AT&T has long ranked among America’s most disrespected companies. The telecom giant is notorious for its opaque billing practices, surprise fees, aggressive auto-renewal, contract lock-ins, and Kafkaesque cancellation processes. Even among its morally flexible telecom peers, AT&T manages to stand out—in the worst way. In a 2025 brand reputation survey, AT&T clocked in at No. 78, behind Verizon (49) and T-Mobile (54).
These days, I’d wager that a significant portion of AT&T’s nearly 141,000 remaining employees—those who’ve survived the company’s spree of mass firings—now loathe the company as much as many of its customers do.
Bosses Back in Charge
AT&T’s John Stankey is the latest CEO salivating over the return of unchecked corporate authority. With AI eliminating jobs, mass layoffs normalized, and the media memory-holing every warm-and-fuzzy “future of work” quote from pandemic-era chief people officers, executives like Stankey are once again free to flex their muscle.
And flex he did.
In a memo obtained and published by Business Insider, Stankey made it clear: If you’re not in the office five days a week, and if you can’t prove you’re outperforming, then hit the road.
“We run a dynamic, customer-facing business, tackling large-scale, challenging initiatives,” Stankey wrote.
“If the requirements dictated by this dynamic do not align to your personal desires, you have every right to find a career opportunity that is suitable to your aspirations and needs.”
Translation: Get in line or get out.
Also from the memo:
“If a self-directed, virtual, or hybrid work schedule is essential for you to manage your career aspirations and life challenges, you will have a difficult time aligning your priorities with those of the company and the culture we aim to establish.”
If only AT&T’s customer contracts were as clear and concise as Stankey’s corporate commandments.
And there was this yuck:
“Our customers expect us to be here to serve their needs.”
Yes, he actually wrote that—no doubt while legions of AT&T customers were on hold due to the “unusually high call volumes” AT&T is infamous for.
In Support of RTO
For the record, I support return-to-office policies. I learned the hard way that culture suffers when leadership goes remote. Years ago, while running a small PR firm in New York, I relocated to San Francisco thinking I could manage remotely. Slowly, the culture unraveled.
I became a stranger at my own company. Employees developed inside jokes and routines I didn’t understand. I once got corrected for sitting in someone’s “usual seat” at a team meeting I was supposedly still leading. Over time, loyal staff began quitting, and I understood why.
So yes, there’s a strong case for being present.
But there’s a right way to call people back—and then there’s the Muskian way. Stankey chose the latter but he’s no Elon Musk.
Stankey’s Performance Delusions
In his memo, Stankey claimed AT&T is shifting toward a “performance-based culture,” moving away from outdated values like loyalty and tenure, and toward capability and contribution.
Let’s test that mandate—starting with Stankey’s own performance.
Stankey was one of the architects behind AT&T’s disastrous $85 billion acquisition of Time Warner, later rebranded WarnerMedia. As the company’s former strategy chief and later CEO of WarnerMedia, he oversaw an attempt to turn AT&T into a Hollywood power player. What followed was a textbook corporate implosion: broken synergies, cultural clashes, mass layoffs, and tens of billions in vaporized value. In 2022, AT&T dumped WarnerMedia in a humiliating spin-off.
For most of us, that level of failure would warrant a pink slip. But in the highest echelons of Corporate America, it’s often rewarded. Stankey was promoted to CEO.
Stankey’s Leadership Milestones
Among AT&T’s recent “performance” milestones:
- A massive data breach recently revealed exposing the private information of over 100 million Americans, including 44 million Social Security numbers.
- A technical failure during a conference call with Donald Trump and thousands of religious leaders, prompting Trump to publicly demand, “The Boss of AT&T, whoever that may be,” fix it.
Fortunately for Stankey, he’s surrounded by a Board of Enablers.
Take Marissa Mayer, the Yahoo! CEO alum whose performance ranks among the worst in U.S. corporate history. Under Mayer’s watch, Yahoo experienced a 500-million-account data breach. Mayer was appointed to AT&T’s board last March—hardly a validation of Stankey’s supposed performance-driven culture.
Other AT&T board members include William Kennard, who also serves on Ford’s board, where the automaker’s recalls have already surpassed 90 this year—and it’s only early August. And then there’s Beth Mooney, former CEO of KeyCorp, who also moonlights on Ford’s board.
It’s like a game of Musical Mediocrity, where everyone keeps a chair no matter how badly they’ve performed.
Performance-Based? LOL
When Stankey became CEO in July 2020, AT&T’s stock traded at around $30. Over the next three years, it cratered to the mid-teens as the company’s debt ballooned, its dividend got slashed, and its media ambitions went up in flames.
Only recently has the stock rebounded—and not because Stankey suddenly developed managerial brilliance. The stock ticked up because he finally abandoned his media fantasies and focused on what analysts insisted AT&T should have been doing all along: investing in fiber and wireless infrastructure.
Of course, Wall Street needed its usual sweeteners. So Stankey and the board last December authorized $20 billion in share buybacks and promised to return $40 billion to shareholders through dividends and repurchases. These moves have propped up the stock—and made Stankey’s $26.4 million compensation in 2024 a little easier to justify on paper.
Once illegal, stock buybacks are now just another way to manipulate performance optics.
Lifetime Membership
Stankey’s not the only return-to-office tyrant preaching one thing and doing another.
Brian Niccol, the hotshot CEO of Starbucks who was paid $96 million last year for four months work, recently made headlines for requiring his Seattle-based employees to be in the office four days a week—while he works remotely from a luxurious compound in Newport Beach, California.
Business Insider reported Starbucks spared no expense when outfitting Niccol with a custom satellite office five minutes from his home, complete with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the Pacific coastline, luxury finishes, and a $14,000 cappuccino machine. Meanwhile, Niccol is talking up a storm about the need for employees to find ways to cut costs.
Guess who was just named to the Starbucks board? That would be Marissa Mayer, who also lends her oversight talents to the boards of Walmart and Hilton Hotels and Resorts.
Final Verdict
John Stankey says AT&T is now about “performance.” The facts say otherwise. He failed upward, surrounded by a chorus of equally uninspiring directors and cronies.
Corporate America isn’t a meritocracy—it’s an exclusive membership club, and once you’re in, you’re forever golden.
Welcome to the CEO Hall of Shame, Mr. Stankey. Your plaque is well deserved. I’m confident that many of your customers—and legions of current and former employees—would wholeheartedly agree.