Ericsson reviews

Once you get past the "Networked Society" marketing and buzz (however nice it is) you realise as an employee of Ericsson, regardless of where you are within the business, that the opportunity for Ericsson to be the/create the networked society really has been missed. Sure they're doing some good things for 5G and small-cells, but that's about it. All you have to do is truly look at the other players in ICT - Which is another thing, Ericsson think they are an "ICT" company, but really, they're still just telecoms with some fancy marketing. They've missed the opportunity for cloud, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, etc have all beat them to it and there are about 5 startups who have done more with IoT in the last 3 years than Ericsson has ever and probably ever will do. But, again, fancy marketing creates the illusion that they're on this track to manage Big Data, being a key player in IoT and Cloud, etc when in actual fact, all of these opportunities have been completely missed. Ericsson also has an internal identity issue in some countries, especially in the UK. Sure Ericsson is Ericsson in Sweden and in India everyone loves Ericsson, this massive company that has provided thousands of jobs. In the UK however that is not the case. Ericsson (over the years) bought out many UK companies and converted everyone to "Ericsson", which is fine and this is a practice that is followed often by big corporations, but once the mergers were complete all they did (as usual) is slap some fancy "It Begins With You", "You + Ericsson", "You Are The Networked Society", etc marketing over everything from internal comms to building marketing and then expected that to just work as an identity. There is a general feeling across the whole business within the UK that we are not really Ericsson, we want to be, but when everything comes from Sweden by people who have probably never been to the UK, it certainly doesn't feel like it. Recently we had a Fun Day in the UK, the 2nd one ever, just looking around you could see that no one really knew what was happening. No one really understands the business outside of their own department, which is understandable when another country tries to force everyone into the same ways of working and pretend like everyone is reaching for the same goal, which is what? The Networked Society that we've already missed? Who knows. Ericsson also doesn't feel like a company that truly values the UK, which brings me to my next point... ...Offshoring! Yes everyone is doing it but Ericsson is really doing it. Regardless of where you are within Ericsson (unless you're Swedish) if your job can be done from India, Romania, China, Mexico, etc - It will be, eventually. I'm specifically talking about jobs that are off-shored to these places, not the local jobs in these places. So much work is being off-shored on a constant-basis, worldwide. Sometimes it works out, but most of the time work is sent to countries (such as India) in big "global service centres" where the knowledge is sub-par, the skills are just not there and the local values are completely lost, which may be fine for a background, easy, data entry-type role, but they're doing this with everything. Even some local management (worldwide) is now being done from "GSCs". Finally, if you want to earn a good wage don't come to Ericsson. Work for an operator or a competitor first, then come to Ericsson. If you start here, you will never get a decent rise, there is no real ladder to climb, you are forced (due to internal policies, which are global) to leave and then come back if you ever want to climb any kind of ladder within Ericsson, which is a shame. Talent retention is not Ericsson's forte.