First week of work!

After spending the last 2+ months preparing for our move to Sweden, I realized last Sunday that I was ACTUALLY here to work! I had completely overlooked that fact, probably because I was so used to starting new “jobs” every few months as a consultant, but overall things have gone great.

My first work interaction was actually last Thursday. I was scheduled to show up at the office to fill out some paperwork and get my laptop / phone. Filling out the paperwork with the HR lady showed me the both sides of my new socialist policies. On one side, I will be contributing a portion of my income each week to what they helpfully explain is called the “Robin Hood Tax”, which truly “steals from the rich (loose definition obviously) and gives to the poor”. On the other side, Calvin is starting to bring something to the table! The Swedish government is giving us $125 per month just for having a kid under 18yrs old! So now we have him learning / managing his budget, and he knows that he can’t go over his diaper allowance for a month, so he has to ration out his “business”.

Adding value Dad! High Five!

Other fun facts from the paperwork were that the Ericsson name pretty much gives me free range in Sweden. I get discounts on taxis, rental cars, restaurants and Swedish language classes, but the best part is that a non-ericsson person would require 4 months to get a visa, their ID card in 2 weeks and another 2 weeks for their “social security number” equivalent. Instead, we received our visa in 4 days, our ID cards in 3 days and will have our personnummers by early next week. I honestly don’t even think we provided them with the right paperwork, but as long as my Ericsson job offer was there, they didn’t check the fine print too much. Lis and I were trying to figure out a US company that could have that kind of pull, and only thought of maybe Goldman Sachs, Apple or Google.

Now to my first day, last Monday. To begin with, E// (ericsson) set us up with a great location. We are 2 blocks from the blue-line on the subway, and I can take that directly to the E// offices. So it is approximately 30 minutes door to door. We have gotten very used to the Stockholm scenery, and it’s actually pretty fun when the subway leaves the Stockholm tunnels and it looks like you just entered a winter wonderland. Just snow covered birch trees and fields. Every morning I’ve seen dogs running or folks cross country skiing. It’s a much more picturesque view of winter, which is fun.

(not the best picture from a moving train, but trust me)

Once arriving at work, I was prepared for a full European work experience – showing up early, having 8-10 coffee breaks, then gone by 4:30pm. Unfortunately, that has not been the case…but it’s still been a really great experience. E// has 20+ buildings in the small tech town, and the building I am in was built just a few years ago. It has a very modern, Swedish style with exposed elevators, and no wasted flourishes.

(elevator bank)

(front lobby)

Interesting notes from the first week:

1) I HATE THE SWEDISH KEYBOARD. They needed to make space for Sweden’s extraneous letters, and so everything is messed up. It’s like I am typing for the first time. Punctuation marks aren’t in the right places, the enter and shift key are not “double width”, and the numbers keys have two “alternate” icons. Yes, it took me 15 minutes to figure out how to do the @ key. After not thinking about typing for years, it kills me every time I need to spend 20 seconds when I need to use a backslash or a question mark.

(you have no idea how long this blog took me to type)

2) I HATE THE EUROPEAN NUMBER FORMATS. Using excel, the comma used to separate thousands is now a period. And the period used to separate dollars and cents is now a comma. So far at least, every time I enter a number in excel, I get an error message when I try to add them up. Fun times for a analysis-heavy job.

DONE WITH THE HATE

3) I like that from when I walk into my building until I get to my cube, I pass at least 3 very high quality coffee machines. Coffee is huge in Sweden, and they just pass out free coffee like it’s good for you. For some reason they do not put cream in their coffee though, and it was fun when I selected the option with cream and sugar in front of my co-workers. They all tried to fix my mistake, until one asked me “did you MEAN to order that?”

4) I LOVE that every Friday afternoon they bring up a huge tray of pastries and each department on my floor takes their turn having a fika – just eating food and hitting up the coffee machine

(any kind of coffee you want, as long as you don't like cream)

(no idea what these were, but they were tasty)

5) For all the coffee machines, they do not have any water fountains in the building. Evidently I am the only one that cannot subsist solely on dark roast. I need to fill up my water cup (patriots themed of course) in the bathroom sink. Pretty gross actually…

6) The bathroom situation is kind of different. Instead of an American-style, men’s or ladies’ room, there are 6-7 individual bathrooms with gender icons on the door. Each has a sink and toilet, and is completely private.

(so private)

(bigger than my apartment bathroom??? very possible)

7) I like that my desk moves from sitting to standing height with a touch of a button. Standing isn’t an option I would choose permanently, but I like being able to switch it up between the two.

(out of order picture of the lobby on our floor - with someone hitting up the coffee machine)

(my desk is the one with the computer on)

(down low when I want to chill)

(up high when I'm feeling energetic)

8) I like that E// cafeteria offers some pretty healthy options. I LOVE that you can load up your tray with as much as you want of that healthy option and it is all the same cost. Do you want 1 piece of fish? 65kr. Do you want 4 pieces of fish, 3 potatoes, half a loaf of freshly sliced bread and a salad? 65kr. Do you want water to drink? No add’l charge. Oh you want beers from the keg they have set up? Go have at it, 65 kr still. I haven’t partaken of those beers yet, but I’m intrigued to say the least. It’s like the Swedish people aren’t gluttons out to take advantage of the system. Just taking what they “need”, and not eating until they are sick to their stomachs and hammered. Well, I’ll teach them how ‘merica does.

(no pictures of our cafeteria keg, sorry)

Overall though, things have gone really well. The work is picking up and I will become a lot busier I’m sure. Everyone has been really great to work with, and that’s all you can really ask for in the first week. Looking forward to uploading more pics and blogs soon!