software engineer

senior software engineer

project manager

driver

assembly technician

Nokia

Even though I have not changed companies since college, I have worked for ATT Bell Labs, Lucent, and Alcatel-Lucent.  Each company and exec leadership has been both exciting and challenging to work for.  ATT Bell Labs paid for my master's degree and provided me the initial confidence that would be the cornerstone of my career.  Lucent gave me opportunities to grow from a sw development engineer to a vendor manager to a low level board sw and diagnostic manager.  I managed upto 25 engineers as a sw development manager.  I was also exposed to hw as the sw my team developed was the board support packages and diagnostics.  I was given the opportunity and challenge to lead the cross functional and organizational team to develop next gen internal communications core.  This project was developed on-time with no major issues during initial deployment.  The project had a $10M and 66 headcount budget.  I had to work with 3rd party suppliers, customers to get this project done.  I had an excellent team also.  I then moved to Product Management and oversaw global portfolios serving customers worldwide. Alcatel-Lucent also gave me unique opportunities.  I was my business lead to ensure compliance to US government mandated requirement that if not met resulted in the disolving of the Alcatel-Lucent merger.  I was asked to lead the release planning and life cycle execution for my business.  I was asked to lead the transformation activities for my business from waterfall to agile, from internal tools to 3rd party.  I supported these successful transformations.  I then moved to 4G to bring the same level of commitment and discipline to the release planning and life cycle execution which I did.  This for this long review as it demonstrates the incredible career I have had and the support I was given by my team, peers, and management.  It demonstrates that even in corporate adversity, the dedication and commitment of the individuals with the boots on the ground is amazing.  Thank you to ATT Bell Labs, Lucent, and Alcatel-Lucent for the skills, experiences, and colleagues as they were the best in the telecom industry!

Finally...  A special thank you to ATT Bell Labs for without you hiring me and moving from Texas to Illinois, I would not have met my fabulous husband that allowed me to have 2 absolutely wonderful children.

It was a very enjoyable work. It started with meeting with the Project Manager who gave out a job order detailing what was to be done and in what city, paying particular attention to the timeline when the project should be completed. I would then make an order from the warehouse of all the items I would need for the project and tell them when to ship the items to the work location. I would then call the sub-contracting company that would do the installation and give them the details about the job and the number of workers I would need for the project. Project duration depended on what equipment was being installed. Some took two weeks, others two months.
I would fly to the job site before the start date to take inventory of all the items needed for the completion of the job.
Work generally started at the site around 5pm in order not to interfere with the other workers, since this was an office environment and our work sometimes involved a lot of hammering. Many a time we would be forced to create holes in concrete or brick walls to run the cables through. This was a hard call because the host did not like their walls being blown, but we made sure the demolition and patching was done professionally to their satisfaction. I wrote a daily report on the progress of the work and forwarded it to the Project Manager.
Once the switching equipments were installed, I then troubleshot it to make sure it was working properly, commissioned it, taught the customer how to work it and then handed it over to the customer, with all the parties signing a certificate of completion.
Before leaving site I would make sure that I left it clean and all extra materials shipped back to the warehouse.

Being a traffic editor at Nokia may be the most under appreciated but overworked departments in the company.  You are expected to work off hours, no holidays, no normal weekends (unless you magically get Saturday/Sunday as your off days), no half days, and if you want to take any time off you have to use your own PTO as there are no office closings or work from home options.  If it snows 2 feet of snow overnight you are still expected to show up to work even if it means driving on unplowed, whited out roads, which has happened quite a few times this winter.  

The job itself is a joke.  Most zones covered are not very active so early in the morning or overnights.  Yet start times still are as early as 4am or as late as 11pm.  The pay is not great considering the off schedule and personal toll the off shifts take on people. (sleep schedule, sitting in a chair for 8 straight hours, etc)  Despite plenty of employees' complaints regarding the schedule structure, holidays/weekends situation, pay, etc the managers' responses are always "we can't do anything about that".  They wonder why employee morale is low, and it's because of a lack of effort to appease anyone.

There is no advancement within the department except for becoming a "senior editor", a position they created when people complained of no advancement within the department.  Needless to say, the job doesn't change if you are a senior editor and once you are a senior editor there is again, nowhere to move up in the department.  It is as dead end as a job can get and the turn over rate is constant as people realize the problems and realize in order for a career they have to look elsewhere. The people who stay are either complacent or just waiting to get out.  The high turnover rate plays a large role in why policies aren't changed, because managers are aware that most employees complaining will be leaving soon.

Prior to my leaving the company, I was tasked with providing technical support for AT&T. in the Operations Support Center, located in the Wireless Remote Integration Test Center in Dublin OH.

My daily routine would involve logging into three different regional markets: Philadelphia, Grand Rapids, MI, Seatle/Tacoma.
This would require twelve separate desktops, across three monitors.

I would log into the the Genesys phone system in preparation of taking inbound calls from field operators for AT&T personnel, sub-contractors, RF Engineers or field call testers.

The majority of support was performed outside of the maintenance window, but the OSC provided 24x5 support, with weekend activities conducted by schedule.

I learned that the dynamic within the Telle-Comm industry, and in particular, AT&T had shifted dramatically. 

My direct supervisor was brilliant, and was the primary reason I had agreed to accept the lateral transfer to the OSC My co-workers & support engineers were the very best within the industry.

The hardest part of the job became having to provide support to unqualified field operators, having to deal with ever changing security requirements & restrictions, and struggling to deal with gaps within processes & procedures because of shifting industry paradigms.

The technology, the hardware & software, training, and knowing that I worked with the brightest minds within the communications industry with hundreds of years of combined experience within my group alone. The satisfaction of complex problem resolution, and knowing that we were providing the highest level of support, and that each & every call into our center would be resolved to 100% satisfaction, guaranteed,

Nokia was a dominant player in the tech field at one point in most people's lives; those days are no more and are unlikely to come again.

The company has good benefits such as medical, vision and dental insurance, plenty of sick time and a few perks, such as a slight reduction on some phone bills, this is sadly offset by the lowish pay and the dismal leadership of middle and upper management.

The job itself is highly variable as different zones can provide vastly different experiences; some are busy and active, others are sloth incarnate. An attempt was made at evening out activity to make it more balanced, but was largely unsuccessful from my experience.

Currently intangible benefits have been dwindling; no in-office celebrations, no random acts of good will from management and there has been a steady departure of high level executives over the past few years and has increased in recent months, the effect trickling down until immediate managers and employees are sensing the changing of fortunes and seeking other opportunities appropriately. 

Contradictory information spills forth from every direction as ominous rumblings appear from without in the form of leaks and rumors from the press that are only later verified by actual Nokia sources with as little notice as a bolt of lightning from a blue sky, this occurs as supposed good news shines brightly from every company missive or management proclamation.

Divisions themselves seem composed of mostly competent people who are friendly and gregarious, the fault once again comes in when asked to describe a company ethos or direction; the answer is that there isn't one - it changes often and randomly,resembling nothing so much as the dying gasps of the T-1000 as it melts into formless oblivion.

I've worked for this company for over 15 years, in a similar role, always related to training and development of internal, vendor and trade-customer channels. I have to say there have been a lot of ups and downs, mostly down turns, including 4 layoffs, which I was impacted by in some minor way each time. After Microsoft purchased Nokia's Devices & Services assets, I was again impacted, in the form of a layoff which will most like be permanent, and the end to my employment with Nokia, Inc. In 1999 when I was hired Nokia was nearing the apogee of it's global success as a Mobile Phone company, but over the past 10 years their mobile phone and services business has gradually and continuously lost market share, which of course significantly impacted the company and workers at all levels. The company did it's best to limit the impact on people during each round of restructuring and right-sizing related layoffs, but in the end you an only lose money for so long before things have to change dramtically, including selling company assets and moving employees to Microsoft, or laying people off. What remains of Nokia is not the same company it was before Microsoft purchased it, therefore the security with Nokia Mobile Phones is a mute point at this time.

Within 2 weeks of joining the Global OD team the pending acquisition of Lucent by Alcatel was announced. The following two+ years was spent in M&A preparation of Day 1 and post Day 1 support.
Helping internal clients and leadership understand the dynamics of Transformational Change not only for larger M&A activity but also for functional groups such as the NA Sales team shifting their business model from a "Parts-Catalog" sales model to a "Consultative-Solutions" Model; this in particular required helping all those in leadership positions understand the mindset shift needed and the org-structure, processes and support to make a culture shift.
My clients (functional groups) were domestic and international. I enjoyed working in the M&A theater and helping to bridge the change in business structure and people/org-effectiveness. The global team was a very effective team with each of the 5 members bringing their own areas of specialty in concert with each other.
Hardest part of the job, in the end, the politics that often accompany M&As still took its toll and undermined many positives. Our OD team only last a few months past Day 1.

Day to day is different depending on where you work, at least at the Allentown location. Priorities shift constantly, sometimes within hours. Most of the time you’re doing the same type of work unless you work in maintenance, in which case your expected to fix equipment whilst building equipment to meet deadlines, which often can’t be met due to being unrealistic but mostly because material never comes in when it needs to. When there’s a push, they really push. If you work the line, they expect as much coverage on the weekend as they can get, which is pretty much every weekend. This is particularly bad at the end of a quarter. Management is pretty mixed as a whole. Upper management has pretty high expectations, and often is completely out of touch with what is going on out on the floor. The third shift supervisor is great, the second shift supervisor is alright, and the first shift supervisor is pretty aggressive depending on the conversation - specifically if you have a complaint or criticism. Most of the time it will get hand waved away in an unprofessional way. If you’re a technician you won’t move beyond that and it may be hard to find work outside Nokia as there aren’t many transferable skills unless you work in areas like debug, test set construction or maintenance - which are areas that don’t pay higher despite calling for more skilled technicians that have higher responsibilities than the people working the floor. 

The worse thing about the experience was the fact that the environment is a miserable one. Within a few days of starting, a manager from another site called me to say that I needed to change the culture at my site. He told me about how much the engineers we supported hated a certain person on my team who had a lot of influence. I would hear constant criticisms of my teams lack of work ethic and initiative. Yet, the company has exposed my former to horrible work conditions, full of electrical and fire hazards. The hardware is obsolete, and the job is not exciting at all. They tried to placate us with a pathetic pool table, snacks, social events, and with not pushing us hard on deadlines. However, the place lacks real leadership, and people hate working there. Ironically, the person who called to say I needed to change my team culture threw me under the bus. During a week where I worked nonstop, and was asked to do something that was completely pointless, he told my team lead that I was “on vacation” that week. The kicker: this team lead would tell me something verbally, and then in writing would say something totally different to make me look bad in front of leadership.  

Nokia and Alcatel-Lucent have both been recently involved in mergers and acquisitions and have taken those lessons learned into the acquisition of Alcatel-Lucent. The communicating through out the process and the speed by which the acquisition took place is a testament to the quality of the management team. Co-workers come in from many areas not all necessarily in the telecommunications space adding different views and lively but constructive discussions. Your are expected to be a self starter, there will be no manager hovering over you. Team members are always willing to help other members when needed, but you need to reach out! Depending on your need to be in a office location is dependent on the job function.  Working VO is supported. As with most acquisitions there will be some cultural differences. Nokia has gone through great lengths to minimize any disruptions and has and I'm sure will continue to be very communicative on this topic. Regular surveys are put out to get the pulse of how employees are feeling. Sales opportunities take time to bring to closure and when they don't it can be a hard fall, of course when they do acknowledgments all around.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
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