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Was it a 1 on 1 that turned into a surprise meeting with HR?

How did you find out that you were being laid off? Mine was scheduled during my normal one on one time, but with a surprise variant, a meeting room was booked in the office. When I got there, you know who wasn't there? My manager. He was remote.....but booked a meeting room in the office. Ok. You know who was there? Some long faced lady from HR that looked like Droopy. You know what we never had, my actual one on one. Imagine spending time gathering feedback, requesting it, people writing it, all for you never to see it and get laid off. I'd heard they do funny things around twenty years, sure enough, right before twenty they do some bullsh-t.


Surplused 7/1

Fortunately I was surplused on 7/1 after 28 years at Att. I’ve seen this company go from, a great place to work to a Stanky hole.

Anyways, when should I expect my last paycheck or severance payment. I haven’t seen anything so far. Knowing the inefficiencies at AT&T, I’m worried that this may take multiple calls to HR one stop. Only to find out that nothing has been done.


New tactic for laying off employees

So there is a new tactic that everyone should know about. Since performance management was released, managers have been in touch with HR to understand how they can give more money to their reports that are their friends or family. And the only solution from HR is this -> employees that are seen as critical to business needs and have a legal offer letter from another company will get a salary hike above the normal SAP limitations to match their offer.

So basically, if you have a friend who has a company, ask them to create an AI-related job for you and make you and offer - it has to be a written offer and cannot be just an email or verbal confirmation. And then your managers starts the process by creating an HR ticket and getting an exception for you and increasing your salary.

But the caveat is this - HR has been asked to reject as many of these as possible.

For a handful of roles where a manager is well connected within SAP, they will get HR to approve this and give 10% or more salary hikes. For almost all other roles, they will decline and then HR will flag that you are not committed to working at SAP and find ways to get rid of your role.

So if your area executive or T5 manager of managers or your T4/T5 manager is asking you to find a good role and get an offer and use it to increase your salary, DO NOT DO THAT. A lot of area executives are peddling this as an idea to work around performance management limitations. It is a farce.

This only works if that manager has already made a deal with HR. Otherwise you will not get an increased salary but be asked to join that other job. HR is doing this to easily identify people who can be laid off without a severance. They are also using sick leave and AI usage data to decide who should be put on a performance improvement plan and laid off subsequently.

Be careful of the sneaky HR and area executives and managers.


Accommodation denied even though many on my team work remote…

Those who work remote have the same title and job duties, but the rejection said “after reviewing your job responsibilities, we’ve decided we cannot accommodate remote work at this time.” I submitted with a doctor’s note explaining the condition and reasoning for the (temporary! Not even permanent, it said temporary) accommodation request, and it was denied. HR never even called me to talk about it, they just read the forms and denied it, which makes me think they’re just denying all of them. Anyone else have this experience?


Document early

As a manager, I could target an individual employee and make it very difficult for them to remain at the company. However, I couldn’t do that repeatedly without consequences because organizations monitor manager turnover rates, and a consistent pattern of employees leaving under one manager eventually raises concerns.

In practice, the process often favors whoever documents their concerns first. If I report that an employee is underperforming before they raise complaints about me, my version of events is already part of the official record.

When the employee later goes to HR claiming they’re being treated unfairly or that I simply dislike them, it can be difficult for their complaint to stand out because HR hears similar explanations from many employees whose performance issues are legitimate. As a result, even when someone’s concerns are genuine, they may sound similar to many previous cases, making it harder for them to be believed. That dynamic can create a system where the manager’s position initially carries more weight.


Why Layoffs Happen The Way They Do In This Relic Of A Company

Q. Why did the Japanese car companies beat the American car companies ?

The answer may surprise you but this is why T is dying as a whole due to layoffs.

The Japanese car companies had eight people rowing the boat and one person steering .
The American car companies had eight people steering, and one person rowing.

When the American car company lost the race, they fire the person rowing the boat.

That is the thinking behind how management and HR and how people are picked .


MLRP Distribution Across Teams

Each cycle has a target percentage that must land in MLRP (NI + NSI). That percentage isn’t identical across all organizations, but the weighted average across the whole function has to match whatever HR planned for that year. Is it possible for some teams in some orgs to have zero NI or NSI in a cycle?


MH - It's Time... Where is the Anonymous Survey?

We know how you love the so called anonymous survey. I'm sure KT in HR would support a survey, but MH knows that it will make him look bad, so No surveys anytime soon. KT keep up the pressure maybe he will resign, so you don't have to continue babysitting him for Apollo.


HR Statistics

IMO. These days, the company pays no importance to retention. The majority of XOM employees in the US will likely have a maximum of 5 years at the company before they finally realize that they are better off somewhere else. 10 years maximum if they are a glutten for punishment and think they are going to make it to retirement eligibility. Considering RE being 55 with 15 years of experience. Who in HR has the statistics of the last 5 years of attrition with the why they were separated, for Campus hires and Experienced hires? What are the breakdowns of left on own will versus MLRP?
My prediction for the future employment longevity in the US for MPT for someone based upon when hired is the following:
Age of hire: 22 - 25, probability of lasting 30+ PA cycles 3-5%.
Age of hire: 25 - 30, probablity of lasting 25 - 30 PA cycles 5-7%.
Age of hire: 30 - 35, probability of lasting 20 - 25 PA cycles 2%
Age of hire: 35 - 40, probability of lasting 15 - 20 PA cycles 0.5%
Age of hire: 40+, probability of lasting 15+ PA cycles 0%

HR does not care about retention. People are a commodity to them and they have sources of cheap labor outside of the US that are going to run the company.


A few thoughts 3,5 years after leaving ATT (RTO)

First I'll say that I genuinely enjoyed my small team at AT&T with whom I worked the last 20 years of my career there. I have no resentment to the time I spent there, so this isn't a complaining post, just some perspective after some time away. I was in management, doing technical work and app development for sales support.

Most of my team, about 80%, was laid off for not moving to Dallas (most of the rest were already there; one or two moved there). We were in various focus cities supporting our local sales teams, but the senior leadership didn't understand that and did not make exceptions. I found another position doing similar work for another company and started 3 weeks after my final day at T. The new company has fewer than 1000 people, for comparison.

So here are some of my takeaways, in case someone with a long career at AT&T might be thinking about making the jump, or who might have it forced on them.

  1. Surprising that this is the first one, but honestly it's such a difference that I wanted to call it out: I have not opened Powerpoint once since I left T. At T, powerpoint was basically the language of business. We wasted so many cycles "making a deck" to try to communicate to the ever-changing field of senior leadership that I probably spent the plurality of my time in Powerpoint vs. any other program. I got a new laptop at my new job, and realized as I deleted the pre-placed icon from the desktop that I've never once used Powerpoint. We use Teams, sometimes demos, sometimes a mockup or diagram...but I've never had to "make a deck."

  2. It really hit me just how many people at AT&T did literally nothing of value. This is not a dig against most colleagues, but rather just that significant subset who didn't have discernible skills, so got placed into positions to just spin their bureaucratic wheels but otherwise stay out of the way. I recall two dozen names off the top of my head that were just there to make people jump through hoops, document workflow (for no followup reason), design a new process that was jettisoned as soon as they moved somewhere else, or just attend meetings and throw in their two cents without really contributing. Outside of T, there are people of various skill and contribution levels, but nobody whose job is simply to fly under the radar. When I read stories about T employees logging in and leaving their laptops in lockers, or sitting in the cafeteria watching TV, it makes me glad to know that where I'm at now, everybody is giving a fair day's work without making work for others.

  3. Leadership at AT&T is toxic. I'm not just talking the Stankey/Stephenson types, who, yes, have ruined the company through unfathomable incompetence. I'm talking the people in the mid-level, director-like positions and above. Almost all (not all) of them at T seemed like they got there based on the Peter Principle or otherwise nodded their head enough. Only in the beginning of my career in the late 1990s did I feel any executive director or above at T (SBC at the time) was there due to being a practitioner of their craft, for being respected, or for being a good manager. And that class began to dwindle as time went on, replaced by hollow, empty suits who could spew buzzwords and claim empty victories by cherry picking their numbers. It's like an ever-shifting field of grifters.

  4. The hiring process at ATT is irreparably broken. I was a hiring manager, and trying to get someone competent in the door was inexplicably difficult. HR gatekept candidates and had no concept of the hard and soft skills we needed. We got sent batches of candidates who faked their resumes, faked their interviews (even before AI was big), faked their legal ability to work in the U.S., and so on. There were times that it took 9 months to find an entry level programmer because HR kept whiffing. HR gets a lot of flack everywhere, but at T, I believed they were truly a cesspool of rejects.

Maybe I'll think of more but these hit me just this week. There are things I miss about T, mostly dealing with colleagues, but these are definitely things I do not miss! The day-to-day stress and friction they cause isn't always evident when you're in the middle of it. Only after the ATT shackles are thrown off do you realize how bad of an environment it can be!


Psychopath Indian Manager

I am actually floored by this guy. I’ve seen some toxic stuff in my career, but this is next-level. He’s been here a year and honestly thinks he’s a deity, the way he talks down to the Indian team is straight-up disgusting, like they’re beneath him, question nothing. His emails read like they’re coming off a stone tablet from God. He makes endless snide comments on calls to belittle people. I would contact HR about this, but from what i've seen they find a way to fire you if you raise this stuff. I'm looking as well, its not worth the health problems.


Can my manager lay me off

Can my manager lay me off just because he's doesn't like me? He cannot make a case of bad performance because I literally get praises And thank yous everywhere from all the other stakeholders. I am IC. Can he fire my me or somehow influence the HR or management to include me in the next RIF? Are there any guardrails to protect teammbers from toxic insecure managers?


Fake job postings

I see so many job positions open for only 2 days or less than a week. Are those genuine openings. I was told by a friend in HR that those positions are there just for formality. Managers have already made up their mind as to who to promote but they have to post the job for HR purposes. Any insights?


Big win for SAP HR

More information will be shared via emails regarding Project Fuji which is actually a continuation of Project Mongoose but with a different name. Lots of discussions between HR and the Betriebsrat this time and the HR definitely won.

The works council just approved the layoff of 8000 of 14000 jobs that Christian Klein and Dominic Asam wanted. This will happen gradually and all hiring managers are supposed to give preference to internal candidates first. Anyone who has been found to not use AI in the last many months or isn't deemed AI ready will have to undergo compulsory training or face layoffs. They are going to add more sections in Performance Management and force all employees to have an AI related goal. Managers make the final decision on whether employees are AI ready or not and this will impact the HOW and WHAT scores.

But this is devastating news nonetheless. I can't wait for my non-technical development manager to tell me that I am not burning enough AI tokens on something frivolous. She uses them all the time to create presentation graphics and vibe coding and none of that is actually creating any value for SAP customers. But she's an AI star now and actually "coaches" developers on how to use AI in day-to-day life.There are also discussions ongoing with the supervisory board to increase share buybacks and the dividend in the upcoming quarter. HR wants to use "any money saved through layoffs and performance management" to be used towards this.SAP is on track to become one of the worst companies to work for.


Got Displaced Today

I got displaced this morning and feeling bad for myself as I have always given 110%. While trying to get additional info from “HR” and trying to communicate with a rep in the philllipines who (besides barely speaking English) didn’t show any empathy or compassion for the companies own employees, THAT was the solidification I needed to say a big F U C K Y O U to this company who treats their American employees like trash, especially when you need them the most. This job loss might be the best thing to have happened to me.


Hybrid work

Hybrid work should be evaluated on outcomes and deliverables, not solely on days in office or commute distance. If managers are meeting their commitments and supporting their teams effectively, a 2-day in-office cadence can be reasonable under current policy. Where concerns exist, they’re best addressed through documented feedback via HR or leadership channels, rather than informal assumptions. Let’s keep the focus on accountability and results for everyone, at every level.


ALSO not Layoff related but need some feedback

Is it normal that your PL calls you while on short term disability from work and asks multiple questions about my health and how I'm coming along and what my thoughts are about coming back to work. I don't like to stir things but the calls and texts I've gotten from my PL while on short term make me feel very uncomfortable.


Wrongful Terminated: The Illumina HR Promotion and Management Scandal ?

https://courtindex.sdcourt.ca.gov/CISPublic/casedetail?casenum=26CU024888C&casesite=SD&applcode=C

https://www.makaremlaw.com/blog/2026/06/illumina-press-release/

We were told a completely different story about a leadership exit in Finance. Total lack of transparency. Shameful