Re:Perfect example (Score 1)

Obviously you didn't work for the original AT&T. I was a part of an IBM division that was sold to AT&T in 1999. At the time their management knew their long distance business was failing so they launched a vision for saving the company. They had just completed a stock split and later IPO'd a tracking stock for their wireless division but then their profits hit the toilet followed soon after by their stock price. They abandoned their vision and started selling the company piece by piece. They spun off the wireless division as a separate company (which Cingular later bought) and sold their broadband business to Comcast. Soon after they started almost randomly laying off people. The products developed by my group were outsourced to IBM to be outsourced to India. A few of us became IBM employees, the rest lost their jobs. I think they had to gut the company to the point it wasn't worth any more than SBC could afford to pay and finally SBC bought them. There were rumors for a couple of years that SBC was trying to buy them.

You are correct in the sense that SBC was part of the original AT&T and their wireless division was part of the original AT&T at one time, but the current AT&T is definitely not the original AT&T. I no longer work for them or anything related to them so I have no idea if it is better or worse than before. It wasn't very good even at the time they originally bought our division. At the point they sold me back to IBM, I absolutely hated the company and its management. OTOH, from what I heard, during the "glory years" AT&T was one of the best companies in the world to work for.