DirecTV Lays Off Hundreds of Managers As Cord Cutting Accelerates (cnbc.com) 51
DirecTV is laying off hundreds of employees -- roughly 10% of its upper ranks -- as the company looks to reduce costs amid the heightened pain of cord cutting for pay-TV providers, according to people familiar with the matter. CNBC reports: Most of the job cuts will be at the manager level, the people said, citing an email to employees sent on Friday. Managers make up about half of DirecTV's fewer than 10,000 employees, one of the people said. The affected employees' last day will be Jan. 20. "The entire pay-TV industry is impacted by the secular decline and the increasing rates to secure and distribute programming," a DirecTV spokesperson said in a statement. "We're adjusting our operations costs to align with these changes and will continue to invest in new entertainment products and service enhancements."
DirecTV and its peers have long been under pressure as customers cut the cord and opt for streaming services. The rate of cord cutting accelerated in the third quarter, according to MoffettNathanson. [...] DirecTV reportedly lost around 500,000 customers in its most recent quarter, according to ratings agency Fitch. Although DirecTV's losses slowed during the height of the pandemic, they recently accelerated to nearly 17%, according to MoffettNathanson.
DirecTV and its peers have long been under pressure as customers cut the cord and opt for streaming services. The rate of cord cutting accelerated in the third quarter, according to MoffettNathanson. [...] DirecTV reportedly lost around 500,000 customers in its most recent quarter, according to ratings agency Fitch. Although DirecTV's losses slowed during the height of the pandemic, they recently accelerated to nearly 17%, according to MoffettNathanson.
Managers managing the manager's managers (Score:3)
So recognizable.
Lately my company is also getting polluted with too many managers that are not actually doing something usefull.
Re:Managers managing the manager's managers (Score:5, Insightful)
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I got a good laugh at the satellite hackers. They spent way more money on bootleg cards, programmers, debuggers, etc than it would have cost to just subscribe like a normal person. Many of them were 'hacking' like a cargo cult or script kiddiez. They had no idea what any of the hacks actually did.
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tl;dr: No, you weren't necessarily spending more money nor could you get that level of television from Dish at any price.
When I was doing it, around 2000 - 2003, the economics were fairly straight forward. I bought a re-programmable card with a serial port on it for around $50. Then you'd download the necessary software and get on an IRC group to wait for the code to put on the board. Once everything was in place, you got *every* channel. And I mean every one. All local, all HBO / Showtime / etc. All
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Like many things, there was a 'golden age', and then it was over with some desperately trying to get it back.
The ones I saw were after DirecTV and would easily drop $500 on a programmer and seemed to spend hours looking for the latest hack that might get the picture back. DirecTV famously tended to send the magic bullets around just as big sporting events were starting.
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Like many things, there was a 'golden age', and then it was over with some desperately trying to get it back.
The ones I saw were after DirecTV and would easily drop $500 on a programmer and seemed to spend hours looking for the latest hack that might get the picture back. DirecTV famously tended to send the magic bullets around just as big sporting events were starting.
Oh shit I forgot about that! It was hours before the Super Bowl (2001 or 2002?).
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Nah, usually these sort of layoffs hit front line managers first. Usually a few quarters after they've already dumped all the staff for them to manager. It's the project and program managers in between the front line and the VPs that are the dead weight, and the second to last to go.
Re:Managers managing the manager's managers (Score:4, Insightful)
I know its fun to hate on management and the MBAs in general. However I think we get somewhat off impression looking at companies like Direct TV that facing more of a obsolesce problem than operational ones.
In better positioned company you need the VPs and Program managers to make the strategic changes to products and services to keep the company viable in the market place. This is a small team that needs trust to operate and ideally has some kind of shared vision, and tribal experience with the organization. It would be difficult to replace these people and have them be immediately effective. It makes sense these folks would be near the last to go because those lower rungs really are more replaceable 'cogs'. How hard would it be hire some guys to make sure some other guys show up and fill-out their timesheets properly while they drive around in vans in screw dishes to metal posts? - not hard.
This is not say that companies like DirectTV don't already have the wrong people in those director and VP positions. That happens and it ruins companies. In cases where they have changed corporate parents a few times and had their strategic vision dictated by outside sources its likely this is case. DirectTV is a good example here the people in those positions are probably not the ones who understood how to add value to the product and adapt it a changing market but rather the ones who AT&T got the most cooperation from turning it into a add-on for their other products before dumping the whole org again when it no longer helped them make sales.
At this point it probably does not matter if those folks are good or bad at their jobs, understand or don't understand where the home media market is headed. DirectTV is a dinosaur in terms of their core product. They have got no diversity in their portfolio to shift focus into, they don't really have tech or capital assets that can be leveraged into other businesses that I can see - though i have not gone through their 10Q and aint interested enough to do it. My guess is they are well and truly fucked, and its just circle the drain time.
But consider a company that is not circling the drain - like Coca Cola. Where is the HR value is the guys at the subsidiary bottlers packing the pallets and the people that directly manage them, or are those positions that could be re-filled rather quickly if needed? Is it the people who recognize the market wants less cornsyrup solutions, and more flavored seltzer products? Which group keeps the company healthy long term?
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How hard would it be hire some guys to make sure some other guys show up and fill-out their timesheets properly while they drive around in vans in screw dishes to metal posts? - not hard.
Those people *the ones that drive around in vans and screw dishes into metal posts" or their supervisors/managers do not exist. At least not as part of DirecTV. They never did.
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When I worked there in their DSL division (yeah, LONG time ago) it was regional third party contractors doing truck rolls to customers and not actual DTV employees. And as far as I know, DTV never installed the dish for you. You had to DIY or hire someone to do it.
Not always (Score:3)
In some companies this is to get them raises so they don't leave. In less desirable companies it's to make them think they're moving up without paying them much if anything more and so get more work out of them.
Re: Not always (Score:2)
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"Managers make up about half of DirecTV's fewer than 10,000 employees,"
That's the problem, half of the employees are managers, WTF?
50% Managers? that seems very bloated (Score:5, Insightful)
50% Managers? that seems very bloated
Re: 50% Managers? that seems very bloated (Score:5, Funny)
Each employee deserves their own personal manager. It drives productivity.
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Your own personal manager
Someone to hear your prayers
Someone who cares
Your own personal manager
Someone to hear your prayers
Someone who's there
Re: 50% Managers? that seems very bloated (Score:2)
And you're all alone
Flesh and bone
By the telephone
Lift up the receiver
I'll make you a believer
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Whoa (Score:2)
"Managers make up about half of DirecTV's fewer than 10,000 employees"
Wait, hold up. How is that even possible?
Re: Whoa (Score:4, Informative)
If you have two employees per manager it would just about work out, e.g. 16 workers managed by 8 managers, managed by 4 managers, managed by 2 managers, managed by 1 manager. In that structure, total managers equals total workers minus 1. But it sounds pretty insane.
Re: Whoa (Score:5, Funny)
and if you mess up your tps report your 8 bosses each tell you about it
Re: Whoa (Score:2)
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I'm guessing a lot of these managers are managing other managers. When you add multiple layers of management on top of each other, with grunts only being at the very bottom layer, you end up with a high proportion of managers.
I used to work for a company that was adjacent to the satellite TV industry. I never had any contacts at DirecTV but I did have a few at Dish Network. Nepotism and mismanagement run rampant at that kind of company. Even when there is work to do, there are people who simply refuse to do
We need to MAKE NFL TICKET FAIL on youtube (Score:2)
We need to MAKE NFL TICKET FAIL on youtube so bad that they are forced to put it back on directv
WTF Is a Secular Decline? (Score:4, Funny)
Re: WTF Is a Secular Decline? (Score:5, Informative)
In economics:
"Secular refers to market activities that unfold over long time horizons, or that aren't influenced by short-term factors."
In other words, this shit is coming no matter what they do. It's not a transient market adjustment or "right-sizing".
Title of manager only (Score:1)
Re: Title of manager only (Score:1)
I hope it's the AT&T jerks (Score:2)
Or maybe even a mercy layoff for any remaining original DirecTV employees, may they retire in peace.
Next they need to cut the direct mail budget (Score:3)
It seems like DTV sends me a mailer at least once a week. Maybe it doesn't cost that much, but stuffing my mailbox on the regular isn't going to make me shell out for a dish on my roof. The previous owners had it, and it's in the crawl space under the house. I removed it from the front deck because it was a view-obstructing eyesore. Nobody ever came around asking for it, so I guess you own it? I dunno. Maybe that's why they mail bomb me, because they think the infrastructure is still there. They also put a metal post in the side yard (previous install?), and it wasn't done right. You can wiggle the post. You gotta go a lot deeper and use more concrete to do it right.
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That was always the "selling point" of DirecTV. You go to WallyWorld and buy a dish and reciever. You install it. You call them on the phone to activate it.
This is unlike Cable where you have to call the Cable Company and they eventually get around to coming and installing their crap which you have to rent at exorbitant prices (thus paying for about four times over per year) and takes weeks or months to from the time the idea pops into your head (I think I'll subscribe to Cable) until it is available to
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It was the crappy DVR that got me (Score:5, Interesting)
As related in my lecture to the Calgary Unix User's Group : http://brander.ca/cordcutcuug/ [brander.ca] ...what got me,finally, was not the value of the channels, it was that their monopoly on what DVR could connect to their content, shifted from quite good HDDVRs in the early 2000s, when they were trying to get people to switch to HD resolution, to the worst DVR that would barely claim to work. Endless glitches and reboots.
Cord-cutting to use over-the-air, and your favourite Linux, Win, or Mac box as the DVR - which produces standard .MPG files you can save, compress, edit - was worth it for that alone. Not to mention, over-the-air is free, covers your news, local sports, and what are usually the most-popular water-cooler shows. That and a stream or two keeps our evenings full of choice.
Re: It was the crappy DVR that got me (Score:2)
When I first subscribed to DirectTV in 2008, my DVR was fantastic. Five years and what I believe was a literal OS change later, it took a fucking second just to un-pause playback, and 2 or 3 seconds to move to the next page in the program guide. It also stuttered and dropped frames in both live and recorded tv.
I think that sometime around 2011, DirecTV MASSIVELY increased their GOP length, and/or made some change to the container stream format that necessitated rewriting the streams on the floor before pass
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This.
The equipment provided by the networks, wether cable or satellite tends to be absolute garbage. In many cases you are forced to use the equipment they supply, so this reduces the incentive for them to make any improvements to it too.
If you have an open standard like OTA, there is a competitive market with hundreds of suppliers of compatible equipment. There are standards for satellite (DVB-S) and cable too, but generally only for the free channels and some networks ignore the standards entirely.
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It's a lot of hassle. I find it easiest to just get stuff from The Pirate Bay. Someone else already checked the quality, edited out any crap, encoded it properly. Morally there is no difference getting it over an antenna or Bittorrent.
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That.
It's damn near impossible these days to get a good DVR in any pay service. I have been using a cable card with a Plex server for the past four years and just recently canceled that due to outrageous cost.
We're on Youtube TV right now and their DVR functionality sucks big green donkey dick. It is impossible to record just one episode of anything. If you tell the DVR to record, you automatically get every airing going forward until you stop it. Google's rationale is basically "so what, it's all unlim
Time to release the piracy waves (Score:2)
Glad to ditch them (Score:2)
We had DTV for a while over Comcrap based on costs; when AT&T pulled fiber into our neighborhood it was helpful to keep it since they pulled the data caps if you were also a DTV subscriber.
That said, by the time our "commitment" was up with them, the Deathstar had pulled data caps anyway and with gig fiber feeding the house, a streaming package was half the cost and removed the rain fade problem (went with the Hulu Live/Disney/ESPN bundle). DTV's streaming package was actually *more* expensive than sta
Getting rid of dead weight (Score:2)
5,000 managers? (Score:2)
Feeling the effects of no Sunday Ticket (Score:2)
It's no coincidence that they announce this after the end of the NFL regular season. With all the playoff games on regular TV going forward, this is the time when the Sunday Ticket people start canceling.
Direct TV these days has to be one of the most depressing companies to work for. Their business model is Dead Man Walking and everyone knows it.
Cord Cutting (Score:2)
DirecTV was my original "Cord Cutting" before streaming was a thing. The problem for DirecTV was that I had proven myself a non-loyal customer simply by signing up with them.