Pros
I will give AT&T credit and pros on making new trainees feel like they're embarking on a "one of a kind" opportunity with a leading communication company. They step up and offer a competitive wage and provide paid, basic technical training at their training facility in Nashville. You get to learn the basics of working with low voltage, twisted copper pairs and serving terminals. If you make it through pass/fail training tests, you will get to keep your job and enter the field in job shadow training with a senior tech. If the senior tech recommends you a good fit and you make the cut, you will get your own van assigned and mostly new tools to work with. Most days, you work autonomously, unless you fall below the metrics and number goals upper management setup. This where the rest of the job becomes all Cons...
Cons
First and foremost, AT&T is no longer your grandparents good ole phone company. It is an international, outsourced money-hungry empire, led by greedy corporate management in TX. The company will tell you that they care about the customer. Don't be fooled. This company only cares about making money and as a Wire Tech, you are the grunt at the bottom of this corporate food chain. AT&T has moved away from providing quality phone and internet services to a strange entertainment and television company. Customers are just as confused now as the entire tech teams across the country. On this job, you are nothing more than a number on the metric system, closely monitored everyday by management. If you manager makes good numbers based on his tech's numbers, he gets a pretax bonus and you get nothing. Let me explain. This job is all about numbers and metrics. You will have more metrics and stats to strive for than a sports team or any other job in the world. These are the metric columns you have to maintain: Efficiency, Dispatch Efficiency, Quality, AIQ, Time not dispatched, Drive time, how many jacks you installed, how many AT&T apps you installed on customer's devices, how many pair changes you can do (which makes no sense), how many hours you demanded (actually worked) vs. how many hours the system calculates you earned...the list goes on and on. You are like an ant under a hot sun magnifying glass everyday. If you do not exceed the unrealistic numbers, your manager will begin to put you on his radar and micro manage every job and situation your in. He will assign jobs close your local garage, so he can roll up and heckle you about things such a not having rubber gloves on while using needle nose pliers or not putting a safety cone against the driver side of the customers car door. If a manager does not like you and you fail to make his pretax bonus, he can manipulate the system and get you fired. In addition to the very stressful pressure of trying to achieve your numbers everyday, the job in general will drain the life out of you. Prepare to become an AT&T zombie. On your days off, you will be so physically and mentally exhausted, it will be hard to get motivated to leave your house. This job will grind on you and cause a stress reverb to hang over you, even on your off days. Most techs all have a daily fear of losing their jobs. The management has made this position maintain an impending doom vibe. It takes daily mind renewal and focus to overcome the piles of nonsense you have to dig through. Let me give you one working example. If you get a big install job and spend 7 hours at the site, doing all the right things for the customer and ensuring the faulty AT&T lines and equipment works but the company only allows you a ridiculous 3 hours to complete this job, you have just entered the "red". All of your numbers are now negatively effected and you will take a strike against your performance metrics. On this same job..say a bad storm comes through and blows out the customer's new AT&T RG (modem) and that customer calls 800 number, you will get a 0-5day repeat. Your manager will come and inspect your job and regardless of what happened, you will get wrote up for it and the document goes in your personal record. Additionally, you now will drop in your quality metric, which is the "golden" metric that holds your job in place. By the way, managers can manually lower the quality metric to keep you lower than the goal, in order to heckle you more. Most weeks, the workflow are techs trying to do their best job, while dealing with mental warfare the management keeps launching at the techs. If you have children and value a good quality life at home or with friends, this job is not for you. I have a daughter and only see her 30 minutes before bed. Then on my contract weekend, I have to spend half of the first day off resting just to get back in the family and home state of mind. Trust me, this job has so much turn over and is easily replaced. Don't be enticed with the $20+ hr they promote. You are doing the work of 2-3 people all by yourself. This job is geared for a young, single person that might want to begin some basic technical skills and save up some cash for a couple of years. There's no future in this job or company. AT&T outsources as much as possible to the Dominican Republic and India. The company is buying out and doing everything to appear as though their dominating Xfinity and Charter but they're not. The company can only provide poor DSL internet speeds, faulty fiber optics not reaching GB power as thought, and now remounting satellite dishes with expensive, hyped up commercials paying Mark Waulburn to say what they want. It's all a money hustle and you will be at rock bottom, taking the blame for the poor services that do not work. When I arrive to a repair job the first thing I ask is "have you had trouble before?" 8 out of 10 customers will tell you that their service always cuts in and out. If you're ready to be micromanaged, do the work of 3 people all alone, work in mostly dirty houses, be treated like a number and chase your tail trying to make AT&T bad services and equipment work then this is your gig.
