Ericsson Is Planning To Cut 25,000 Jobs in Brutal Response To Crisis, Report Says (businessinsider.com) 96
An anonymous reader shares a report: Multinational telecom operator Ericsson -- which carries 40% of the world's mobile traffic on its networks and is Sweden's second largest company by revenue -- reported another disappointing quarter last month.
As response, the troubled company's new CEO Borje Ekholm announced costs cuts of 10 billion SEK ($1,25 bn) per year. He did not say how many jobs were at stake. Now insider sources have provided details to Svenska Dagbladet (SvD), indicating that Ericsson's restructuring will be more brutal than expected. The Swedish newspaper reports that there are advanced plans to cut Ericsson's operations by 80-90 percent in some markets, and centralize several European markets. However, the 14,000 employee-strong Swedish work force is to stay intact -- at least all R&D engineers. "Right now, Ericsson is hiring engineers to repair the damage that earlier saving packages caused. It's crucial that most of all the Swedish R&D department remains somewhat protected. They are the ones who will come up with the new solutions that will drive sales in the long term," said a person with insight into the process. According to internal sources, up to 25,000 people may be affected by the restructuring program. The Swedish company currently employs 109,000 people across 110 offices around the world.
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For research? No.
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For research? No.
Actually there are. Higher education in Sweden used to be free for all, that led to a lot of students from Pakistan, India, Bangladesh (and others). They generally studied tech related subjects. On a swedish student visa you are allowed to work, so many found work that could be combined with the studies. Once the studies are over you either go back or as most opt, you try to get a work permit. Rules are you need an offer of employment valid for two years that pays at least 13000 sek/month (about 1600 usd).
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No worries, Sweden has plenty of "immigrants" to fill those positions!
So that instead of having to modify a cellphone to act as a detonator, they will be able to just bring up an app.
Re:Undo the Damage of Prior Savings Packages (Score:5, Insightful)
The MBA classes that I have took, actually encouraged R&D and making a solid product. The problem is the misinterpretation of the statement that "A companies first priorities are to towards the shareholders" The person who had created that statement actually went on to expand and apologized for it. At the time of that statement a lot of companies were running their business to the grown with shareholder money and just pocketing the money, or putting the money not into the business but towards other causes they may feel they want to put it into. This wasn't meant as a statement to put short term gains over a long term plan, but to make sure the money used for the business is put towards the growth of the business, so the shareholders will be able get payback from their investments.
Often these decisions are also not from some Harvard MBA, but from accountants, who need to report quarterly, which cannot always get a direct correlation of money put into R&D and company profits.
Only part of the problem anyway (Score:2)
Ericsson was the victim of a huge amount of IP theft. It was obvious when a Chinese telecom equipment provider released a router a few years ago which looked exactly like an Ericsson router and behaved exactly the same way. Including all of the bugs and "features" for developer access to diagnostics. It took quite a while for them to react, and what they did to try and stop the theft was too little too late.
When developer cost is favored over security at every step of the process, well... they could have
Only part of the IP problem anyway (Score:1)
But...but...IP theft doesn't hurt anyone. At least that's what Slashdot tells us.
Re: Only part of the problem anyway (Score:3)
Huawei opened office close by Ericssons hq, and atleast three people was arrested giving IP to a russian, probably one with diplomatic immunity given the secrecy surrounding the issue, don't remember how it all turned out in the end though. (This all happened a couple of years ago).
Not a telecom operator (Score:3, Informative)
Ericsson is not a telecom operator, but a telecoms equipment company.
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That does not make them an operator, that still just makes them a vendor. Professional Services is just another product vendors supply to operators and service providers.
https://wiki.mef.net/display/C... [mef.net]
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not an interesting employer (Score:1)
ericsson has a management problem , not an employee problem , i worked for them for 3 years , was originally hired as a full hire but they fucked me up in my contract mot making me a full employee , i.e treating me as a consultant but at the same salary as full hires and no socials being renewed at 3 months period , they ended up dismissing me when i asked they either titularise me or give me my consulting fees as an independent , i am a single parent and i told them straight off on the first phone calls t
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WTF? And they say US care is bad?
One of my kids needed an ENT last year and was seen the same day
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WTF? And they say US care is bad?
One of my kids needed an ENT last year and was seen the same day
Shh ... it's an article of faith for them that US care is awful and Euro care is awesome.
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No they fit me in cause it was somewhat of an emergency and it was a referral from a pediatrician they know. and if they didn't i would have just went to one of the other of dozens of ENT doctors in my area within a few days.
The only time I really have to wait is when I want an appointment on a weekend so I don't have to take off from work. Those are a long wait.
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If there is an acute problem that needs treatment, the patient will be seen the same day. If it can wait - like a routine checkup - an appointment is required, although some specialists really take their time.
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Germany here. When I went down with acute abdominal pain, I got a CT a couple of hours later. I had to wait a month for a MRI after a spinal disc herniation, but then again the diagnosis was pretty clear in the first place, the doctor just wanted to know which disc has failed (two discs, as it came out after the MRI). With the result I got additional personal rehabilitation training with 10 EUR copayment for each session. As an additional bonus, the trainer was a pretty hot MILF.
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We don't have medical insurance, and it wouldn't have made a difference in her care anyway.
I am so glad I live in a country where one accident won't bankrupt me.
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. . . That pretty much showcases the good and bad side of both systems.
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MRI machines have gotten a lot cheaper recently. The computational resources required to analyze the results are now doable with a standard desktop machine and there are better superconductors available which can do most tasks without requiring as much cooling as the old devices which needed to be at the temperature of liquid helium. So I expect this situation to change eventually.
Re:not an interesting employer (Score:4, Interesting)
WTF? And they say US care is bad?
Mostly "they" don't say US care is bad. They say it is way overpriced, and many people don't have access.
Health spending per person in Sweden: $4900.
Health spending per person in America: $10,500
Life expectancy in Sweden: 82.5 years
Life expectancy in America: 79.3 years
No access to healthcare in Sweden: Less than 1%
No access to healthcare in America: About 12%
Government spending on healthcare in Sweden: $3800 per person (about 75% of total)
Government spending on healthcare in America: $6300* per person (about 60% of total)
*Medicare, Medicaid, VA, and ACA subsidies.
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Except that's not actually true (see clarifications above) and you are now just feeling smug in your ideological bubble based on intentionally misunderstanding the facts. Tell me, how quickly do you get an MRI in the US if you don't have insurance?
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As someone who also worked at Ericsson in their consulting arm I can agree they SUCK and have terrible management. After 5 "managers" in 3 years that they seemed to randomly pull out of a hat.... Jim will now be the manager , and he will manag
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Or, you know, Ericsson, being a *multinational* company, might also employee people outside of Sweden. If fact they might even have offices in such backwards countries as the US, perhaps even a headquarters in Plano, Texas (https://www.ericsson.com/en/careers/global-locations/rnam), one of the most stereotypical "conservative" states in the country.
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The waits are probably longer in Sweden (or japan, or the UK, or Germany, or France, or any developed country), while the care in the US is probably on par, or better (if you can afford it.)
But US tax rates are lower. And it's a really tough sell politically in this country to get people to look beyond the next paycheck.
Basically It's really, really, really hard to have a single payer system that works when half the population would have an easier time paying 11 quintillion dollaroos for a jet of very lim
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You mean, apart from the likelihood of inappropriate and expensive treatment which will reduce your quality of life or life expectancy.
I've seen both US and European socialized medicine first hand and the idea that the US "system" is better is laughable.
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Your socials are covered by the collective agreement and th swedish government. Those who are able to negotiate private health insurance are key positions not the average worker. If you have to take care of your kid it pays about 80% of your salary and it's no biggie and you are as a male encuraged to take parental leave (for no other reason then to spend time with your kid) under a very generous system.
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Being a temp, asking for FT employment, and getting rejected is not being "f***** over". As a temp you either endear yourself to your employer and make your indispensable, or you don't. You didn't.
Swedish unions save there jobs the us office H1B's (Score:2)
Swedish unions save there jobs the us office H1B's to cut costs.
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Actually Ericsson has employees with work permits, however to get one you must have an offer of work with conditions that are not worse than the collective agreement or what's common on the swedish labour market. As Ericsson has a collective agreement they can not (easily at least) dump wages. As others have noted layoffs in Sweden is cheap and engineer salaries are lower than for example germany.
How do you cut 40% of you workforce (Score:2)
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It's like hypothermia. They have to cut off the extremities or die in the short term. Hopefully if they retain their core R&D they can ride the 5G wave. If they do not put R&D first right now, Huawei and Nokia will crush them when 5G rollouts start.
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No Swedish jobs affected (where most r&d is made). They centralize sales and get out of support contracts they are doing at a loss. This is as far as reports go, very little has been said officially except for the no swedish jobs affected.
They have 25k jobs to cut? (Score:1)
Have they tried naming their phone ANGSLILJA? (Score:2)
5G is ready, and Ericsson developed it (Score:2)
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https://www.engadget.com/2017/... [engadget.com]
Whatever you do, don't get rid of the... (Score:3)
Telephone Sanitizers
(HHGTTG ref)
What planet did I just step onto?? (Score:4, Interesting)
I mean, I get that Ericsson probably saw they need to get going if they want to be part of 5G and future telecom equipment rollouts....but I have NEVER heard a CEO, even of a technology company, acknowledge that they haven't spent enough on R&D. At least lately, R&D has always been a cost that had to be minimized in any way possible. Anything outside of a 3-month timeframe is completely off the table at most companies; it has to affect this quarter's numbers or it's totally invisible.
At least in big US corporations, I blame this on the MBA grooming cycle. MBAs are taught that they can manage anything using metrics and spreadsheets, and that they need no knowledge of the actual business processes they're managing...it's enough to be able to run the numbers. Add to this the fact that an MBA gets you an immediate management job at most companies, even if you've never done the work before or know anything about the company. And on top of that, the truly elite business schools graduate MBAs who haven't really had to work or get any real-world experience. It's Harvard MBA --> McKinsey --> VP job at a high-end McKinsey customer, with no stops in between. I've seen this happen in a couple of large companies - you get people who have no clue what's going on unless there's a dashboard telling them some metric is out of spec.
I wish more companies would admit mistakes like Ericsson is doing and try to focus on something other than the share price...but I'm not holding my breath!
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There is another path:
MBA -> VC firm -> CEO of VC dependent company.
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MBAs are taught that they can manage anything using metrics and spreadsheets, and that they need no knowledge of the actual business processes they're managing
Can someone with an MBA comment on whether or not this is true?
Never Cut Engineering/R&D for your core busine (Score:3, Interesting)
"Right now, Ericsson is hiring engineers to repair the damage that earlier saving packages caused. It's crucial that most of all the Swedish R&D department remains somewhat protected. They are the ones who will come up with the new solutions that will drive sales in the long term,"
In other words, the last CEO was a typical MBA jackass who cut engineering/R&D as a short term cost savings measure, and now they are paying a huge price (~25% layoff based on 100k employees). It never ceases to amaze me how many CEOs view R&D as overhead, and cut those employees willy nilly and then laugh all the way to the bank when they pull the ripcord on their golden parachute in 5 years as the company tanks because they don't have any products to compete because they starved their pipeline to fatten the C-level executive bonuses. (A karmic law that will never be passed would be for management bonuses to be impounded for 5 years and distributed to any employees laid off for 5 years after the bonus is paid.)
The root cause of all this stupid is the practice of paying CEOs more than god in salary and bonuses for what amounts to a relatively simple job (look at the market, competition, position and guess where to go/what to do next). Regardless of what the CEOs might say, most larger, established companies would probably do better being guided by a simple algorithm that looks at maybe 15 key factors and then decides if the company should expand, how many new products to pursue etc. and then let market research and engineering feasiblity studies guide what products are selected using a Pugh study.
CEOs are fast becoming the emperor with no clothes and are in the same category as fund managers (hint: you are better off with an index fund, since fund managers are about as good as throwing darts at a wall). Companies need to come up with a similar, stable form of governance to an index fund.
Most real work is done by lower management, HR, sales, sales research, etc. "Vision" might be marketed by CEOs as some ineffable thing, but most companies would do a lot better long term hiring someone internally for $300k/year who knows WTF the company is in the business of doing.