“If no one’s going there, we’re going to be the first ones.”
Simon Craftman, Senior Sales Engineer at Webbing, tells his story of becoming a telecom professional after being a soldier, explains how he worked with the company before becoming an employee, and shares what it is about Webbing’s mentality that makes him feel empowered.
From a machine gunner to a telecom professional
I’m from Stockholm, Sweden.
My main hobby is skiing. I think I started learning to ski when I was two or three years old.
But along with active hobbies like skiing or diving, I also enjoy simple things such as cooking, meeting friends and playing board games. And I travel a lot, I go to the Alps at least once a year.
When I was a little kid, I wanted to be either a policeman, a military man or a nurse. In high school in Sweden, you get to choose some professional courses, and I did electrical engineering automation. School was easy for me, I had good grades, and I’ve always been a geek and liked digital and computer systems, so it all came naturally to me. However, I didn’t want to pick a profession before becoming an adult. After I finished school, I took some odd jobs here and there until I fulfilled my childhood dream for a brief moment in time, enlisting in the Swedish armed forces. I was contracted as a machine gunner and a combat medic for nearly four years, and was stationed in Uppsala, which is north of Stockholm.
After that I moved back to Stockholm and got a job at Tele2 customer service via an old buddy of mine. I stayed there for three months and was recruited by Tele2 IoT, a newly founded company within the Tele2 group. I recommended my old friend, and we were among the first people in that company. While in Tele2 IoT, I focused on technical customer support. I did that for 4 or 5 years, soaking up all the knowledge I could, until I got a promotion to a technical account manager.
Joining Webbing
It’s been five years since I became a Webbing employee, but I’ve been working with the company for much longer. I first heard of them when I was in Tele2 IoT, it was in the days when they were still selling two-SIM mobile hotspots. But at that time, Webbing was already taking steps to become a real MVNO. So I supported them as a NOC, handling their cases, so it’s been already 8 or 9 years now.
When I heard that Webbing was looking for somebody with good customer technical support skills, I thought I could recommend people, but I didn’t think of joining Webbing myself because I was quite new in my manager role. And then, about a year and a half later, I think I reached a stagnant point at Tele2 in some way. I really liked Tele2 and it’s a very good employer, but at the time it was such a large organization, and we had a change of leadership, and it didn’t feel as good.
I knew I could do my work in my sleep; I was so well-acquainted with the network, and I’ve done troubleshooting on such a deep level that I felt like it was a bit too easy.
And Webbing, they were small, and it was essentially doing the Tele2 IoT journey again from when we were only a handful of people. It felt like the old days of starting up a company, being part of something that’s about to grow. And we were all very much contributing to that growth because we were so few people.
Also, Webbing was working truly in a roaming space, which I always enjoyed. So, I thought it was time for a fresh start.
At Webbing, I feel empowered
Webbing has this “We can do anything” mentality. There are very few people that would ever engage with the issues that we face, like regulations when roaming in the automotive sector. Basically, there’s a good reason why nobody does certain things – because they’re crazy in terms of overhead and complexity. But at Webbing, it’s different: if no one’s going there, let’s go there, we can do it. We’re going to be the first ones.
And that kind of mentality is very customer driven. If we get an opportunity which we want to aim for, we go in with full force. I like it a lot. I always liked that the entire company rallies toward the common goal of landing a customer or getting the RSP capabilities in Turkey or meeting these automotive regulations requirements. Webbing has a very goal-oriented way of working.
Besides, what I’ve always enjoyed about Webbing is that I don’t need to check with anyone about what I can and cannot do. That was certainly not the case at Tele2 and was definitely not the case in the army. I feel that I have free hands to do what I feel is best. I feel somewhat empowered. Of course, you occasionally bump into other people and their priorities and responsibilities. But at the end of the day, I’ve always been empowered to seek out solutions for the customers, which I thought were best for them.
Today, naturally, we’ve grown, but still, I don’t feel less empowered. And I believe if you start empowering your personnel, they will do wonders. I mean, nobody wants to drive initiative for five blocks of escalations and authentications, it becomes cumbersome. Shortened lead time to be able to do something is what I really appreciated. And I’ve felt this way working here since day one.
We’re doing stuff that most people wouldn’t even think of
Compared to my previous experience, Webbing is a much more dynamic environment. I mean, the space that we operate in is ever-changing and it’s just different. Also, our core network is far more sophisticated than traditional MNO’s. And the way that it’s distributed, all packet core with the local breakout we have in place and it’s also ever-expanding – there are always new things to learn and to deliver to customers.
For instance, now in the automotive space, there are requirements popping up that will need us to localize the content down to the country level. If I buy an EV from China or Vietnam and we want to deliver it to Germany or Sweden, where I live, and I want Swedish content when browsing or hearing the news, I need to get a Swedish registered IP to assign that dynamically in the breakout. Managing all that is not a thing that an MNO would traditionally do.
And it’s going to be changing every day and making you learn again and again. I think Webbing is going to be a very fun workplace for the years to come. I feel like we’re doing stuff that most people wouldn’t even think of.
And there’s this drive here that pushes on forward all the time. All the way from the sales side to the technical side, everyone has a very strong sense of moving forward. It makes Webbing a very cool place to work at.
