Verizon Cuts 13,000 Jobs as Schulman Dismantles Bureaucracy

Roughly 13,000 jobs — about 13% of Verizon's workforce — were cut one month after Dan Schulman became chief executive in October 2025, the sharpest single move in his campaign to overhaul the largest U.S. wireless carrier. "I really needed to show that this was different," Schulman said of the layoffs. "That I was very serious about the change that was going to happen."

At his first companywide meeting after taking the role, Schulman spoke without notes or slides. He told employees Verizon had surrendered market share to AT&T, T-Mobile and lower-cost providers, that its bureaucracy had become a liability, and that layoffs were coming. He was 67, newly arrived from a Montana ranch and a near-decade running PayPal until 2023. He had turned down the Verizon board's offer twice before his wife persuaded him he could make a difference. "I came in with a little bit of a bad attitude," he says; now he is "absolutely loving it." Should the board have moved sooner? "Yes, we probably should have," he concedes.

How bad were the losses?

The competitive math behind the urgency is stark. In 2024, T-Mobile added a net 3.1 million postpaid phone lines and AT&T added 1.65 million; Verizon added fewer than 900,000. In the first three quarters of 2025, Verizon's consumer business lost a net 414,000 postpaid phone lines, 356,000 of them in the first quarter alone. Director Roxanne Austin recalls 20 consecutive quarters finishing third among major carriers while management kept prioritizing network build-out over shifting customer needs. "Our playbook didn't change for five years," she says. Hans Vestberg, CEO from 2018 to 2025, declined to comment.

Inside the company, some decisions required 35 signatures. Schulman describes a "big lumbering giant that had fallen behind." He recalls one manager proudly planning to lift a sales closing rate from 15% to 25%. "So, are you saying at the end of that, we are losing 75% of the time?" Schulman asked. His operating principle: "Anytime the pace of change external is greater than the pace of change internal, you're falling behind."

What does the turnaround look like?

The early numbers point to a rebound. In the third quarter, Verizon gained a net 406,000 phone lines, against 44,000 a year earlier — its strongest third quarter in five years. It added 137,000 customer accounts, its best quarterly performance in more than a decade, while slashing promotional spending by 41%.

CFO Tony Skiadas says the old pricing strategy fed a costly cycle of price hikes, defections, and expensive win-back promotions. "We've seen that movie before over the years, and we know how it ends," he says. Schulman cancelled a planned price increase and launched the Simplicity plan, cutting the starting single-line price from $65 to as low as $30. Verizon is also offering incentives to bundle mobile service with home internet, including Fios.

Chief Commercial Officer Kevin Zavaglia frames the shift plainly: "Customers don't want to pay for a great network; that's the expectation." Once, the "Can you hear me now?" campaign made network quality a premium justification; as rivals closed the gap, that advantage became table stakes. (The campaign's actor, Paul Marcarelli, resurfaced in 2016 pitching for Sprint.)

What threats and opportunities lie ahead?

In October, Elon Musk's SpaceX bought an $8 billion portfolio of low-band cellular spectrum licenses, laying groundwork to compete with the incumbents. Schulman takes the ambitions "quite seriously" but estimates a rival network would take four to six years and roughly $300 billion to build. "Frankly, at that point, I welcome the opportunity to compete against them," he said on the October earnings call. "Once they come into the market, we will be ferociously competitive."

AI demand offers upside. Verizon has signed agreements with Google, Amazon Web Services and others worth billions to supply high-capacity fiber connecting data centers. Internally, AI tools have cut about six minutes from the in-store phone-buying process.

Schulman demands intensity and expects managers to know their businesses inside out. When executives propose taking a discussion offline, he challenges them: "Why would we take it offline? Like, we're all here." Some employees may find the style too demanding and leave; he accepts that. "Heaven and hell are the same place," he says. "It's just heaven for some and hell for others." Austin likens the task to "turning an ocean liner at the speed of a race car" — and landing it on the moon.