Any more BT escapees out there?

[Hailstone]

I have started this thread to avoid a complete hijack of Port Perrans  layout thread so that other ex BT people can swap tales here.
I joined Post office telephones as an apprentice on 06/08/1973 and spent the next 40 years and 216 days doing a variety of jobs Exchange maintenance, trunking and grading, TO(A) of an RSC, computer network maintenance,  ANIP a computer based cable fault location project, External planning, MDF capacity planning and MDF capacity management from which I retired in 2014 with a 9 month release package - the 6 years that have elapsed since seem to have gone in a flash. from the mid 1980's I witnessed the upper levels of management institute a pogrom of most of the managers that knew what they were doing and replaced them with "yes men" who by and large were not fit to shine shoes. I was lucky to survive as long as I did and when I have talked to those poor souls who are still there it could justifiably be said that the lunatics have taken over the asylum.

Regards,

Alex   

[GrahamB]

I joined what, at the time was London South Central Telephone Area in September 1973. At the end of my apprenticeship I ended up in Nine Elms Exchange as a T2A on exchange maintenance.
I got my TO in 1979 at, not liking the look of TXE4, I moved to RHQ Brixton in 1981 on data circuit design.
In 1984 I moved to Gower Street with National Networks as a temporary level 1 and was made permanent two years later.
In 1989 I moved to Canturbury as a Project Manager attached to what was then the Channel Link Unit (Channel Tunnel Construction Project).
In 1990 a joint venture company was formed with FT and FCR called Cordiale Comms Ltd and I transferred into it as a temporary level2.
At the end of the project I moved into the outsourcing arena and continued my way up the management structure, reaching level 5.
I took the King's shilling in 2007 and went to work for Network Rail as a Signaller (I was already a K&ESR Signalman). The idea being to do your hobby and get paid for it.
I retired early in 2010.

[degsy_safc]

I Joined on 01/09/1980, as an apprentice in the Newcastle on Tyne Telephone Area.
I finished my apprenticeship and went into Exchange Construction on Strowger, then TXE4. I was really lucky as all of the existing TXE4 trained TO's on our staff all got promotion the same year.
So I was fast tracked to TO at the ripe old age of 21, didn't even have to do Basic Auto, just had to complete al, of the E4 courses, spent one stint of 10 weeks at Stone doing 3 courses back to back.
Stuck the construction job for quite a while, ending up doing internal fibre work for 34, 140 & HO 565 routes.
Was promoted to MPG2 as a product manager and was then promoted within 2 years to MPG4 as a systems process manager, the role was to even a role to be fair and I spent most of my time data collecting for the system developers - money for old rope.
Was then seconded to a project team and met one of the best managers ive ever had, worked with him for nearly 15 years, before a re-arrangement broke up our partnership and we went our separate ways.
During that time the old job families changed and I went from an MPG4 to a Project Manager 1, wasn't long before I was promoted to Project Manager 2 which was roughly the equivalent to a PCGT (a level 2.5)
I finished my career with 3 years working for a team project managing the deployment of super fast broadband across the West Yorkshire patch - I had been homebased for approx 18 years by this point (in Sunderland), but was still travelling all over the country as all of my PM roles were national based.
Retired from the company in November 2017, no leavers package, but loads of great memories..

Cheers Derek 

[themadhippy]

Didn't work for BT directly,but spent a lot of time at bletchley as the company i worked for had the electrical maintenance contract for a few years.We had our  office(garden shed)  next to H block.most memorable job was digging,by hand around one of the old accommodation blocks that was being demolished,to rewire the street lights.

[The Q]

Didn't work for BT directly,but spent a lot of time at bletchley as the company i worked for had the electrical maintenance contract for a few years.We had our  office(garden shed)  next to H block.most memorable job was digging,by hand around one of the old accommodation blocks that was being demolished,to rewire the street lights.

NOT BT, but I spent   a year (1975-76) at BP, our accomodation was in B block classrooms in D Block

[Snowwolflair]

Early 80's I ran equipment design and delivery activity into BT for Philips and I can assure you there were a fair number of lunatics in charge even then 

[Graham]

I was fortunate to join Post Office Telephones on 23rd Aug 1971 in Bedford as an apprentice technician. After 3 days of induction at the local college we were told where to report to on the first day working. Luckily for me I was assigned to a lovely gent who looked after this very naive 16yr old. He managed to steer me away from all the tricks played on the other apprentices, as I found out later his son was apprenticed to my father so that probably had a lot to do with it.

After completing my apprenticeship i started out on Exchange Construction, but was quickly moved over to Circuit Provision Group, which although i fought the move quickly turned out to be a great move. We were providing the connections to allow STD, then IDD for customers, starting out on the exchange side of things which gave me insight into the different exchanges of the day, Strowger, Crossbar, TXE1, 2 & 4. Then moving across to the transmission side of this activity, working on all the analogue and digital transmission technologies.

After working on many different projects, i ended up securing a level 1 position on a new team providing support for one of the newly formed Sales teams, I suppose we were what today would be called Sales Engineers. Our team designed and wrote the proposals for customers implementing the first LAN's, large private networks and the like.

All in all I had a good 16yrs with BT, and the training set me up for the rest of my career.