Attention-All NTL Staff.

[shumba376]

Originally Posted by bigcat

NO jobs are safe in NTL at the moment

In the past year or so I've seen our Call Centre (the best performing in the country) and our FMR departments get canned (approx 150 jobs). Some staff managed to transfer to 2nd line, Surveillance or Retensions..but after Mondays bombshell we're not 100% sure these jobs are safe

We also learned on Monday that the Head Of Operations in Teesside Steve Brown had been put on 30 days notice This guy has flogged his guts out over the past year turning Teesside into the streamlined, efficient unit that it is, and seamlessly migrating the entire countries 2nd Line & Surveillance functions over to Teesside. This is the way NTL thanks him for his hard work..

Good luck for the future Steve (and to all other staff that have/may lose their jobs)

I would just like to point out the factual errors in this comment. Teesside does not have the entire countries Surveillance function. In fact that role has been hyped up which may be a deciding factor in why we now have abscence of Mr Brown.
I do not doubt that there was a cause to fight for and admirable job was done too, but when a person fails to communicate internally company wide and empire build you will realise why on this occassion he was given the puch. Maybe now Teesside may co operate with the rest of the world and I hope not at the expense of other jobs.

Wow - that post was almost 6 weeks ago

Anyway - to the site.

[Pierre]

Originally Posted by shumba376

I would just like to point out the factual errors in this comment. Teesside does not have the entire countries Surveillance function. In fact that role has been hyped up which may be a deciding factor in why we now have abscence of Mr Brown.
I do not doubt that there was a cause to fight for and admirable job was done too, but when a person fails to communicate internally company wide and empire build you will realise why on this occassion he was given the puch. Maybe now Teesside may co operate with the rest of the world and I hope not at the expense of other jobs.

Aye, the republic of Teesside.

This is where the seat of power of COBI lies. The MD of COBI was originally MD of ntl:Home North East. The Director of Field Ops of COBI was originally Director of Field Ops in ntl:Home North east, the Director of COBI Design and Civils Ops was - thats right - Head of Design and Civils in ntl:Home North East.

There's only two ways of doing things in COBI, the Teesside way or the Teesside way.

Because they did things SOOOoooo much better than you mere mortals that worked for other cablecoms bought by ntl.

[shumba376]

Thanks geezer, yeah I know I'm a little slow off the mark!!

[Escapee]

Originally Posted by Pierre

Aye, the republic of Teesside.

This is where the seat of power of COBI lies. The MD of COBI was originally MD of ntl:Home North East. The Director of Field Ops of COBI was originally Director of Field Ops in ntl:Home North east, the Director of COBI Design and Civils Ops was - thats right - Head of Design and Civils in ntl:Home North East.

There's only two ways of doing things in COBI, the Teesside way or the Teesside way.

Because they did things SOOOoooo much better than you mere mortals that worked for other cablecoms bought by ntl.

This underlines the area that always pi**ed me off about ntl, the empire builders gain power and move everything into their own region and appoint their own Kronies. The ones that have had their noses put out of joint then keep their heads down hope to survive redundancy and wait for the next bout of confusion (Sorry I mean re-org) and then make their move to build their empire and staff it with their own. All it takes is for one of the managers to get a sympathetic ear of the new appointed director for that division and they are suddenly top man, nothing to do with ability. A similar thing has happened recently with managers redundancies, a couple of managers who were on 30 day notice ganged up (sorry teamed up) and made their case to keep their jobs, but get rid of the third manager, the director in question follwed their advice and got rid of the one who was most use to the company.

It's been an ongoing cycle for many years in ntl, it was once Huddersfield, then Surrey and later Glasgow having the networks power. IMHO this sort of thing has been the big killer for morale in the networks department (COBI) The same happened with planning when all the jobs were lost in wales to keep people in jobs in the midlands.

This will never end in ntl, it's an ongoing survival with managers building empires to surround themselves by as many people as possible, all in the hope that they will look important and only loose a percentage of the people below them when redundancies happen. I know it was a few years ago now, but one department had contractors sat around doing nothing. They were being kept on to use when there was the next round of redundancies, to save full time employees in the cuts.

The politics in ntl stink

[injuneer]

I agree with Escapee, a lot of Ntl's problems are due to empire builders. Having worked for Cabletel & CWC in the past, though it pains me to say it, CWC management (ex-Mercury) seemed to be more capable than Cabletel management. A lot of them stayed on with Cable & Wireless when the Consumer Co division was sold to Ntl. (except the bad ones who went with it!).
Management styles today are all about quantity not quality, it's all part of the dumbing down of Britain.

[Escapee]

Originally Posted by injuneer

I agree with Escapee, a lot of Ntl's problems are due to empire builders. Having worked for Cabletel & CWC in the past, though it pains me to say it, CWC management (ex-Mercury) seemed to be more capable than Cabletel management. A lot of them stayed on with Cable & Wireless when the Consumer Co division was sold to Ntl. (except the bad ones who went with it!).
Management styles today are all about quantity not quality, it's all part of the dumbing down of Britain.

Yes, I heard from some of the guys working for CWC business, that useless managers from that division were offloaded onto ntl when they bought the consumer co division.

They said managers were moved over to the consumer co division, even though they had never worked in that division or had any involvement with it!

[Womble]

Originally Posted by injuneer

I agree with Escapee, a lot of Ntl's problems are due to empire builders. Having worked for Cabletel & CWC in the past, though it pains me to say it, CWC management (ex-Mercury) seemed to be more capable than Cabletel management. A lot of them stayed on with Cable & Wireless when the Consumer Co division was sold to Ntl. (except the bad ones who went with it!).
Management styles today are all about quantity not quality, it's all part of the dumbing down of Britain.

CWC was far better run than this ntl shambles! For a start there was proper budgetary control, something ntl STILL can't do. There wasn't any "Knee Jerk" management, which is rife in ntl.
All in all the existing management is crap, and this results in the staff being treated like crap!
The upper levels of management should hang their collective heads in shame, and, if I was a major shareholder I would be asking for them to go. They have taken a perfectly running, profit making CW comms and Fukin screwed it up

As regards to empire building, that has, and always will go on, not just in ntl but in most companies. And if the guy doing it is a decent manager there isn't a problem, but, within ntl they are few and far between.
In Nynex you had Portsmouth/Solent. They think and still do that everything they do is better, and Sussex, Ashford and Surrey are inferior (lol, we have seen your noise floors/flap lists!!). Itââ‚ ¬ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¾Ã‚¢s gone on within all the cable companies because the management are relatively new/naÃÃâ€*’¯ve. This is why CWC where different, they had an established structure.

As for the future, god help us