3 years after Sprint merger, T-Mobile employs 9k fewer people | Hacker News Reader

3 years after Sprint merger, T-Mobile employs 9k fewer people

geekwire.com

52 pointsubiquitysc11 comments

Anyone who thought the merger would result in T-Mobile’s balance sheet getting worse, doesn’t understand how businesses work. The ONLY asset Sprint had by the time it was a carcass of its former self was the spectrum. It was economical for T-Mobile to transition Sprint devices/customers to T-Mobile, but certainly it’s not economical to keep, say, retail and customer support staff around.

Sprint was a dead man walking and had been for nearly a decade. Their main activity in KC was layoffs.

I still think it was killed by the Nextel merger. Both were great before that, and the golem that emerged was… not

Sprint was killed by making the wrong bet on 4G technology. They wasted their capital on rolling out a nationwide Wimax network right before all the other carriers and device manufacturers decided to use LTE instead. At that point Sprint was out of money to replace their dead end network.

I really wish the article would name the spokesperson who claimed "We’ve upheld our jobs commitment," when it clearly goes against Legere's testimony.

Most mergers find someone making promises like they're still in power, only for that person to leave later. I always assumed this is by design. I get a lot fewer ugly surprises when I do.

A little bit old owners trying to hit a target for employee retention to get their full bonus, a little bit new owners finding cooperative grist for the machine.

I’m not sure there’s ever been a merger in history that lead to more jobs being created after. These expensive deals get sold to investors by claiming “synergies”.

How many people were at YouTube and Instagram before their mergers?

It all depends on the stage of the companies. When companies are still in growth mode it can create more revenue and jobs. When companies run out of ways to grow (mature industries like telecom) then mergers are almost always about economies of scale and cost savings.

YouTube wasn't a merger. It was an acquisition.

Yes, Google Video was similar sized to YouTube (maybe), but Google itself was far greater.

If you're bought out, the bigger company that now owns you can put more money behind your product vision and that leads to more employment.

Mergers only happen between 'equals', and in that case the benefit is the two companies can stop fighting each other in the market and 'synergize' by firing all the sales, middle-manages, and customer support that now are unnecessarily overlapped. Do you really need two sales guys to target the same customer now that you're the same company? No.

I guess it’s all semantics to me, as when I read “merger“ or “merger of equals” there is usually a dominant partner. Either way it gets to the end you’re pointing at. Less need for excess sales, support, etc.

I see this in some acquisitions too. (Like when IBM buys anyone)

But how many CEOs testify to congress under oath that the merger will create more jobs? Why is there no repercussion for lying under oath?

Congressional testimonies are just show business to let politicians market themselves. There was nothing stopping the FCC or whoever from requiring T-Mobile to agree to penalties if total headcount did not reach certain targets at certain dates.

No one in leadership had intent to ensure a minimum number of jobs.

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