A Sad Tale from Mexico

By Mark Evans | Published: September 10, 2009

When Ericsson purchased Nortel’s CDMA business last month, Nortel employees in Mexico were excited about a new owner arriving on the scene to provide some much-needed stability and direction. Unfortunately, the future of the Mexican operations and its 130 employees is still uncertain. Below is a guest post from Mexican employee about the situation:

On September 3, Nortel’s CDMA employees had the opportunity to breathe a little bit easier. This was the day that offer letters from Ericsson were scheduled to appear on employees’ inboxes. It was finally the time to get out of Nortel and its entire sad story. It was an opportunity to get out of the salary freeze, hiring freeze, training freeze among other cost-saving measures. It was also an opportunity to allow Nortel’s technology and innovation to move forward on a company that could make use of it. Indeed it was an overall happy day in all the sad days through the stream of announcements, at least, happy for US, Canada and China employees.

It all started when an email came out from Richard Lowe that mentioned only NA and China. This was puzzling and alarming to all Mexico employees since in all NSN communications the wording was “North America, Mexico and China”. Equally puzzling was the fact that Lowe clarified that two Ericsson/Nortel communication emails had been sent to potentially in-scope employees only, since it was sent to a distribution list created for offer distribution under the NSN deal.

Immediately after this, emails, phone calls and requests for clarification were made. Was it just an oversight that around 130 Mexico employees were not in scope? Was it safe to assume Mexico was included as part of NA since it handles a vast amount of NA operations? Several days later, the worst was confirmed. The entirety of Mexico was not included, essentially leaving out a huge cost-effective and successful project called “Mexico Center of Excellence”.

However, this was not the end of the story, but far from it. The information around this decision was not communicated to Mexico employees until a few hours before the offers went out for distribution. Late on the day, September 2, there was a conference call hosted by Ron Centis (CDMA Leader). After the news was given, moments of shock, awe, anger and frustration were present on the room. A few moments later, questions started to pour in. When asked about the business rationale behind the decision, Centis was quick to state it was his, and his leadership team’s decision, and that Ericsson had nothing to do with the final decision to leave Mexico out.

As expected, morale went down to the floor. And it will continue like that for a long time. High levels of attrition would not be surprising. It is hard to imagine how a cost-effective and successful project with continuous improvement and higher-than-expected metrics were to be left out.

But wait, that is still not the end of the story.

Being left out of the deal, the worst was expected and assumed: massive layoffs. However, this is not the case. As the CoE is a critical part of the CDMA operations (as well as for several other business units), the CoE will be re-incorporated into NBS to continue servicing Ericsson now as an external outsourced supplier. Translation: Mexico employees will stay with Nortel until Ericsson decides to stop buying services or until work has been transitioned over to another location.

Still, Mexico Nortel employees must keep their metrics at expected levels in order to keep Ericsson happy enough to continue the deal. With no incentives other than the quarterly AIP (whose variable factor is decreasing each time), work must be done to the same or better levels.

A sad tale, one of many to come out of the poorly managed Nortel, whose potential to become a key player on the telecoms field was eliminated by the few people who make key decisions. And still, Mexico employees will come out of this incredibly incompetent communication effort and impossibly business-wise incorrect decision (at least with the tidbits of information available to general population) performing the job as they have always been, and supporting the original decision to move work to Mexico and create the CoE.

With a lot more weight on their backs, and with a lot more people moving on, but getting the job done and demonstrating the potential of an organization that started out with a few engineers and turned out to be one of the most profitable and successful projects Nortel has come up with.

This entry was posted in General, Wireless and tagged cdma, Ericsson, MExico, Nortel, Wireless. Bookmark the permalink. Post a comment or leave a trackback: Trackback URL.

NortelTragedy

E/// has great presence in Mexico and has for years. Possibly people more close to the situation will hopefully provide more details, but here's the sketch version of how the Mexico COE came about: Hackney (a.k.a. the Carolina Strangler) created low-cost centers in Turkey and Mexico (maybe India as well, not sure). Essentially, low-skill engineering tasks were to be performed in Mexico to reduce costs, although Mexico City is not that much less expensive that Richardson, Texas.

It's not clear the CoE was ever enabled to succeed. Tools are a mess, disorganization, poor knowledge transfer, lack of training, low morale, and the list goes on. Hackney forced it to happen so it would look good on a monthly and quarterly ops chart. No execution, just do it. It's unfortunate, but E/// knows Mexico and has wireless throughout the country. I hope the best for Nortel Mexico employees.
stillhere123

I know for a fact that most of the work I deal with that is done in Mexico is sent back to the States to be checked and corrected by state side Nortel employees. Metrics can say anything but since its inception the standard practice is for there to be 2 employees now for what was once only 1 employee. Used to be a state side employee did the work and that was that. Now a Mexico CoE employee does something and sends it back to the Nortel state side employee to be corrected which is then sent back to the Mexico CoE to have their name put on it.

From what I see the Mexico CoE does not produce quality work they just put their name on it.
jharris84

less QQ more pew pew
jharris84

preach it stillhere, no sob story here
NewAge

As far as I know there should be also a CoE in Istambol..

What happended to them?
brett5

And Enterprise is next up to suffer thru the void of communication. Cheers.
joremero

” although Mexico City is not that much less expensive that Richardson, Texas.”
Think that again. The salary for a NT Engineer starts at around 1000 dollars a month, a far cry from what is paid in Rich.
pickaxe

What CoE is whinging that it is still employed ..but not in as “rosie a state” as it thought it would be?!

Get REAL!
Real employees are out of work whilst your complaining. I had more UNPRODUCTIVE challenges with the Turkey CoE than if I had done the work alone. Total waste of space IMHO.
fishymcdonk

Puh-leez. “Center of Excellence” my behind. You do realize that everyone calls it the center of excrement, right? Leaving these guys out of the deal is a great business decision. I hope they do the same with the other excrement centers. You may pay them a fraction of what a US employee costs but you end up hiring 3 or 4 of them to do what one US person does, then you need US-based program managers flying all over the place to train and micro-manage these people. What's sad is that they didn't get rid of this center earlier.
GoProto

Check this out re: Enterprise Bid from the Wall Street Journal:
——————————————–
Verizon Communications Inc. says the sale of Nortel Networks Corp.'s enterprise business jeopardizes critical U.S. law enforcement, anti-terrorism and national defense interests, because one of two potential buyers has said it won't take on Verizon support contracts”

“A Delaware judge has scheduled an emergency hearing Thursday to hear Verizon's concerns, which are aimed at Avaya Inc..”

read more :
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125259355632899…
less

How about real estate? The Rich telecom corridor is a ghost town.
NortelEngineer

U r really stupid, irritating and ridiculous
kekekeke

Ardilla jajaja
whatev321

Again, generalizations only prove that prejudices and lack of information lead to an incorrect perception. I do agree that this might have been the scenario about 2 years ago, but lot has changed. Several employees in Mexico are successfully leadering projects.

And even if you want to ignore that fact, think about the following:

You can't have 200 Architects working on a construction right? You've got “less skilled people” being supervised by “skilled people”.
escuintle

Take your wife to the Mex CoE. Lets see if she thinks the same after a couple of days.
escuintle

Take your wife to the Mex CoE. Lets see if she thinks the same after a couple of days.
kekekeke

jajajaja pero no estan ardidos verdad? Eso les pasa por lenguas largas
LonelyOpsGuy

You guys are funny and got it all wrong.

The only and sole reason for the CoEs were to deal with the humongous amount of overhead required to have a Nortel solution implemented.

One of the main tasks was the work to transform a customer requirement into manufacturing codes. If you take a typical engineering job to put a wireless network together, it could be split like this: 20% to capture customer requirements, 10% to put the MEs (material estimates) together, 70% working on the Specs in order to translate the MEs into orderable codes. Once Hacnkey told in a Sales Conference that he would reduce the amount of Nortel PEC codes from 70K (!!! )to 'only' 30K. Still a lot but would help in terms of easy to provision.

The other task was to work on software tables (Database Engineering) to provision the equipment into service, which is volume work and it was a mess because very often you had to go back and redo the whole thing.

Both tasks above are pure overhead and add nothing to the Customer in the end.

If Nortel equipment was easy to provison, the CoE would not be in place to begin with.

The CoE destiny was doomed at its creation, period.
Meridian

I feel for the uncertainty of the Mexico staff, but they do still have jobs going forward which is a good thing compared to many people very soon.

This approach does make sense from the buyers point of view. The CoE was supporting multiple lines of business. I suspect the work was not segregated along product lines but along function. Each new owner will already have their own operations propositions which they will need to streamline post purchase. They cannot do that overnight and still keep product flowing.

I would suggest that now is the time the Mexico CoE staff should rally together and show Ericsson what they can do. No one likes to have to continue to sell themselves as they do their jobs – but that is the place Mexico staff are in and they can chose to use this opportunity collectively.

The Mexico CoE did have a slow start, but as with any start up location there is hiring, training, familiarity and process to come up to speed. It takes atleast 2 years to get a new location up and running to be as effective as the place it replaces no matter the job function. You have to also train everyone else that is working with the new resources which was not done.

Sure, 4 years ago it was alot easier to get something done by my buddy down the hall that I had worked with for 20 years. Familiarity and trust is already present. I did not have to second guess or follow up. It takes time to rebuild that with new players at a remote location.

Good Luck to our Mexico co-workers.
the_ugly_truth

Probably you were one of the many that got laid off and your job was replace by one the CoE folks. Keep it real Man, Better Work and less cost, is just “Bussines Made Simple”, either you want to accepted or not. Mexico is a Win-Win deal.
kekekeke

Otra ardilla??? jajajajajajaja ya basta! Loosers
joremero

the telecom corridor is still expensive real-state wise. It's not a ghost town, There are even new buildings like BlueCross Blue Shield headquarters being build…. it's just that it not mostly telecom anymore

real state in Mexico is also cheaper, as well as maintenance costs
ntgator

When will current Nortel employees wake up and realize NOTHING is guaranteed anymore in this Zero/Hack mess? The final alarm was Jan 14th and the announcement of no more severance. After 22 years with Nortel, I made it my responsibility, not Nortel's, to secure a new job (which I did) BEFORE I got the ax. I don't understand why everyone still there is not doing that. I understand that it's not easy, but sending out resumes should be #1 on your Priorities. At this point, nothing Nortel does should come as a surprise. The screaming will only get louder until the ship finally slips under and the stragglers lose their body heat.
Moose_Chaser

Right you are, Gator !
Moose_Chaser

Get back to picking those apples !

MC
kekeke

jajajajajajja y me rio mas de ustedes
Moose_Chaser

” Leadering ” ? WTF is that ??!

Go bak to skule.

MC
howmuchmore

unbelievable
whatev321

leading. served???
LonelyOpsGuy

22 years at Nortel sometimes makes you write “priorities” with a capital “P”.
golfingpokerplayer

Hmm. This story sounds familiar. THink-think-think. OH YA!!! Nortel employees were FORCED to train the CoE so that Nortel could lay them off after they were done training the “CoE”. WOW. What happened to the Nortel employees that wouldn't train the CoE. Oh, they got laid off first! What comes around goes around. How does it feel to be on THAT side, Mexico? Don't whine too much now. Where was the “Sad Tale from America” story that started all this CoE stuff????
NortelTragedy

A Mexico CoE is a good idea … it's not the people, it's the process … Nortel's engineering “tools”, processes, everything is and was a mess, evening before Hackney arrived. What Hackney did, however, was force the CoE transition to happen no matter what the impacts were, not just Mexico but also Turkey. What is the status of the Turkey CoE?
PM_Guy

This is not all ways as easy as it sounds. If you work in a small town like Belleville Nortel is the only game in town. You may be able to find a another job else where but not with out a lot of sacrifice.

For example if you have a working spouse and kids you need to up root them and also find the spouse a new job. You may need to move to a higher cost center to live and will likely have to accept a lower paying job.

It is just easy for most in a situation like that to just sit back and wait to see if they make it to the new company or get laid off. At that time the tough decisions will get made.

I know many who have left Nortel for another company but all were in a city that offered similar jobs with maybe a slightly lower pay without up rooting the family.
PM_Guy

This is not all ways as easy as it sounds. If you work in a small town like Belleville Nortel is the only game in town. You may be able to find a another job else where but not with out a lot of sacrifice.

For example if you have a working spouse and kids you need to up root them and also find the spouse a new job. You may need to move to a higher cost center to live and will likely have to accept a lower paying job.

It is just easy for most in a situation like that to just sit back and wait to see if they make it to the new company or get laid off. At that time the tough decisions will get made.

I know many who have left Nortel for another company but all were in a city that offered similar jobs with maybe a slightly lower pay without up rooting the family.
Rememberl

Well, Mexican employees were not so sad when then were hired to do the job of American people and didn't worry about what was happening to colleagues being fired because Mexican were cheaper. It was the same story for Turkish CoE taking off hundred of jobs from European employees. I'll certainly not cry for them. They are not the ones being responsible for that but they plaid the game and they just lost.
tiredofthisbs

Considering we have like half the age of our US co-workers, let me think-think-think, … how does it feel? It doesn't feel THAT bad. So trust me, not that much whining.

Sorry indeed, for the people that gave many years for this company, and were laid off. It sure isn't a pleasant feeling no matter where we are; but after all it was ALL because of bad decisions at a very high level affecting all of us!
zuperman

İstanbul not Istambol. They are enjoying uncertain life and spending their days as working Nortel Netaş employees, trying to get their jobs done as best as it could be done and not blaming others although it could be done within a blank of eye since it is the easiest thing to do. I don't work for CoE no more and i can say if you want to throw first stone to İstanbul CoE, please make sure you don't have any guilt because i can easily name 15-20 stupidest North American engineers i worked with along with 3-5 high quality North American engineers.
The psychiatrist

You know alot of things with Nortel don't add up,one of those things is when Mike Z used to say that failure is not an option,yet when he agreed to lead Nortel into chapter 11 and ultimately being completely liquidated.

If you ask me being sold off to competitors is the ultimate failure….are you reading this Mikey?

The more I think about it,the more I actually think that these events were decided long ago and Mike was just brought in to reduce overhead inefficiencies and simplify processes (something that he was known for) his duties also included reducing headcount to be as lean as possible as Nortel continued to operate independently,of course once Nortel's business units were to be sold then the buyers would further reduce headcount due to overlap.

This whole sequence of events that unfolded at Nortel especially while Mike was CEO reflect very poorly on him and make him look like the huge failure that everyone assumes,but I personally find it hard to believe that even an inexperienced CEO like Mike could be so stupid as to give up on Nortel when it was him that was talking the talk and walking the walk stating that “Nortel was going to be a great company again” and then basically give up and turn his back on the supposed “3-5 year turn around”.

I think time will ultimately prove that there was a dishonest game plan being worked out while Mike was CEO.

To all the employees,I know this sounds like BS but you all had your own destiny in your control with Nortel.

If you would have stood united against managements unethical and selfish conduct at various stages of Nortel's restructuring,you would have found that your bluffs would have given you much more power than you could have ever of thought possible and in most cases avoided the unfairness on the part of management practices when it came to preferential treatment and layoffs along with selfishly motivated staff reduction by various management levels.

I know it sounds unrealistic but if most of you would have stuck together and formed an independent employee lead rights group which would have threatened to walk off the job in response to everytime there would appear to be unjustified layoffs or outsourcing while management would continue to collect their hefty paychecks.

Believe me if you would have been able to collectively walk off the job, management would have soiled their underwear,as this would have put them in a very difficult position when it came to their highers which could have ultimately swung the lop sided pendulum in favour of the employees.

Believe me the only reason why outsourcing has become the phenomenon that it is is because of the greedy and selfish agendas of corporate America and their quest to please institutional investors by increasing company profits which would result in higher stock prices,so that corporate bigwigs could cash in all those millions in options and never giving one bit of thought to the consequences of outsourcing all those american jobs to lower cost countries.

Laid off employees can't contribute much to the local economy but corporate big wigs all the while could live it up in their lavish estates,fly the corporate jet,and drive their fancy cars.

Bottomline Mike Z is living it up while many of you are facing uncertain futures for dedicating many years at Nortel.

Sometimes it is necessary but you must play life like a poker game and call those bluffs to keep the wolves at bay,the worst that could hapen is that at least you could walk away knowing you didn't go down without a fight.
Nortelianoz

This is indeed a sad tale to Mexico, as it was a sad tale to some employees in USA when the COE was created.
But please, let's not talk about vengeance: “you did it to us, now you pay” , what is wrong with you guys?
We don't feel sorry and we don't want you to be sorry for us, we are just expressing ourselves and this is the truth.
Mexican employees work as hard as anyone in Nortel. Many people who trained COE employees are still there and they are still being considered to be part of Ericsson. Lay offs… Mexicans are also being laid off.
It is true that we can not be surprised after all the bad decisions made in Nortel, but let's face it, this decision was not made thinking in business. This decision was made to secure the positions in Ericsson to employees in North America only, this is how it was played.
oz_ex_nt

And the ones laid off first got severences!
less

That is the Way!
thing

Just so you know, not all the Nortel employees in other countries are as immature and stupid like some of the people who have commented on this page. I work in the UK office and can say that I do feel sorry to see hopes of any of our fellow employees dashed. We are all in the same boat I'm afraid. Nortel did not fail because of moving operations to cheaper countries. Nortel failed because there were too many jobs in the richer countries for the sake of having jobs. It's a hard pill for a lot to swallow…' My personal plan is to stay on the ship until I get pushed, my hope is to ride out the recession for as long as I can with a job, and then hopefully more suitable opportunities will turn up.
sofuckingwhat

I wonder if US employees are that damn good, why bother to hire experts from abroad? If I am not mistaken, when you walk into a NT facility at Canada you can literally feel that you're abroad, as the massive majority of RD employees are not from the Americas at all… And why this happened? Because other countries care about doing something better and thinking better… I suggest you check how many americans were approved to enter MIT University and how many people from abroad in the last years. By the way… most of you don't even know how to speak a unique easy language (English) meanwhile us from the “abroad world” do speak at least 2, sometimes 3 languages. It is pretty easy to have an american way of life, arriving at 8 and leaving at 5 without caring about the business and then go home. Try living the lives that the “abroad world” live where you do the job of at least 2 americans, on double turns, and still have to deal with the real world and business matters. It is people like you that has sinked the Titanic. Live with that.
nortelex

How can you blame people for taking a job to earn a living? that's pretty ignorance and stupid….everytime you take a job, you potentially take it from somebody else who can do the same thing that you do.

Blame it on the greedy corporates or management.
nortelex

Everybody is a victim in Nortel except may be the useless upper management that are hanging on for free money with no real job done.

The people that got offers from Ericsson are the most lucky but any of them know what is going to happen in 1 year? I am sure some optimization is going to be done with the redundant business.
am_i_bothered

Wasnt that an Iceberg?? der………..
scalppeeler

A sad tale for sure, but not nearly as sad and pathetic as the provincial, federal and municipal governments in Canada, and specifically Ontario.
Ontario Nortel pensioners are getting screwed.
The fact Nortel is/was a Canadian company means nothing to the government.
A traitor to their own race, heritage and traditions. But isn't that the Canada of today?
They'll screw people who have paid taxes for generations, working hard and contributing to society, and this includes curreent employees or soon to be ex for one reason or another.
They'll screw them in favour of handing out money, to, well you know, I've said it a thousand tiemes before. It's a broken record.
Woe Canada.
At least the mexicans don't have the lousy weather the canuckois have.
If they can avoid the cartels, keep their nose clean and continue to work in the
U.S or Canada and send that money home they'll be alright.
scalppeeler

More bad news from canuckistan.
Just saw iggys tv ad on the boob tube in preparation for a likely upcoming lieberal campaign. Sitting in the woods with that half smirk s*** eating grin telling canadians how they must reach out more to India and China.
What?
So more jobs can be outsourced and more canadians can lose their jobs.
You appealing to the canadian indians and asians now lookin for votes?
What a lameoid.
This is the best message he can come up with.
Nortel Canadian workers really did well with the indian and chine angles didn't they.
This guy is so out of touch he has thalidomide on his mind.
Canadians must vote independent and or create a new government party.
Already have four including the traitorous block.
Might as well go for five.
whatnext4nt

I agree with a lot of your points but I don’t buy the conspiracy theory and here’s why: Mike Z did not reduce overhead inefficiencies and simplify processes significantly until the very end when it was too late. By Z’s own admission, he did not favor a matrix organization yet he actually reinforced and convoluted the matrix with help from the Kool-Aid salesman CTO and only worked on dismantling the matrix when things were falling apart last September. The upper management faked him out when he demanded de-layering and layers were generally not removed and ironically effectively added in some cases. Z did not execute effectively on the GE Neutron Jack strategy and tactics that he was hired by the brain-dead BoD to implement. I would not be surprised to find out there was dishonesty at the top of the house however, and I agree the lower management and employees should have pushed back a lot more. Lessont learnt.
Nortel watcher

Where's Alvio Barrios in all this?

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