Wednesday, April 21, 2004
What "Working for the Phone Company" is all about
Steve Crandall's blog points to this excellent article in CIO Magazine about the terrifying self-destruction of AT&T Wireless under the "leadership" of John Zeglis, who walked away with at least $27m from the sale of the hollowed-out hulk of AT&T Wireless to Cingular.
It is a story of detached, hands-off management, whose idea of morale boosting was to tell the troops, "Come in every day and expect to be fired." Everything was outsourced -- to Siebel, to NeuStar, to Deloitte and Touche, to consultants, to India -- in the vain belief that somebody would understand how all the pieces would go together. But, of course, the pieces did not fit together.
On number-portability day, November 24, 2003, the number portability software crashed hard. It stayed down for days. AT&T accounted for half of the FCC's number portability complaints in the first week.
Author Christopher Koch gets the inside story from several former employees. For example, one said, "We'd see our people going into these long meetings with people from Indian companies. We'd see whiteboards that had questions like, 'What opportunity do we have to offshore/outsource?'"
One thing the article missed was the precursor telco mentality about legacy software. When I was at AT&T (in the consumer LD unit), every year we'd look at the patch-on-a-bandage-on-a-scab-on-a-festering-wound legacy software and say, "Shouldn't we re-write the whole system with modern software methods?" And every year we'd study it. And every year, we'd say it'd cost $X and take Y months. And every year, Senior Management would ask what it'd cost to put another band-aid on the patch-on-the-bandage-on-the-scab . . . and we'd say 1/10th of the cost and 1/10th of the time, and the resulting decision was a no-brainer. The system never was rewritten the way it shoulda been. Into this mess add number portability -- or any moderate change at time-certain -- and stir until chaos emerges.
What was John Zeglis doing during all this time? "Minding the store," is not the right answer.
The on-line article is augmented by dozens of pithy comments from ex-AT&T Wireless employees. For example, apparently CIO Chris Corrado had his new Ferrari delivered to the AT&T Wireless parking lot on pink-slip day. Et cetera.
My own experience suggests that the article is not unique to AT&T Wireless. And I suspect it will ring true in Qwest-land and over at MCI-Worldcom-MCI. It's a glimpse into the culture of a dying industry, and it probably resonates well beyond telecom.
Worth reading!
It is a story of detached, hands-off management, whose idea of morale boosting was to tell the troops, "Come in every day and expect to be fired." Everything was outsourced -- to Siebel, to NeuStar, to Deloitte and Touche, to consultants, to India -- in the vain belief that somebody would understand how all the pieces would go together. But, of course, the pieces did not fit together.
On number-portability day, November 24, 2003, the number portability software crashed hard. It stayed down for days. AT&T accounted for half of the FCC's number portability complaints in the first week.
Author Christopher Koch gets the inside story from several former employees. For example, one said, "We'd see our people going into these long meetings with people from Indian companies. We'd see whiteboards that had questions like, 'What opportunity do we have to offshore/outsource?'"
One thing the article missed was the precursor telco mentality about legacy software. When I was at AT&T (in the consumer LD unit), every year we'd look at the patch-on-a-bandage-on-a-scab-on-a-festering-wound legacy software and say, "Shouldn't we re-write the whole system with modern software methods?" And every year we'd study it. And every year, we'd say it'd cost $X and take Y months. And every year, Senior Management would ask what it'd cost to put another band-aid on the patch-on-the-bandage-on-the-scab . . . and we'd say 1/10th of the cost and 1/10th of the time, and the resulting decision was a no-brainer. The system never was rewritten the way it shoulda been. Into this mess add number portability -- or any moderate change at time-certain -- and stir until chaos emerges.
What was John Zeglis doing during all this time? "Minding the store," is not the right answer.
The on-line article is augmented by dozens of pithy comments from ex-AT&T Wireless employees. For example, apparently CIO Chris Corrado had his new Ferrari delivered to the AT&T Wireless parking lot on pink-slip day. Et cetera.
My own experience suggests that the article is not unique to AT&T Wireless. And I suspect it will ring true in Qwest-land and over at MCI-Worldcom-MCI. It's a glimpse into the culture of a dying industry, and it probably resonates well beyond telecom.
Worth reading!
Comments:
Post a Comment
