Telstra is sharpening the axe again. It’s becoming a seasonal tradition in Melbourne, right up there with the AFL Grand Final and complaining about the weather. This time, 650 more heads are on the chopping block.

It’s the second major cull this year. Back in May, the "Big T" announced it was nuking 2,800 roles to "simplify" its operations. Apparently, 2,800 wasn’t quite simple enough. Now, another 650 workers are being shown the door, with a chunk of their responsibilities being shipped off to Infosys. You know the drill. It’s the classic corporate shell game: fire the locals, hire an offshore giant, and pray the "synergies" don’t result in a three-hour wait time for someone to tell you to restart your router.

The PR spin is predictable. It’s always about "agility." It’s always about "efficiency." It’s never about the fact that Telstra’s share price has been doing a slow-motion car crash for years, and the only way to keep investors from revolting is to offer up a ritual sacrifice of the middle class. The company says these changes will help them focus on their core business. I guess "core business" doesn't include keeping the people who actually know how the legacy systems work on the payroll.

Let’s talk about the Infosys of it all. Outsourcing isn't a new trick, but it's a tired one. We’ve seen this movie. A company trims the fat, then trims the muscle, and eventually starts sawing into the bone. The work doesn't disappear; it just gets moved to a spreadsheet where the hourly rate looks better to a CFO who hasn’t stepped foot in a regional exchange in a decade. Infosys gets a fat contract, Telstra gets to brag about "reduced overheads" in the next quarterly report, and the customer gets a slightly more bureaucratic hellscape to navigate when their NBN goes dark.

There’s a specific kind of friction here that the press releases ignore. When you outsource deep technical knowledge to a third-party provider, you lose the institutional memory. You lose the guy who knows why that specific server rack in Paramatta acts up every time it rains. You replace him with a ticket system and a "standard operating procedure" that was written by someone who thinks a cloud is just something that makes it rain on their golf game.

Telstra’s CEO, Vicki Brady, is navigating a mess. The company is trying to pivot into an AI-driven, high-tech future while lugging around the baggage of a former state-owned monopoly. It’s a hard pivot. It’s also an expensive one. Restructuring costs for the year are expected to hit somewhere north of $350 million. That’s a lot of money to spend just to stop paying people.

The irony is thick enough to choke on. Telstra spends millions on marketing campaigns about "connecting" Australians. They want us to believe they’re the backbone of the nation, the digital glue holding the Outback and the city together. But it’s hard to sell the "human connection" angle when you’re systematically removing the humans from the equation.

What’s left? A leaner, meaner Telstra, presumably. A company that’s "fit for the future." But every time a company says they’re getting "fit," it usually just means they’re becoming a ghost of their former selves. The desks get empty, the offices get smaller, and the technical support gets moved to a time zone six hours behind.

Don't expect the cuts to stop at 650. In the world of modern telecommunications, nobody is ever truly "efficient" enough. There’s always another automation tool to buy, another consultant to hire, and another batch of "redundant" employees to "transition out of the business." It’s the circle of life, if the circle was drawn by a McKinsey associate with a cold heart and a sharp pencil.

We’re told this is progress. We’re told this is how a modern tech company survives in a competitive market. But you have to wonder what they’ll have left to cut once the "simplification" is finally complete.

If the goal is a company run entirely by three guys in a room and an AI bot that refuses to understand your accent, Telstra is well on its way.

Does anyone actually believe the service will get better after this?