The theme at Ericsson in Ireland was to #PressforProgress on International Women’s Day this 8^th March. We were all encouraged to pledge to concentrate on a number of areas such as to maintain a gender parity mindset, challenge stereotypes and bias, influence others’ beliefs and actions and celebrate women’s achievements. I’d like to share some of the photos with you here.

I hope I am living up to my personal pledge – which is to forge positive visibility of women – by congratulating Claire, Laura and Tara for organising the day so well and raising awareness of IWD in Ericsson Ireland on the day.

At Ericsson, we inspire innovation, communication and connectivity around the world. Your personal strengths are our strengths – and it is Ericsson’s mission to ensure that diversity and inclusion are some of the most important building blocks of our company.

If that sounds like the kind if place you would like to be, then we’d love to hear from you. To see all our open positions, please click here.

In the future, Self Organising Networks will be a critical enabler for the widespread deployment of mobile broadband technologies. Network complexity has reached the stage at which self-configuring, self-optimizing and self-healing functions are now indispensable for running a modern mobile network.

Ericsson’s SON Manager is our innovation. This is an amazing technology that is being researched and developed in our Athlone site in Ireland. If you would like to be part of this and other exciting projects, we would love to hear from you. We are looking for a Senior Engineers and you can see our open positions here.
If you are interested in seeing the demo in action (and having a try), to find out where we will be next, please follow our Twitter account.

1: The Campus has end-to-end responsibility

If your dream in college was to be somewhere where the entire software lifecycle is hosted, then the Ericsson Athlone Software Campus is the place to be. Here, you can truly innovate and your ideas can flourish.

2: Ericsson is diverse

We have over 50 nationalities onsite in Athlone. It’s one of the many things that makes our office a truly special place to be. If you are a Software Engineer, Analyst, or Architect anywhere in Europe (or even further away), and are interested in joining us, we would love to hear from you. It’s the uniqueness you bring when you join , that we are delighted to have, that helps us continue to build the best software in the world. You can learn about Sowmya’s experience or joining us from overseas in the video below.

3: Athlone is at the heart of it!

We are in the best place in Ireland – right at the heart of everything in Athlone! From here, you can do anything. You can enjoy serenity in the countryside, or the hustle-and-bustle of the city , go to the beach, cycle, hike, ski, go horse-riding, golf, water sports– the list is endless!). Best of all, we have a strong ethos of work-life balance, so you will have the opportunity to do all those things. Below is a great video about life in Athlone.

4: Ericsson offers great career advancement

Ericsson has over 42,000 patents which we have achieved by hiring the smartest people in the world and nurturing their talents to help them reach their full potential. As you might imagine from a global R&D centre with end-to-end responsibility, we are brimming with smart people on our team.

You and your manager will continually work together on a plan to make sure you succeed, either through training, mentoring, special projects, exploring technology trends of other means. You can even take advantage of our scholar program, which includes fee assistance and extra leave for study and exams.

Does this sound like the kind of place you want to be?

If so, we  would love to hear from you. You can see our latest positions and apply by clicking here.

And happy World Day for Cultural Diversity!

Turkish ‘Lady’s Thigh Meatballs from Emrah Onder of Ericsson

The index ranks 145 economies according to how well they are leveraging their female talent pool, based on economic, educational, health-based and political indicators. Here is a video about the index if you would like to know more:

As a country, we are not 100% there, but this is a very positive move in the right direction.

Ireland moves from 8th to 5th place globally

The competition (in co-operation with Mensa, the high IQ society) involved employees of companies taking the Mensa’s official IQ test on a voluntary basis. Ericsson Hungary were the highest on average (for the second time in a row, as they won in 2014 as well) in the large company category. Several Ericsson entrants even achieved scores high enough to be offered Mensa membership.

Well done all!

You can read more about the competition here: http://www.intelligensvallalat.hu/fooldal (in Hungarian).

Opening with the surprising fact that; currently, there are as many mobile subscriptions as people in the world, and every second, 20 new mobile broadband subscriptions are activated – the numbers and facts continue to astound throughout.

You can even create your own graphs, tables and data using the brilliant Traffic Exploration tool. Here’s one I made which illustrated the rise of LTE/5G from 2010 onward (including predictions to 2021) in Western Europe. for those of you who know me and my love of data; I may spend hours exploring this…

– Unit testing with TypeScript by Daniel Jimenez Garcia, and

– Decorators & metadata reflection in TypeScript by Remo H. Jansen

The last event was an enormous success, and Tuesday is already booked out, but you can join the meetup group online to hear about when the next (and subsequent  meetups) will be, here: http://www.meetup.com/Dublin-TypeScript-Meetup/ as well as join the wait-list for Tuesday if anyone else cancels.

For all who come on Tuesday, I hope you will all feel very welcome here.

The event was hosted by Derrick Howard and Sharon Goff who outlined why LGBT issues. The discussion was informative and well received, with the steering group team members adding their comments during a very interactive session.

Karen Lyons provided some background on the importance of Diversity generally, and the session also asked the audience to think about what they themselves can do.

The session had a collaborative feel where many of those present had the opportunity to ask questions and give suggestions and feedback.

Ericsson Ireland is committed to providing an inclusive work environment where everyone is valued and welcome. All individuals are respected for the skills they bring and the contributions and impact they make. If that sounds like the kind of place you would like to work, please visit our careers portal:

https://jobs.ericsson.com/search/?q=&locationsearch=ireland

Much like Dublin, Prague is a beautiful and vibrant city, steeped in history and culture. So for more information, or to apply, please visit the following link: https://goo.gl/T8k2xT

You may recall last month I posted about the bake sale that was held in Ericsson Ireland to support our two charities, of which MyCanineCompanion is one (the other being Sonas APC) and I couldn’t have been more happy to have another excuse to talk about My Canine companion again.

So just if you are wondering, yes, that’s me with a puppy on my lap, and yes, the puppy’s name is Ericsson.

My Canine Companion provide highly trained and skilled service dogs to people with disabilities, particularly autism.

On Thursday the 29th of October Ericcson ran a successful Cyberlympics event on campus in UCD. We had an excellent turnout of almost 40 enthusiastic computer science and engineering students. The competition was enjoyed by all and very well received. The winning team consisted of Karl Jonas Radle, Fabio D’Urso, Vincentas Glusinskas and Michal Gwizdz and they finished on a score of 4300 after two 45 minute rounds. A huge congratulations to the winning team as they held of stiff competition from the other teams.  We look forwarding to seeing everyone again at future events.

Well done to to the organisers and volunteers and most especially all the participants!

One such organisation is the RSSA CHI (which stands for Region Sub Saharan Africa Competence Hub Ireland). This team provides senior competence across the Sub Saharan Africa region. At Ericsson, this means Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Congo, Cameroon, Gabon, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Namibia and many more – quite an adventure!

Team members, who are regarded as being the best in their field, will travel on assignment to these countries to assist or manage some of the most complex, challenging, strategically important and rewarding projects in the world.

The team itself is fairly representative of the best of Ericsson: a diverse mix of professionals from all over the world who have each excelled individually and have joined forces to form a unit that has a strong ethos of teamwork (they describe themselves as the “A-team”).

Although they travel significantly thought the year, I was pleased to catch up with Jeffrey Manalaysay and Hamizan Mohamad when they were here in Ireland recently (where, as you can see, we were having a typically fantastic Irish summer).

Hamizan Mohamad

Hamizan Mohamad is a veteran of telecoms and joined Ericsson in 2007, and Ericsson Ireland in 2011 as a Senior Customer Project Manager, managing multimillion-dollar rollout projects and programs on Ericsson’s behalf. Although I had worked with him since 2011, this was the first time we met face to face. He told me the RSSA region itself gave you a lot of varieties in terms of culture, working environment and customer interactions. You will meet up with new challenges everyday which makes the job even more interesting. This creates diversity in your experience and it makes your job very enticing!

Jeffrey Manalaysay

Jeffrey Manalaysay has worked with Ericsson for over 10 years now, in the Philippines, Sweden, Brazil, Algeria and now Ireland. He is a Senior Solution Architect, helping bring Ericsson’s customers ambitions to fruition through innovation. Jeffrey told me: “I have travelled to various African countries specifically in the Sub-Saharan region. Since Africa is a continent like none other, it has that which is elegantly vast or awfully little. It goes the same with the projects; it could be a huge turn-key project or a small delivery; very challenging or a “walk in the park.” Either way, there are always lessons to be learned. But the biggest lesson from Africa both in a professional and personal experience was that, our life’s joys come mostly from relationships and friendships, not from material things.”

Hamizan and Jeffrey work on projects in the RSSA Region (illustrated). Having recruited for this division a couple of years ago, I have discovered a couple of interesting facts about Africa that I thought I would share with you:

1. Sub Saharan Africa has a bigger land area than India and China combined- wow.
2. The number of languages spoken in Sub Saharan Africa is over a thousand.
3. More oil is produced in Sub Saharan Africa than in the Middle East- sorry EMEA!
4. Mobile Data penetration is expected to double by 2017.
5. The second largest market in the world for Guinness is Nigeria. (Is this why the RSSA CHI is in Ireland?)

So, if you think you are the next Hamizan or Jeffrey, and you’d like to discover RSSA like I have, we would love to hear from you. We’re hiring right now:

Senior Solution Architect – BCSC/CBIO
Senior Solution Architect – RAN
Senior Customer Project Manager – NRO
Senior Customer Project Manager- CSI
CSI Program Director/Manager

It was an enormous success and we met hundreds of job seekers and spoke to them about what a fantastic employer Ericsson is.

We also spoke to some recent graduates about joining Ericsson as a graduate employee, or further study through the Ericsson Masters in Software Technology – Plus a Guaranteed Job.

We also met some of the EURopean Employment Services (EURES) Team, some of whom had traveled from all over Europe to meet with midlands job seekers and advise them of options abroad. EURES offer a job mobility portal for job seekers and EURES Advisers that are in daily contact with job seekers and employers across Europe.

It was great also to meet and speak with Kevin Humphreys, T.D., Minister of State at the Department of Social Protection with special responsibility for Employment, Community and Social Support about what Ericsson has brought to the midlands as an employer, as well as speak to Athlone Community Radio about what types of positions we have available.

Overall, a great day!

You can see details of the position (and apply) here: http://goo.gl/kcaZDi

We’re looking for a strong communicator with both English and local-language skills, ideally with similar experience managing suppliers who also has a strong  track record in delivery. If this sounds like you, please click the image below to find out more and apply.

Montage (with thanks) by matissek

I gave the same talk in Ericsson a couple of weeks ago, and I hope those there found it useful. For more about Connecting Women In Technology group, you can visit their Facebook page here:
facebook.com/ConnectingWomenInTechnology 

Vodafone also recently launched their Ready Business LinkedIn portal, which you learn more about here:
https://www.linkedin.com/company/ready-business

Congratulations to our Global Resource Manager at Sinead Brock, and the bakers, organisers and volunteers of this week’s bake sale in Ericsson Ireland in aid of Ericsson Ireland’s two nominated charities; Sonas APC andMyCanineCompanion.

Both are fantastically worthwhile causes; Sonas APC provides a range of training, resources and supports for those on the dementia journey, while My Canine Companion provide highly trained and skilled service dogs to people with disabilities, particularly autism.

The cakes were of course delicious, but most especially it was great to have one very special visitor, “Google” the service dog, who seemed to enjoy his time here.

The organisers did a fantastic job raising €424 for the 2 charities, but even if you missed our cake sale, it’s still not too late to donate to either or both charity, and I would encourage you to do so:

Sonas APC: http://www.sonasapc.ie

My Canine Companion: http://www.mycaninecompanion.ie/

If you’d like to be part of a company that has been shaping the future future for over 130 years, you should visit the Ericsson careers page: https://jobs.ericsson.com/search/?q=&locationsearch=Athlone

In the meantime, here is some fun: