. The actual number of people who are full time employees and still do tech at a telecom operator is close to 0. They are users of pre-built solutions and everything is offshore or managed by the firm that sold the software. This includes NFV, SDN, and the O&M plane, and other places (where actual innovation still happened in the past decade)

manicennui• 3 years ago

Big companies lay people off all the time. Verizon and AT&T have both laid people off this year or plan to.

ourmandave• 3 years ago

Is this because their hi-speed internet service sales aren't there even though the intro price is super cheap?

The competition's ads portray it as super slow because all the surrounding neighbors signed up and bogged the tower.

travisporter• 3 years ago

Any Google fi success stories? I’m on Verizon not out of my own choice. It’s working okay but despite the price I still get no data sometimes and I live in a midsized city.

focusedone• 3 years ago

I've had great luck with Fi. I switched to them in 2016 when it was still a bit buggy. Moved the rest of my family over a yearish later and have zero complaints.

The few times we've needed support, they're helpful and easy to talk to.

Dealing with Fi support was an absolute revelation after countless hours spent waiting in AT&T stores even for a simple phone upgrade.

Their app is solid, billing is very easy to understand and the prices are competitive.

Coverage used to be lacking in rural areas compared to Verizon and AT&T, but it's improved dramatically over the past few years in our area.

Highly recommend Fi.

T-Mobile to cut about 7% of workforce, mostly corporate roles

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