BT To Cut Up To 55,000 Jobs By 2030 as Fibre and AI Arrive (reuters.com) 53
BT Group, Britain's biggest broadband and mobile provider, will cut up to 55,000 jobs including contractors by 2030 -- potentially over 40% of its workforce -- as it completes its fibre roll-out and adapts to new technologies such as AI. From a report: The company has been working through a transformation plan to build a national fibre network under boss Philip Jansen, as well as rolling out high-speed 5G mobile services. The former state monopoly reported on Thursday pro forma revenue and core earnings growth for the first time in six years in the year to the end of March, but the cost of transforming the business, and the hit to its free cash flow took a toll, sending its shares down 7% in morning trade. Jansen said after completing the fibre roll-out, digitising the way it worked, adopting artificial intelligence (AI) and simplifying its structure, BT would rely on a much smaller workforce and significantly reduced cost base by the end of the 2020s. "New BT Group will be a leaner business with a brighter future," he said.
How the heck do you cut 40% of your workforce (Score:3)
Article says 10k of the cuts are from AI. Almost 1% of their workforce. Another 10k from needing fewer network engineers, but they didn't say why.
It might just be Brexit fallout too though. e.g. they're overcutting to deal with the mess Brexit is causing. Even Nigel Farage admitted Brexit was a failure, and it's come out that they're are _more_ immigrants since Brexit hit, so it didn't even close the borders like they promised... Still, this seems a bit much even for cleaning up Brexit's mess.
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Brexit was a failure. Ok. I assume you mean economic failure from the context.
If the economy was trashed then why would even more people immigrate to the UK?
Are immigrants stupid?
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If the economy was trashed then why would even more people immigrate to the UK?
Are immigrants stupid?
No, they're fucked. How did they get fucked? Colonialism. Who did they get fucked by? In part, the UK, the former poster child for colonialism. The UK is having big problems, but it's still better than where they live now, and they're coming to get some back. It's exactly the same thing the US is dealing with, except it's central and south America for us while it's Africa and India for the UK. And exactly the same kind of people are crying about exactly the same thing, how it's not fair and it doesn't make
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They would still be killing each other in petty conflicts with primitive weapons, when they were not to busy starving to death..
We'll never know, since they were killed in petty conflicts with slightly less primitive weapons by colonialists, and starved to death under colonialism.
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They would still be killing each other in petty conflicts with primitive weapons, when they were not to busy starving to death..
We'll never know, since they were killed in petty conflicts with slightly less primitive weapons by colonialists, and starved to death under colonialism.
I think we do know, actually.
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Colonialism hasn't changed yet the OP says immigration rates have *increased* since Brexit.
Please explain how post Brexit / trashed economy the rates of immigration went up.
Re:How the heck do you cut 40% of your workforce (Score:4, Insightful)
Why. In. Fuck. Are. You. Asking. Me.
I asked google [google.com] and my top result [ox.ac.uk] says "Three factors have come together to make the number of visas granted to non-EU citizens unusually high. The largest single factor is the introduction of visa routes for Ukrainian refugees and Hong Kong British Nationals (Overseas) status holders. Together these two routes contributed 45% of the 467,000 increase in visa grants between 2019 and the year ending June 2022 (excluding visitors and short-term study).
The rest of the increase results from students (39% of the increase) and work visas (23% of the increase). Skilled workers, particularly in the health and care sectors, were the main factor behind the increase in work visa grants."
I do not understand why so many people engage in so much performative question-asking on Slashdot. I guess it's because so many dipshit moderators encourage you. Or maybe you're just emulating your idol Tuck-Tuck.
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I do not understand why so many people engage in so much performative question-asking on Slashdot.
They are "just asking questions" as in JAQing off. They don't want an answer, they're smugly assuming they know the answer and are leading you to it by asking clever questions. Just so happens the questions aren't clever and most of the jaqoffs are wrong.
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I replied to him directly and fully. You're wrong, of course, but it's the internet so I expect my inferiors to snipe and throw peanut shells from the gallery.
And when I say "of course you're wrong", that's not just a turn of phrase. Of course YOU are wrong.
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I replied to him directly and fully.
As in continued jaqing off and making out like you're Socrates. No one's making you drink hemlock, we're not challenged by your brilliance, just bored with your indefatigable stupidity.
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You're so bored you have to reply multiple times.
Lol, got it, thanks for playing.
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So the game is you pay boring, stupid shit and get a response from someone who doesn't like your drivel to be the last word?
Oh I get it! It's funny because you're username is ironic!
Lol !
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Was that English? Are you drunk or ESL or both?
Why does my name trigger you? Does it hurt your feeewings?
I think you're drunk. You're normally stupid but do write in something resembling parsable English. For the most part.
Put the bottle down, you've had enough.
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You joined a conversation. You made a statement. I asked you about what you said. Why are you losing your shit over it?
Ok, now then, so given the data you presented, there was an increase in immigration over a multi year time period, post Brexit.
What do we get?
A 62% post Brexit increase in immigration from students and skilled workers. That does not match up with a fucked up economy. If anything, at bare minimum, the work visas should have dropped, not gone up 23%.
Why do I ask these questions? It's es
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Why do I ask these questions? It's essentially the Socratic method.
It worked for Socrates because he was smarter than the people he was talking to, which explains why it's not working for you. HTH, HAND!
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It's working very well for me, thanks.
It only took 2-3 posts to use your own reply to demonstrate that you were wrong. Everything after that is you whining.
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Are immigrants stupid?
No, just completely exasperated. Crossing the Mediterranean and the North Sea in small boats is a proof of how exasperated they are.
And in the UK you don't need ID for all kinds of services once you are in the country. On the continent, every country requires an ID for services.
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Ok but why would immigration go _up_ after Brexit?
It should remain the same or go down unless there is some other completely unrelated UK draw that overwhelmed the push of the broken post Brexit economy.
I'm not a UK subject so I don't know the details of what that draw might be but according to the anti-Brexit crowd, the economy is fucked and that's a push not a draw for immigration.
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Influx of refugees fleeing the war in ukraine likely had a significant effect.
Other than that, there would be some rebalancing - the UK still needs migrant workers, but now there will be more of a balance between eu and non-eu. Previously there were no restrictions on eu workers, so there were more of them and less non-eu because it was much easier to hire eu workers.
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Someone else posted a link with data that said skilled workers and students account for about 60% of the _increase_ in immigration.
Ukraine, etc, was a big chunk of the rest.
With a bad economy, immigration should drop. There's no two ways about it.
In the US we see people self deporting when the economy here is in a down turn. So either the UK post-Brexit economy isn't all that bad or there is some other yet to be determine draw to the UK for students and skilled workers that overwhelms the push of the bad
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that's what makes all this fucked up. There's a phrase, "Born sick, commanded to be well" that comes to mind. Wealthy countries with str
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Economically, Brexit hasn't been much of a failure. UK employment is high, we've avoided recession, and there's a bit more inflation than in some European countries.
The problem has been the useless Tory government. Sadly, the current Labour leadership is also Tory so there's not much hope of change for the better there.
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Re: How the heck do you cut 40% of your workforce (Score:2)
This has got nothing to do with Brexit. In fact they explained it in the story: completes its fibre roll-out. They're replacing all last mile copper with fibre, nationally. That's a massive infrastructure project that requires visiting a lot of homes individually. Maintenance won't require so many people. The last time I had somebody visit my premises was when I upgraded from ADSL to FTTC, which was 10 years ago. Once I upgrade to FTTP, I can't imagine they'll need to visit again for a very long time.
It still seems excessive (Score:3)
This seems more like they're getting ready for a major economic down turn. I mean, they're literally telling the Brits they have to accept that they're poorer [theguardian.com]
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Well those workers are trained to lay fibre, but once fibre has been laid everywhere you're only going to be laying fibre for new builds so there will be a LOT less demand. A much smaller workforce will be needed for ongoing maintenance of the already laid fibre.
Over a period of 10 years however they don't need to make a lot of people redundant, a lot of people will leave of their own choice over that period and just won't be replaced.
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If BT is anything like telecoms in the US, it has an aging workforce that was highly specialized in the particular technologies that the tech workers had been involved with historically, but likely were pigeon-holed into those particular technologies without a whole lot of room for professional growth into other areas.
My guess is that the substantial volume of workers subject to losing their jobs work with the copper outside cable plant, such as the older twisted-pair and coaxial cabling networks, the types
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From the BT workers I've known over the years, BT isn't much like the US telecoms industry.
Shocking that, with it being a different country, different laws, different regulatory regime, etc. OK, the electrons and photons are the same, but how they're arranged, very different.
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Are they planning to fire their entire customer service department and replace them with chatbots?
Probably. It's also probably all outsourced already, but they included contractors in that number. Since the number was invented to appease shareholders, it is probably inflated bullshit. They are probably counting everyone who works for whichever company they contracted to do phone service.
Does Fibre not need as much maintenance for some reason? Or are they just finishing a major Fibre rollout and going to fire all the people they hired to lay cable?
TFS literally says so: BT Group [...] will cut up to 55,000 jobs including contractors by 2030 [...] as it completes its fibre roll-out.
Re: How the heck do you cut 40% of your workforce (Score:2)
Maybe you're looking for OpenReach [wikipedia.org]. I bet that's where the axe will fall most heavily.
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in 7 years?
40%/7 years comes to 5.7% of their (current) workforce per year. Is that really all that high a rate? I'd think that on the average more than one person in 17.5 resigns retires or finds another job per year anyway.
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Fibre is somewhat lower maintenance than copper/aluminium lines, yes. The equipment is lower power, so produces less heat, so fails less often. The network is simpler overall too. It also means they can consolidate voice and internet services, where as at the moment they have to maintain two parallel systems using the same wires. The bit that converts the old analogue POTS to pure digital is moved from BT's local exchange to the user's router, i.e. it becomes the user's problem to maintain. No more DSL mode
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Are they planning to fire their entire customer service department and replace them with chatbots?
Dude, it's BT. WHAT customer service department?
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Hows that Brexit going! (Score:2)
It might have been an easier job, if they were able to work with their neighbors, pool resources employees, as well be able to spread some risk, with other EU states, that would have benefited from an updated UK network.
But they decided to have a fit, because their democratically elected representatives didn't always get what they wanted.
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How would brexit help or hurt with local telecom issues? You can't share a network over the channel.
Re: Hows that Brexit going! (Score:3)
Whatâ(TM)s Brexit got to do with this story?
While I'm as anti-Brexit as the next guy (I live in part of London that voted 76% against this nonsense and I became a paid up member of the Lib Dem party to support them in the remain campaign), Iâ(TM)m certainly not daft enough to blame every single negative story on it.
Huh? (Score:2)
Do you think BT only worked with EU telecoms companies beforehand? That if they wanted to work with US, Canadian, whoever networks they'd have to go through some 3rd party negotiator in a secret room?
I'm no brexit fan but jesus christ, some clueless morons talk a lot of rubbish about it.
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It might have been an easier job, if they were able to work with their neighbors, pool resources employees, as well be able to spread some risk, with other EU states, that would have benefited from an updated UK network.
But they decided to have a fit, because their democratically elected representatives didn't always get what they wanted.
Our democratically elected representatives wanted a "Remain" vote, actually. And the UK is doing okay, really.
"AI" for customer service (Score:2)
Hehe, I do wonder how much swearing and sex talk will start coming out of customer service in the future. Maybe it'll start deleting accounts on a whim too.
Can't be any worse (Score:2)
If you're lucky you get someone who can comprehensible english. If you're REALLY lucky they might have a clue about telecoms issues without simply "forwarding your issue to the technical dept".
Frankly ChatGPT would have a hard time doing any worse. Though perhaps it should be renamed ChatGPO (only british old timers will get that).
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Despite being a private company, BT and Openreach have a functional monopoly on telecoms in this country, so probably not (thanks Thatcher)
AI (Score:1)
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what will be the new jobs that this transition creates?
There's going to be a whole lot more jobs in signing people up for public assistance program[me]s, for a brief moment, until those jobs are taken by AI as well.
Gold coin counters (Score:2)
For the C suite who'll no doubt increase their already fat salaries while simultaniously firing a load of people to "save money".
Eh just kidding (Score:2)