Alexander – My story

Reading longer texts takes some time. A cup of tea (or coffee) might help. ☕

Looks like you are not scared by seeing longer texts. This makes me happy. 😊

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To understand the economic (and also strategic) situation at Ericsson one could simply compare the current number of employees with the value in 2022. If that makes you happier, you can always see this as an effort "to enhance cost efficiency". The first wave of such "enhancements" took place in 2023 and many (including me) were hoping that it was enough. But it wasn't. I remember when I just finished exploring Bock Casemates in Luxembourg during my vacation in spring 2024 and decided to have a quick look at work emails. I know, one should not check work emails while being on vacation. It was a bad habit indeed. But during all those transits on my tour around the Europe I had plenty of time to make my decision. When such layoffs are being planned (regardless if voluntary or not), managers tend to first let go those who want to leave anyway. I was one of those who "raised a hand". To be on the safe side, I expressed my plans to farewell via four communication channels. The managers did not mind. I saw a few people crying when leaving the company after more than 20 years. Somehow, I was not having such emotions. Perhaps, being at the company for "only" 12.5 years was not enough. Or maybe I was just reflecting too much about what I saw happening in the company. Want to know what exactly I saw? Once again, I can only tell you about the non-disclosure agreement (NDA). But I can look backwards a bit – software developer designing and testing features, scrum master organizing the process, system manager defining feature requirements and educating support engineers, senior developer and design architect re-engineering old products and platforms, engineer fixing issues in operation, support engineer troubleshooting severe customer cases. Those were just a few examples. How to summarize my time at Ericsson? Most often, I was a problem solver. Sometimes, I was a trouble maker. Anyway, despite the development life cycle in packet core is notorious for being complex, it seems like I was playing an active part in most of its phases. Except the recycling phase, which I would rather leave to others.

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