Pros
I enjoy working at Ericsson because I'm passionate about telecommunications. There is very few companies in the world with such rich history of innovations and technology leadership: various product lines, technology areas and research opportunities - industry leader in mobile networking space. To some extent the company is a bit cautious and doesn't have aggressive marketing like American companies - more conservative European/Nordic culture in doing business and promoting the achievements.
In summary, company has:
- very good benefits such as health insurance;
- good salary, employee stock purchase plan (for last 4 years the stock price is more or less the same, no stock options);
- 15 - 25 days of paid time off, additional flexible holidays and personal business days;
- good life/work balance. However, you may work late or early hours due to distributed across the sites (Europe, China, India) projects;
- new office is under construction on HWY 101/Bowers Ave (Santa Clara Square project);
- non-college like professional open space environment (alcohol/drug free offices, no shorts, no free food);
- espresso machines, 0.25c/0.30c vending machines, bagels/donuts on Fridays;
- it is possible to get a decent laptop with Linux instead of Windows (Linux support is not outsourced to the third party);
- a lot of folks from different parts of the world;
- hardcore telecom company: everything is about connected world and technology for good.
Cons
On the other side there is always some things to improve. Some of the pain points:
- old organizational structure - many levels of redundancies and a lot of processes (it is a large company);
- a lot of project managers without any technical background. Sometimes I think, that the ratio between project managers and engineers are 1:3(!)
- promotions: what I noticed is that you would need to have a connections to get a promotion on a higher than director level. Most of the upper management are non locals (which is good and bad);
- IT support is outsourced. Hard to survive for non-Windows folks: a lot of IE7/Windows-only enterprise tools.
