I should have known better. Seriously.
Well, I interviewed, was offered a position as a contractor, gave notice at my previous employer, and was to start on a Monday. The Thursday prior (my second to last day with my previous employer) I was told that AT&T was entering a hiring freeze that retroactively effected the position I was hired for and about to begin. Thankfully I was able to get another position fairly quickly.
A little less than a year goes by and I get a call from the recruiter at the contracting company and am told that the hiring freeze was over and that they'd like to reinterview me. Yes, you read that correctly, reinterview me for the very same position that I was offered, accepted, and about to start some months ago. At the time I was severely underpaid (even more so than my time at AT&T) and the position at AT&T would be a decent raise. At the time, I also thought that I would learn more skills in my field but this definitely did not happen. Anyways, I again was offered the job, accepted, and this time actually started.
Now, for my actual time with AT&T.
Having worked for many tech companies within the Seattle area, I have quite a bit to compare AT&T to. I can without hesitation say that I have never seen a company as poorly run as this one. Top to bottom. Allow me to list some of the major issues.
1. Management - Managers here tend to be those that get promoted due to their willingness to play office politics, not leave for much better opportunities elsewhere, and the option to get by with minimal performance.
2. Team Structure - Teams are EXTREMELY siloed. They also often overlap in responsibilities/duties. This leads to many, many issues and inefficiencies.
3. Overall Complacency from top to bottom - I've never seen anything like this before. There is an overall lack of passion. There is no desire to do more or be better. It seems that most employees and managers show up to work to give the minimal effort required to keep their jobs.
As for the way my time there ended, that was the worst of the worst.
I had 1 on 1's with my supervisor weekly. I was never told a single piece of negative feedback. Seriously. Never. I wish that I had, as negative feedback is necessary to improve one's performance and who can't improve? I was let go by my contracting company with a phone call after the work day had ended while I was at home. My leadership didn't have the stomach to mention anything to me about this or ever mention why this was happening. If my job performance was lacking one would think that it would have been mentioned, It was very odd.
I know that much of this information is pretty specific to my experience but I know that my experiences are not isolated incidents. My significant other worked for them for years and witnessed many more.
As someone who has had success in my career and never experienced anything close to this kind of a complete and utter dumpster fire of a company, I would strongly suggest avoiding this company at all costs. Unless, of course, if you really do need a job THAT badly.
