T-Mobile To Cut About 7% of Staff

T-Mobile USA is cutting 7% of its staff, part of an effort to rein in costs as the company spends heavily to attract new subscribers in an increasingly competitive market. From a report: The move will affect about 5,000 positions, mostly corporate and back-office staff along with some technology roles, T-Mobile said in a regulatory filing. Retail and consumer-care experts won't be impacted. Chief Executive Officer Mike Sievert said in a letter to employees that the cost of attracting and retaining customers is "materially more expensive than it was just a few quarters ago." Building out the company's high-speed internet business and efforts in other areas "is not enough to deliver on these changing customer expectations going forward," he said.

Re: increasingly competitive market

[S_Stout]

Stockholders expect growth every quarter, so if sales are slow then you fire people to lower costs instead.

Generally a bad idea but most companies could let 7% go and be fine, the risk is morale and losing the actual talent afterwards.

what's "fine"?

[Anonymous Coward]

These people were all doing stuff. Are base stations not going to be maintained in Tampa because the guy there was laid off? They were all hired for a reason.

The problem with layoffs is that they are partly arbitrary (e.g., every department is given a cost control target even if department A is lean as hell and department B is stuffed full of redundant morons) and partly based on manager-employee relations -- lots of people who get laid off are just the quiet types who don't have a good rapport with their m

Re:

[NoWayNoShapeNoForm]

Where I worked...the maintenance & upgrade work to cell site base stations was done by authorized contractors of the cell site manufacturer. Why? Because it was cheeper than keeping trained full-time staff to do it.

Sometimes that maintenance work required specialized skills, like tower climbing to change out the FAA-mandated warning lights along with inspecting the tower & cabling. In other cases it might be HVAC skills or backup generator (and related fuel system) skills. Upgrades could require spe

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[dbialac]

We need a law on the books that prohibits this kind of behavior. If you're making a reasonable profit, it's full steam ahead with the personnel you have on staff.

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[ichthus]

Stockholders expect growth every quarter, so if sales are slow then you fire people to lower costs instead.

Also, you nickel-and-dime your loyal customers by eliminating the autopay discount for cc users. They just bumped my monthly bill up for $20.

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[Austerity Empowers]

They bought sprint, they're now cleaning house. This is why M&A should be denied 99% of the time.

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[Austerity Empowers]

There are multiple things we're doing that allows wealth to concentrate in the hands of a small number of people, two of them are:
1) The lack of genuine competition driving profit margin to the minimum required
2) The loss of employed people that are also taking that profit margin

Neither one of these are good for any of us who don't own at least one megayacht.

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[toxonix]

It's only competitive until they can buy out some of the competition. So they cut costs by firing people until they can convince Blackrock to finance a merger, after which the newly formed merged company combines the market share of the previous two (more profits) and workers are laid off because of "synergies" and stuff (more profits). BUT they'll tell you if you're a worker that all this layoff stuff is really expensive actually, and we're not doing it just to make more profits, but that it was "hard choi

Circumcised?

[PPH]

Sorry. I had the wrong thread [slashdot.org].

Most expensive phone plan

[Mattsh]

For reference, yesterday they announced the highest priced single line plan in the US at $100.

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[dbialac]

I have a similar line from them. It's not for everybody, though. I get high speed internet the second I step off of a plane pretty much anywhere in the world along with free international calling. Not everyone needs that because most don't travel globally.

They need to work on connecting calls

[schwit1]

I have TM. About 10% of my incoming calls go straight to VM. I get no ring or log entry on my phone app. It's not spam calls because they show in the phone app as blocked.

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[Opportunist]

I took a look at the world.

It sucks.

Thanks, but no thanks.

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[John Smith 2319]

And that is exactly the attitude that will kill us all. Happy consuming, I guess.

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[Opportunist]

One can only hope.

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[dbialac]

People talk and communicate more because of phones and cars. People can reach out to people almost anywhere in the world and talk instantly. People can go visit each other even almost anywhere in the world. People can IM people almost anywhere in the world. Communication is a lot easier than it used to be. What you do with it has nothing to do with the device, it has everything to do with the choice in utilization somebody makes. I personally go to parks, forest, etc. while I work. I run outside regularly a

Mostly corporate?

[RUs1729]

What is that - executives and managers? And it is only now that they realize such people are nothing but dead weight?

5G was way better and cheaper in SouthEast Asia

[thesjaakspoiler]

$8 USD for a full month at 5G speeds.
No US carrier can beat such service and prices.

The "phones" and the cars will both go

[John Smith 2319]

The "phones" and the motor vehicles will both go the way of the dodo, once humanity wakes up from this insanity. Just look at it - it is pure insanity. Walk. Talk - in the real fucking world! Without glass and steel bubbles that pollute the fuck out the place and kill people slowly. They have you in a physical bubble (the car) and now in a mental bubble (the phone).

There is still a real world out here that most of you do not experience at all any more. And it shows.