AUGUST 24. 2023 — 5,000 EMPLOYEES TO BE AXED
T-Mobile plans to lay off close to 5,000 employees, or about 7 percent of its workforce, by the end of September 2023.
Most of the layoffs will impact corporate, back-office, and technology team members.
According to T-Mobile’s president and CEO, Mike Sievert…
Team –
I am reaching out today to share some important news that I wanted to be sure you heard directly from me. Starting this week, and over the next five weeks, we will be making changes to our organization that will result in the reduction of some positions at the company. These shifts will impact close to 5,000 positions, a little under 7% of our total employees in locations across the country, primarily in corporate and back-office, and some technology roles. The retail and consumer care experts who take care of our customers will not be impacted. After this process is complete, I do not envision any additional widespread company reductions again in the foreseeable future.
Impacted roles are primarily duplicative to other roles, or may be aligned to systems or processes that are changing, or may not fit with our current company priorities. Some areas of the business will be implementing more centralized models where they can improve efficiency and effectiveness and save costs. We’re also taking opportunities to build bigger, broader people manager roles with deeper spans and fewer layers, to provide longer-term growth opportunities. At the same time, we’ll also be decreasing our reliance and spend on external workers and resources.
I know this email will create uncertainty, but I believe transparency about what is happening, and how we’re taking care of our impacted colleagues, is important. I also want to take this opportunity to explain a bit more about why we are making these shifts and share why I am optimistic about what’s to come.
We’ve been able to celebrate tremendous successes together over the past decade, and right now, our company is at a pivotal crossroads. As the Un-carrier, we don’t hesitate when customer demands change - we step up and meet those demands, every time. That’s how we became successful. And today, thanks in part to the added competition we brought due to our merger and historic network build, those customer demands are higher than ever.
What it takes to attract and retain customers is materially more expensive than it was just a few quarters ago. We’ve been out-running this trend by accelerating merger synergies, building our high-speed Internet business faster than expected, and outperforming in a few other areas. However, 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.
Today’s changes are all about getting us efficiently focused on a finite set of winning strategies, so that we can continue to out-pace our competitors and have the financial capability to deliver a differentiated network and customer experience to a continually growing customer base, while simultaneously meeting our obligations to our shareholders.
In a company as successful as ours, the time to challenge the status quo and write the next chapter is WHILE we are still successful. That’s how we sustain it. Instead of just taking the model that we know and trying to run faster, we can take it to the next level. We know the work ahead of us will look different than the work behind us, and that means how we do the work needs to change, too. We need to move at the speed of technology, using data, AI, and other tools, to deliver simplified digital experiences specifically curated for every customer.
In addition, I want this to be a better place to work for every employee going forward. We can be smarter, faster, and even better at competing, by streamlining our operating model and structure to reduce the complexity. You have my commitment that our organization will create more individual empowerment and faster decision-making over time. This is about re-prioritizing our work and doing it differently, NOT about foisting more work on fewer people. And, it is about optimizing every dollar, so it can be used to deliver a better network, a better value, and a better experience for our customers.
It is hard to part ways with our coworkers who will be impacted, and I want to let you know that our focus during this time of change is to do everything we can to treat each of them with as much care and support as possible. Our plan is to have all notifications complete by the end of September. This is a bit of a longer timeframe because we want to ensure we treat every one of our people with respect and personal support. We have zero intention of being a faceless – or heartless – company in a situation that is already difficult.
FEBRUARY 1, 2022 — YOUR CHOICE OR YOUR LIFE?
T-Mobile is preparing to lay off unvaccinated corporate employees by April 2, 2022.
"Employees who have not yet taken action to receive their first dose and upload proof by February 21 will be placed on unpaid leave," the blog quoted the memo as saying. "Affected employees who do not become fully vaccinated ... by April 2 will be separated from T-Mobile."
"We are requiring office workers (with limited exception for certain roles, locations and legally mandated accommodations and exemptions) to be fully vaccinated by April 2."
In what scenario does a private company demand employees with underlying medical conditions take medication with questionable efficacy and the potential of life-altering or threatening consequences? Or is this a ploy to reduce headcount without unfavorable media attention?
SEPTEMBER 12, 2020 — 74 LAYOFFS IN OVERLAND PARK, KANSAS HQ
T-Mobil is continuing with its merger integration plans and laying off 74 employees in their Overland Park, Kansas headquarters.
JUNE 27, 2020 — 127 EMPLOYEES LAID OFF IN LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY
T-Mobile has announced the layoff of 127 employees, mostly account executives and sales support positions, in Louisville, Kentucky. Most of the layoffs are former Sprint employees.
JUNE 22, 2020 — 241 EMPLOYEES LAID OFF IN OVERLAND PARK, KANSAS
The company has filed a WARN notice for 241 employees at its Overland, Park, Kansas headquarters. Impacted are workers inclding national retail account executives, indirect sales managers, and indirect account executives. The company plans to eliminate Sprint’s Business Inside Sales Organization.
JUNE 19, 2020 — JOB CUTS INCREASING AND ACCELERATING
T-Mobile’s SEC filing notes that the company plans to spend an additional $300 million on merger-related costs, primarily on severance expenses, to accelerate expected cost benefits from the deal. The company did not provide details of the layoff, but they are expected to be substantial.
The company also expects to complete the DOJ anti-trust divestiture of its Boost Mobile prepaid brand and about 9 million customers to satellite-TV provider Dish Network on July 1, 2020.
JULY 17, 2019 SPRINT’S BOOST MOBILE INITIATES LAYOFFS
Published reports claim that Sprint has laid off the marketing staff for its prepaid card offering known as Boost Mobile.
While no numbers or locations were provided, the company did issue a statement that noted, "To enhance our efficiency and nimbleness while we continue to aggressively compete in the Prepaid Wireless industry, we recently made some organizational changes to ensure our Prepaid business is structured appropriately."
It is believed that Sprint is preparing to divest Boost Mobile and other assets to meet regulatory demands. Many believe that Dish Network may be the purchaser.
AUGUST 28, 2018 COMMUNICATIONS UNION WARNS FCC OF MASSIVE JOB LOSS
The Communications Workers of America has notified the Federal Communications Commission that Sprint's planned merger with T-Mobile could result in layoffs of an estimated 28,000 employees without benefiting customers, primarily by eliminating the competition between the two entities.
Original Post...
The consolidation and convergence in the mobile communications space continue with the merger of T-Mobile and Sprint into a single entity, retaining the T-Mobile name and valued at $146 billion. And, it is all about the creation of a 5G network that will require billions of dollars and totally different infrastructure. John Legere, the current T-Mobile USA chief executive officer will lead the new entity which will be jointly based in both Bellevue, Washington and Overland Park, Kansas – which will probably be a future target of consolidation. The company will continue to be controlled and directed by Deutsche Telekom which owns two-thirds of T-Mobile.
While there will be significant employment opportunities for those capable of building out the 5-G network, there is little or no doubt that there will be significant periods of assimilation, integration, and consolidation as duplicative functions are eliminated to achieve the cost-savings anticipated by merger and demanded by the investors.
For those who are not familiar with the generations in wireless communication as codified in various standards: the first generation was analog; the second generation included such technologies as CDMA (Code-Division Multiple Access ), GSM (Global System for Mobile communication), and TDMA (Time-Division Multiple Access); the third generation included EVDO (EVolution-Data Optimized), HSPA (High-Speed Packet Access ), and UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System), the fourth generation included WiMAX ((Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access) and LTE (Long-Term Evolution); and now the fifth generation standards including Massive MIMO (Multiple Input Multiple Output). The end result will be a more resilient network capable of greater speeds, more responsive behavior (lower latency), and the ability to connect more devices – enabled devices in addition to mobile phones.
