If I understand the garbled translation, the Nokia workers took advantage of extremely flexible work time to stage a coordinated, but totally non-rule-breaking walk out. I've never heard of this sort of half-strike method, but it's interesting. Is this something that is common in Europe or Scandinavian countries where a more flexible work schedule is common?
1000+ Nokia workers have walked out in protest (in English via Google Translate)
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Re: 1000+ Nokia workers have walked out in protest (in English via Google Translate)
#22It's exactly this sort of tech expertise revolt that happened at the largest Smalltalk company at the time -- when out of touch management announced the company was going to go the direction of Java/JVM.
This is not an indication of mismanagement. This is mismanagement (of employee expectations, culture, and perception) plainly visible in public.
Nokia needs to figure this out right now, or they are going to bleed intellectual and technical assets.
Re: 1000+ Nokia workers have walked out in protest (in English via Google Translate)
#23Whether it was Android, Microsoft, or slowly dying, people working there would be affected, so I'm not sure the choice of Microsoft changes things too much from that point of view. With Android, perhaps they could have kept more people on board to hack on it and customize it, but still, the axe was going to fall. Should be interesting to see how this is handled in Finland. Stock is down, layoffs, and some "arrogant f…
Nokia had been moving towards an open-source culture. Those are the types they've attracted the last several years. This is a very radical departure from their previous path.
Sure, I think Android is in some ways closer and more interoperable, but still... people were likely to go in any case.
Re: 1000+ Nokia workers have walked out in protest (in English via Google Translate)
#24Let's see 1. Hire someone from Microsoft to run the company 2. He says "our platform is burning, we have to do something drastic" which most people interpret as "prepare to come up with a strategy and fight like hell to win". 3. Guess what, he already had something in mind! It was "throw out our current reasonably successful development efforts and become a licensee of Microsoft's failed platform instead". And piss o…
What could possibly go wrong?
It's like he took the playbook from ObjectShare (Smalltalk vendor) when the CEO announced, "Hey gang, let's go Java!" then was surprised when the personnel situation started to go pear shaped.
Someone is out of touch with his employees here.
Re: 1000+ Nokia workers have walked out in protest (in English via Google Translate)
#25This kind of behavior makes me wish at-will employment was the norm throughout the world. If you aren't happy, quit. Change was clearly needed and change was made. Work hard for your company or find a different place to work that'll make you happier. Everyone thinks they could make better decisions.
Re: 1000+ Nokia workers have walked out in protest (in English via Google Translate)
#26It's exactly this sort of tech expertise revolt that happened at the largest Smalltalk company at the time -- when out of touch management announced the company was going to go the direction of Java/JVM. This is not an indication of mismanagement. This is mismanagement (of employee expectations, culture, and perception) plainly visible in public. Nokia needs to figure this out right now, or they are going to bleed in…
In Finland, where are they going to bleed to? What options do the regular (under 80th percentile) Nokia employees have? If a company of that size were to lay off 100's of technical people here in the Netherlands, that'd be a large supply to absorb for the industry, and especially those with 10-15 years of highly specialized skills (antenna design, phone chipset design etc).
Re: 1000+ Nokia workers have walked out in protest (in English via Google Translate)
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
"for fear of arrest" Whether you agree with the decision or not, nothing about it sounds in the least bit criminal.
An executive switches from company M to competitor N then abruptly throws much of N's development investment in the trash and signs a deal to license all of it from M instead, it smells funny. I'm not saying anything actually is wrong, I don't know enough about it to care. But what I do see is Nokia being a big employer and part of national pride for Finland. This will likely become an issue in politics there. They'd…
I am assuming the board talked about something like this happening - even directly with Elop - before hiring him. It's not like it's totally surprising.
Re: 1000+ Nokia workers have walked out in protest (in English via Google Translate)
#28If I understand the garbled translation, the Nokia workers took advantage of extremely flexible work time to stage a coordinated, but totally non-rule-breaking walk out. I've never heard of this sort of half-strike method, but it's interesting. Is this something that is common in Europe or Scandinavian countries where a more flexible work schedule is common?
It has been known to happen in public sector places that work flexitime. If enough people coordinate they can effectively stop business/service for a couple of hours without breaking any hard and fast rules being even bent. There are usually fluffy-wuffy rules regarding reasonableness being broken, but they are so vaguely worded as to be practically unenforceable and anyway no individual can be got by them as they could all make up perfectly plausible reasons to need those particular couple of hours off (as it permitted by their flexitime contract).
While not nearly as effective as a day-long strike or other such, it has the advantage of not being covered by certain laws (so a ballot of the union is not required) meaning it can be implemented quickly to send a very visible message if enough people agree strongly enough with the message.
Re: 1000+ Nokia workers have walked out in protest (in English via Google Translate)
#29This kind of behavior makes me wish at-will employment was the norm throughout the world. If you aren't happy, quit. Change was clearly needed and change was made. Work hard for your company or find a different place to work that'll make you happier. Everyone thinks they could make better decisions.
This kind of behaviour makes me wish golden parachutes for executives weren't the norm throughout the world. If you can't make money for the company, quit or be fired.
Isn't it amazing how "at will" seems to apply to both employees and management, but somehow management's version of "at will" is considerably lower risk than the employees, even though the manager has considerably more influence over their future.
Re: 1000+ Nokia workers have walked out in protest (in English via Google Translate)
#30Let's see 1. Hire someone from Microsoft to run the company 2. He says "our platform is burning, we have to do something drastic" which most people interpret as "prepare to come up with a strategy and fight like hell to win". 3. Guess what, he already had something in mind! It was "throw out our current reasonably successful development efforts and become a licensee of Microsoft's failed platform instead". And piss o…
WP7 is a failed platform already?