After 4.5 wonderful years I have decided to leave Ericsson and move on to new and unknown ventures. I was never comfortable with the idea of finding a stable job in a stable company and getting “settled” in life. The idea of a stable life may appeal to most people but for me life is all about constant motion, moving on and experimenting with every plausible opportunity.
Not many of us have the luxury of being the wanderer like myself, most of us are bounded by responsibilities and are accountable for not only ourselves but also for the people associated with us. So yes, I consider myself lucky that I was born a wanderer and despite all the forces against me I managed to stay a wanderer by refusing to “settle” in life.
When I joined Ericsson in 2011, it was an exciting time, I remember being ecstatic to have an opportunity to work in the telecom industry with all the new technologies in the palm of my hand. I couldn’t wait to get started. Well, it has been a roller coaster ride I had a blend of good, beautiful, bad and awful times in this company with enormous opportunities to grow technically, professionally & politically.
With every passing year in the company I have witnessed myself turn into a professional, resilient and motivated woman, which is a world apart from the shy, impressionable and naïve girl that I was almost five years ago. Every moment has been a stepping stone towards believing in hard work, passion and honesty.
There were times when after a fulfilling productive day of codding and successful testing of a feature I had factually jumped all the way home with excitement and then there were times when I was criticized for my software design methodologies and have mumbled with frustration all the way home and how can I forget the day of my desperate crying in the toilet [Maybe someday I will state the reason here]
Here are my key take-a-ways from working @Ericsson:
Year 1 (2011-2012) “Speak up”:
Speak up for what you want; you will not be offered an opportunity in a plate. If you want something, speak up and grab it. I didn’t do that, I sat and waited for opportunities to land on my desk and I only realized the mistake when I was irritated, unsatisfied and couldn’t figure out the reasons. With time I learned to speak up for myself and grab the opportunities that I wanted.
Year 2 (2012-2013): “Work hard, always pay off”
This was the year I worked the most in terms of writing code and software design. I wrote hundreds and thousands of lines of code. I was given an opportunity to do so (in other words I grabbed the opportunity), I dedicated myself to it and it paid off. As a result I proved myself to be professional developer and I was also given the prestigious place in the top 10% of most productive employees in the company (and a personal letter form the CEO). So don’t be afraid to work hard you might not see it immediately but it definitely pays off in the long run.
Year 3 (2013-2014): “Don’t be afraid to take risks”.
This year I nominated myself to go and sit with the customer in order to understand the problems they face with the product that I work on. It was a bold task, nobody wants to go and sit onto the dark side but to me it was a wonderful experience, besides all the angry stares I received from the customers due to missed deadlines from my team this experience helped me gain access to the flaws in our product and in our team’s way of working and most importantly helped me to look at software design from the customer’s perspective.
Year 4 (2014-2015): “It’s a lot of politics”
Working in big IT companies is not always about producing the best quality software. I would say most of it is about lobbying and how well you pitch your ideas and advertise the work that you have been doing. I learned how to defend my ideas and opinions and how to convey my thoughts on particular matters to the people with the power to make influential decisions. I did play some tricks like everyone else but most importantly I developed an eye for identifying the scenarios where people are playing nasty tricks.
That was a small list of my key takeaways from every year that I have spent in Ericsson, it was a wonderful journey and I must confess I am a little sad to leave, but in the end it all comes down to the fact that one must move on and so I can’t blame life for providing me with opportunities to satisfy my thirst for knowledge and continue my path towards super stardom : )