Cable Forum

Cable Forum (https://www.cableforum.uk/board/index.php)
-   Virgin Media News Discussion (https://www.cableforum.uk/board/forumdisplay.php?f=10)
-   -   90 Day Notice for Network Engineers (https://www.cableforum.uk/board/showthread.php?t=49847)

Womble 12-07-2006 05:41
90 Day Notice for Network Engineers
 
Well today is the day we, the Network Engineers get put "At-Risk", 90 days of hell.
Not much more to say!

Bill C 12-07-2006 05:49
Re: 90-Notice
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Womble
Well today is the day we, the Network Engineers get put "At-Risk", 90 days of hell.
Not much more to say!
All i can say is i wish you all luck. I for one want them to keep the network internal not farm it out.

bonzoe 12-07-2006 05:52
Re: 90-Notice
 
The company I worked for kept telling us our jobs were at risk about every 12 months, doesn't motivate you. Was glad when I got out, no regrets.

Good luck, hope things work out for you.

Hugh 12-07-2006 07:54
Re: 90-Notice
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Womble
Well today is the day we, the Network Engineers get put "At-Risk", 90 days of hell.
Not much more to say!
Good luck, and get your cv up to date and out on the market (to beat the rush).

I was made redundant two months ago, so I share your (anticipated) pain (but to be fair, the weather has been brilliant, and I did get to see the World Cup and Wimbledon on TV). :)

Escapee 12-07-2006 10:21
Re: 90 Day Notice for Network Engineers
 
Announced in a meeting this morning that 109 techs are to be made redundant and 54 moving to Business, apparently its not clear if the 54 are from the 109 or an extra 54.

Womble 12-07-2006 11:41
Re: 90 Day Notice for Network Engineers
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Escapee
Announced in a meeting this morning that 109 techs are to be made redundant and 54 moving to Business, apparently its not clear if the 54 are from the 109 or an extra 54.
The 54 are not part of the 109 :-( 54 are going Business from the Telewest side, then 20 percent from all sides to go which equals 109 engineers. But, most of the Telewest boys are not Dual trained (CATV & Telco), they also have "Core Network Techs", which to ex-Nynex are Activation. so I suspect Telewest bods will take the major hit:Yikes:

Bill C 12-07-2006 16:29
Re: 90 Day Notice for Network Engineers
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Womble
Quote:
Originally Posted by Escapee
Announced in a meeting this morning that 109 techs are to be made redundant and 54 moving to Business, apparently its not clear if the 54 are from the 109 or an extra 54.
The 54 are not part of the 109 :-( 54 are going Business from the Telewest side, then 20 percent from all sides to go which equals 109 engineers. But, most of the Telewest boys are not Dual trained (CATV & Telco), they also have "Core Network Techs", which to ex-Nynex are Activation. so I suspect Telewest bods will take the major hit:Yikes:
Which at the end of the day means even less engineers working on the network, Even less preventive maintenance "which i am lead to believe now no longer takes place at all" Even less core knowledge left in Network in the case of a major event. Sad day for those that lose there job and a devastating day for customers who can now look forward to even longer fix times and less engineers to look after the network.


So whats next Engineers flown in each day from Bombay with a sat nav and a electronic dictionary :Yikes:.

Foo Fighter 12-07-2006 16:45
Re: 90 Day Notice for Network Engineers
 
I want a job network engineering at ntl but looks like i never will :(

had a call today about a ntl call centre job and have the telephone interview later but dont fancy it will probably get outsourced to india after a few months anyway

Escapee 12-07-2006 19:41
Re: 90 Day Notice for Network Engineers
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Womble
The 54 are not part of the 109 :-( 54 are going Business from the Telewest side, then 20 percent from all sides to go which equals 109 engineers. But, most of the Telewest boys are not Dual trained (CATV & Telco), they also have "Core Network Techs", which to ex-Nynex are Activation. so I suspect Telewest bods will take the major hit:Yikes:
Apparently the meeting in South Wales was held by managers who didn't seem to know anything. The question was asked about the 54, and they didn't know the answer. Knowing the two main managers who would of conducted the meeting, I would say they wouldn't really give a sh*t about the 54 or 109, they are the type who only think of themselves.

That type are the ones who have survived.

The one good think to come out of it today, was when I was chatting to an ntl guy. He is in Headends so not affected (yet), he was however with one of the network guys. The network guy who I have known for many years (almost 20) sounded quite happy, he is hoping they will accept his offer and pick him to get out of the place.

Oh well, another 109 going and probably more to follow. I wonder how many more redundancies it will take to make the company a viable concern.:rolleyes:

Bill C 12-07-2006 19:53
Re: 90 Day Notice for Network Engineers
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Escapee
Quote:
Originally Posted by Womble
The 54 are not part of the 109 :-( 54 are going Business from the Telewest side, then 20 percent from all sides to go which equals 109 engineers. But, most of the Telewest boys are not Dual trained (CATV & Telco), they also have "Core Network Techs", which to ex-Nynex are Activation. so I suspect Telewest bods will take the major hit:Yikes:
Apparently the meeting in South Wales was held by managers who didn't seem to know anything. The question was asked about the 54, and they didn't know the answer. Knowing the two main managers who would of conducted the meeting, I would say they wouldn't really give a sh*t about the 54 or 109, they are the type who only think of themselves.

That type are the ones who have survived.

The one good think to come out of it today, was when I was chatting to an ntl guy. He is in Headends so not affected (yet), he was however with one of the network guys. The network guy who I have known for many years (almost 20) sounded quite happy, he is hoping they will accept his offer and pick him to get out of the place.

Oh well, another 109 going and probably more to follow. I wonder how many more redundancies it will take to make the company a viable concern.:rolleyes:
What worries me the most is the brain drain.

They must be getting to a point now where those that built the network are all gone.

Those that have sense and the ability to move jobs will grab the redundancy which will then leave those that wanted it but were refused. These Engineers will then be worked off there feet doing the work of those that have left. They will just get even more demoralised and will work from month to month hoping for the next round of redundancies.

Then there are those that do not want it because they would not be able to con another company. They know who they are.

There are a lot of very good engineers still in NTL however there are some that just don't cut the mustard and will resist redundancy with all there might "sucking up to managers and such" and its these that Ntl and Telewest should get rid off. However these same people will be the ones that will support the **** managers that always seem to survive when the good ones get the boot.


I wish those that are made redundant well and hope you find better jobs out in the real world where you will be treated with the respect you should have and dont get from NTL.

brundles 12-07-2006 20:37
Re: 90 Day Notice for Network Engineers
 
To all of those who might be affected, I am sorry for you.

I just hope that NTL doesn't go the way my employer went in that they announced so many at risk periods (5 over a 4 year period I think) that even when they said 'This is the last one' nobody believed them with morale at rock bottom.

Unlimited - You missed out one vital point:
Quote:
Originally Posted by unlimited
Those that have sense and the ability to move jobs will grab the redundancy which will then leave those that wanted it but were refused. These Engineers will then be worked off there feet doing the work of those that have left. They will just get even more demoralised and will work from month to month hoping for the next round of redundancies.
Those that wanted redundancy but were turned down as being too important will be the ones who leave anyway because they can.

That's exactly how things worked out at our company anyway. :(

only me 12-07-2006 22:05
Re: 90 Day Notice for Network Engineers
 
As I always say ntl is run by sales people who have not one technical bone in there body, they think as they can monitor the network remotely its ok to reduce the already overstretched network guys, but they do not understand that they are only monitoring the return path, also as there is no preventative maintenance getting done only "fire fighting" the network WILL fall over very soon, some cabs and muxes I have seen you can not close the door as they have not had a audit for years and splitters are now a common place in cabs, naughty installers, but that's not there fault.

homealone 12-07-2006 22:37
Re: 90 Day Notice for Network Engineers
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by only me
As I always say ntl is run by sales people who have not one technical bone in there body, they think as they can monitor the network remotely its ok to reduce the already overstretched network guys, but they do not understand that they are only monitoring the return path, also as there is no preventative maintenance getting done only "fire fighting" the network WILL fall over very soon, some cabs and muxes I have seen you can not close the door as they have not had a audit for years and splitters are now a common place in cabs, naughty installers, but that's not there fault.
what is interesting is that the idea of 'marketing led' companies, underpinned by enterprise capital is now up and running, how that actually performs may ultmately define our society ???

Saneboy13 13-07-2006 06:32
Re: 90 Day Notice for Network Engineers
 
The biggest pain in the a$$ for us at the moment, is the fact that they don't know how many engineers are going from each area (or so they claim).

We don't know if it's 1, 2, 3 or 4 in my area. It has taken them three months to get figures together, but they can not tell us what the local impact will be.

Moral is rock bottom right now, we have ended up with more questions than answers from the presentation and we are fearing what the knock on effect will be to the Network.

I was banging on the other week about return path issues with people using sub standard splits and cable, now it's going to get a whole lot harder to keep on top of those kind of things.

But there are some of us that are either stupid or stubborn (me) that want's to keep working for NTL, I want to try to keep making that little bit of a difference, but I will have to wait and see what the cull will be and what my area will be reduced too...

Chrysalis 13-07-2006 16:16
Re: 90 Day Notice for Network Engineers
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by only me
As I always say ntl is run by sales people who have not one technical bone in there body, they think as they can monitor the network remotely its ok to reduce the already overstretched network guys, but they do not understand that they are only monitoring the return path, also as there is no preventative maintenance getting done only "fire fighting" the network WILL fall over very soon, some cabs and muxes I have seen you can not close the door as they have not had a audit for years and splitters are now a common place in cabs, naughty installers, but that's not there fault.
what are side affects of splitters?

---------- Post added at 17:16 ---------- Previous post was at 17:15 ----------

TO add I thought virgin were supposedbly wanting to improve the quality of the service, this shows they are just as not bothered as the old ntl regime.

Bill C 13-07-2006 19:22
Re: 90 Day Notice for Network Engineers
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Womble
Quote:
Originally Posted by Escapee
Announced in a meeting this morning that 109 techs are to be made redundant and 54 moving to Business, apparently its not clear if the 54 are from the 109 or an extra 54.
The 54 are not part of the 109 :-( 54 are going Business from the Telewest side, then 20 percent from all sides to go which equals 109 engineers. But, most of the Telewest boys are not Dual trained (CATV & Telco), they also have "Core Network Techs", which to ex-Nynex are Activation. so I suspect Telewest bods will take the major hit:Yikes:
From what i have been told today it works out as this.
approx 500 Network engineers for the whole country :Yikes:

-54 going to Business.
-109 redundant

= 337 Engineers to cover the whole country.

Doing the following

network upgrades
network maintenance
preventive maintenance "been told this NEVER happens now"
day to day faults.
on call cover.

So these poor sods will be worked into the ground daily.

No wonder moral is lower than a snakes belly in a wagon rut.

Escapee 13-07-2006 19:46
Re: 90 Day Notice for Network Engineers
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Saneboy13
The biggest pain in the a$$ for us at the moment, is the fact that they don't know how many engineers are going from each area (or so they claim).

We don't know if it's 1, 2, 3 or 4 in my area. It has taken them three months to get figures together, but they can not tell us what the local impact will be.

Moral is rock bottom right now, we have ended up with more questions than answers from the presentation and we are fearing what the knock on effect will be to the Network.

I was banging on the other week about return path issues with people using sub standard splits and cable, now it's going to get a whole lot harder to keep on top of those kind of things.

But there are some of us that are either stupid or stubborn (me) that want's to keep working for NTL, I want to try to keep making that little bit of a difference, but I will have to wait and see what the cull will be and what my area will be reduced too...
I heard that from one of the guys in Cardiff today, he said it sounded like any number between 1 and 5 but they didn't know. That sounds like they really know what they are doing!

I spoke to another guy today in a national department, he was on 90 days earlier this month and then taken off risk. He was then put on 90 days yet again last week, it makes you wonder if the left hand really knows what the right hand is doing.

Although he did say something that was good, there is now only one head of department who is ex-ntl and he's my old boss. All the rest are Telewest guys, a lot of the ntl ones are on their bike.

I know there are one or two sad losses amongst them, but generally some of them have been around for too long. I was surprised at some of the names he said were still about after all the redundancies losing good people, although it does seem like a lot of the hangers on are now hanging on for dear life.

860 13-07-2006 20:43
Re: 90 Day Notice for Network Engineers
 
Whats got my goat is the fact that as a network engineer I'm having to cover service faults next week as they are short staffed, leaving 2 blokes to cover an average of 25 network refferals a day, as no pm is being done things are starting to fall over, especialy in this heat we have no spares for the antiquated equipment so having to improvise unit repairs especialy 24v switching units and fuse boards for 1 ftd's in the street. any one who has any going spare drop me a line.
Also it's been hinted at no VRD for me as to qualified and experienced and as has been mentioned already in previous posts I will leave once I've found something comparable or better.
I've also been told that all you guy's in old NTL land are very happy with the state of affiairs and that we in old Telewest land are just moaning about change, which by all accounts from managment is the best thing since the wheel.(that must be the square one as thats pretty amazing!).
Any way not to be wanting to sound negative. God luck to all affected by this and hope that the muppets that run this shower have run out of horlicks, they then might know whats it's like to not sleep all night and have to work or what ever they do all day.

Escapee 13-07-2006 22:43
Re: 90 Day Notice for Network Engineers
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by 860
Whats got my goat is the fact that as a network engineer I'm having to cover service faults next week as they are short staffed, leaving 2 blokes to cover an average of 25 network refferals a day, as no pm is being done things are starting to fall over, especialy in this heat we have no spares for the antiquated equipment so having to improvise unit repairs especialy 24v switching units and fuse boards for 1 ftd's in the street. any one who has any going spare drop me a line.
Also it's been hinted at no VRD for me as to qualified and experienced and as has been mentioned already in previous posts I will leave once I've found something comparable or better.
I've also been told that all you guy's in old NTL land are very happy with the state of affiairs and that we in old Telewest land are just moaning about change, which by all accounts from managment is the best thing since the wheel.(that must be the square one as thats pretty amazing!).
Any way not to be wanting to sound negative. God luck to all affected by this and hope that the muppets that run this shower have run out of horlicks, they then might know whats it's like to not sleep all night and have to work or what ever they do all day.
I left ntl back in 2001, after 13 years in the industry. I could see ntl getting worse but to be honest couldn't see it getting much worse. I went to work for a company that had a large contract to supply the network management system to ntl approx £10M and £1M a year maintenance, ntl verbally agreed everything to get the kit installed, made similar promises to other large vendors and promptly filed for chapter 11.

The working conditions have slowy but surely got worse in the company, due to the number of years and sort of people I was involved with, I still have fairly regular contact with ntl employees. (even if they are just asking me if I know of any jobs available) Certainly amongst the network techs in original
ntl they are not happy, anyone who says that is spouting pure lies.

There seems to be different views, but there are techs who are keeping thier head down because they are not capable of finding anything else, techs who are too lazy or set in their ways, and techs who are just waiting for the redundancy. Sure there are some good techs still in ntl, but the many good ones who have left have meant promotion of lower grades due to a block on employing people. This has in many cases meant some of the newer techs in networks wouldn't of been seen as suitable a few years ago, but are now acceptable to fill the gap.

This all means a company that is becoming less and less efficient at fixing customers faults, preventative maintenance was always the first thing to be dropped in the old days. Funny though, it was always re-instated when the faults started to escalate because of it. It appears these days that they just fire fight and ignore the fact that some preventative maintenance actually reduces the number of service and network calls.

I guess the reduction in managers with any technical skill, for ones who used to work in the call centre has a lot to do with these decisions. The 'yes men' managers under them are also to blame, the majority of managers in networks keep their heads down and mouths shut not to kill the golden goose who lays a big egg in their bank account every month.

ntl is a pile of sh*te, the company is getting deeper and deeper into trouble. I have predicted that the company will go from one crisis to the next, and I dont even believe we have seen the last of the redundancies or the bottom of the spiral yet.

Right now if they had to pay the quarterly interest payments they were paying before chapter 11, they would again have to seek a safety net from the creditors. Chapter 11 and all the redundancies and the merger has still left them with a large disfunctional company full of very pi**ed under motivated employees.

The employee morale speaks volumes for the companies chance of making the business viable.

Shaved Wookie 13-07-2006 22:46
Re: 90 Day Notice for Network Engineers
 
There are some NTL franchise areas that are already desperatley short of network techs (ie Leicester), I don't know how they can expect to cut back even further? It is so reminiscent of whats happened with parts of FMS, no one replaced upon leaving and instead expected to take on more and more work. Its probably been said before, but there are clearly too many levels of management which is causing failures within network operations as a whole.

only me 14-07-2006 21:24
Re: 90 Day Notice for Network Engineers
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by Escapee
I left ntl back in 2001, after 13 years in the industry. I could see ntl getting worse but to be honest couldn't see it getting much worse. I went to work for a company that had a large contract to supply the network management system to ntl approx £10M and £1M a year maintenance, ntl verbally agreed everything to get the kit installed, made similar promises to other large vendors and promptly filed for chapter 11.

The working conditions have slowy but surely got worse in the company, due to the number of years and sort of people I was involved with, I still have fairly regular contact with ntl employees. (even if they are just asking me if I know of any jobs available) Certainly amongst the network techs in original
ntl they are not happy, anyone who says that is spouting pure lies.

There seems to be different views, but there are techs who are keeping thier head down because they are not capable of finding anything else, techs who are too lazy or set in their ways, and techs who are just waiting for the redundancy. Sure there are some good techs still in ntl, but the many good ones who have left have meant promotion of lower grades due to a block on employing people. This has in many cases meant some of the newer techs in networks wouldn't of been seen as suitable a few years ago, but are now acceptable to fill the gap.

This all means a company that is becoming less and less efficient at fixing customers faults, preventative maintenance was always the first thing to be dropped in the old days. Funny though, it was always re-instated when the faults started to escalate because of it. It appears these days that they just fire fight and ignore the fact that some preventative maintenance actually reduces the number of service and network calls.

I guess the reduction in managers with any technical skill, for ones who used to work in the call centre has a lot to do with these decisions. The 'yes men' managers under them are also to blame, the majority of managers in networks keep their heads down and mouths shut not to kill the golden goose who lays a big egg in their bank account every month.

ntl is a pile of sh*te, the company is getting deeper and deeper into trouble. I have predicted that the company will go from one crisis to the next, and I dont even believe we have seen the last of the redundancies or the bottom of the spiral yet.

Right now if they had to pay the quarterly interest payments they were paying before chapter 11, they would again have to seek a safety net from the creditors. Chapter 11 and all the redundancies and the merger has still left them with a large disfunctional company full of very pi**ed under motivated employees.

The employee morale speaks volumes for the companies chance of making the business viable.
:tu: :clap:

Bill C 16-07-2006 16:00
Re: 90 Day Notice for Network Engineers
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by only me
Quote:
Originally Posted by Escapee
I left ntl back in 2001, after 13 years in the industry. I could see ntl getting worse but to be honest couldn't see it getting much worse. I went to work for a company that had a large contract to supply the network management system to ntl approx £10M and £1M a year maintenance, ntl verbally agreed everything to get the kit installed, made similar promises to other large vendors and promptly filed for chapter 11.

The working conditions have slowy but surely got worse in the company, due to the number of years and sort of people I was involved with, I still have fairly regular contact with ntl employees. (even if they are just asking me if I know of any jobs available) Certainly amongst the network techs in original
ntl they are not happy, anyone who says that is spouting pure lies.

There seems to be different views, but there are techs who are keeping thier head down because they are not capable of finding anything else, techs who are too lazy or set in their ways, and techs who are just waiting for the redundancy. Sure there are some good techs still in ntl, but the many good ones who have left have meant promotion of lower grades due to a block on employing people. This has in many cases meant some of the newer techs in networks wouldn't of been seen as suitable a few years ago, but are now acceptable to fill the gap.

This all means a company that is becoming less and less efficient at fixing customers faults, preventative maintenance was always the first thing to be dropped in the old days. Funny though, it was always re-instated when the faults started to escalate because of it. It appears these days that they just fire fight and ignore the fact that some preventative maintenance actually reduces the number of service and network calls.

I guess the reduction in managers with any technical skill, for ones who used to work in the call centre has a lot to do with these decisions. The 'yes men' managers under them are also to blame, the majority of managers in networks keep their heads down and mouths shut not to kill the golden goose who lays a big egg in their bank account every month.

ntl is a pile of sh*te, the company is getting deeper and deeper into trouble. I have predicted that the company will go from one crisis to the next, and I dont even believe we have seen the last of the redundancies or the bottom of the spiral yet.

Right now if they had to pay the quarterly interest payments they were paying before chapter 11, they would again have to seek a safety net from the creditors. Chapter 11 and all the redundancies and the merger has still left them with a large disfunctional company full of very pi**ed under motivated employees.

The employee morale speaks volumes for the companies chance of making the business viable.
:tu: :clap:
Seconded


All times are GMT. The time now is 01:47.

Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.11
Copyright ©2000 - 2026, vBulletin Solutions Inc.
All Posts and Content are © Cable Forum