
AT&T lays off thousands after getting billions in tax breaks, regulatory favors - microwavecamera
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190618/07430842417/att-lays-off-thousands-after-nabbing-billions-tax-breaks-regulatory-favors.shtml
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sp332
Same story reported a month ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19910973](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19910973)

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cortesoft
People who think tax breaks will mean increased hiring just don't understand
how business works.

A company doesn't hire people because they have extra money. They hire people
because they believe those people will generate them more money than they cost
(and enough more money to be worth the opportunity cost). Sure, tax breaks
might change the math a little bit if the math is close, but this is pretty
rare.

~~~
howard941
You make it sound like some generic class of people have dopey business
expectations. But in this specific situation AT&T promised to hire people as
an inducement for the massive tax gift. Criticisms are rightly directed at CED
Randall Stepto who promised to turn our (we taxpayers) gift to AT&T into 7K
hard hat jobs for every $1B of tax giveaways.

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kaesar14
While I wouldn't go so far as to think AT&T is well run, laying employees off
after tax breaks isn't necessarily indicative of wrongdoing. If there's
redundancies in the company, that's going to eventually be remedied. I want to
see a more in-depth study of where the company's extra money is going before
coming to a conclusion.

~~~
ghayes
I guess the article is, in part, refuting the argument that the tax breaks
cause hiring and reduce layoffs. In all honestly, they are likely unrelated
events-- but it would be in the public interest to know that before deciding
tax law changes.

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busymom0
I read the entire article and got the impression that instead of objective
journalism, it sounded more of a partisan attack and anger in the author’s
tone. A journalist is supposed to take out their emotions and state the facts
and let the people decide the emotions based on the facts.

Anyway, I am curious (and the author fails to cover) is how many new employees
at&t hired/hiring in 2019? I used to work for a Fortune 500 company which did
a similar thing but they would also hire the same amount. They would lay-off
70,000 and hire 80,000 new employees. Is that the case here too?

EDIT: This has been posted before and the article is misleading as I
suspected. Check out these top comments:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19911521](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19911521)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19911694](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19911694)

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tootie
Just stating that they are doing layoffs is totally meaningless. AT&T has
probably laid people off every quarter it's been in business since Alexander
Graham Bell. The number that matters is whether total employment is up or down
which this article doesn't say anything about. It's thesis may be correct, but
this is just a data point and not evidence.

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bryan11
Isn't this a recurring theme for the last few decades? A telco takes federal
money with the promise of laying fiber, providing broadband, and creating
jobs. Next, they don't do any of that and ask for more money a year later.

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RmDen
Isn't this mostly because of the mergers they did with Time Warner etc and
they have some "synergies"?

~~~
JaimeThompson
They are also laying off fiber installers while pushing back install dates on
pending fiber projects in some areas of the United States and yes some of the
areas with delayed projects are subject to layoffs.

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JaimeThompson
They are laying off people but keep pushing out install dates for multiple
fiber projects and other such work I have knowledge of.

I can't understand why they are acting this way.

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UI_at_80x24
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

Everybody can see that these are blatant lies. Just like the MILLIONS and
MILLIONS of federal dollars 'spent' on AT&T to get high-speed broadband to
rural regions of the country.

I can't accept that every damn politician is that fucking corrupt to just bend
us over like this and keep a straight face.

~~~
dang
Please don't post indignant rants to HN. No matter how justified they are,
they lower the signal/noise ratio and invite worse from others. You may not
owe better to AT&T or corporatist politicians but you owe better to the
community when posting here.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

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zer0faith
What a disappointment...

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panny
[https://www.statista.com/statistics/220683/number-of-
atundt-...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/220683/number-of-atundt-
employees-since-2007/)

