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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)

#31

Post by arethuza »

jarek wrote: post #27
marshray wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I really wouldn't be surprised if the decision to shut down work on their own software platform had already been taken and he was hired and told to decide between Android or WP7 - with the expectation no doubt being that as he was from Microsoft he'd favor the latter.

Re: 1000+ Nokia workers have walked out in protest (in English via Google Translate)

#32

Post by darklajid »

taylorbuley wrote: post #20

Regardless of whether you agree with the CEO's position I think it's pretty childish to walk out on your job.

If you are afraid that this decision means that your job is in danger it's quite okay to show protest in my book.

And - they even did it on their own free time (using flexible working time), not 'stealing' paid time for their protest.

I like that move a lot.

Re: 1000+ Nokia workers have walked out in protest (in English via Google Translate)

#33

Post by bvi »

_delirium wrote: post #11
pclark wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Better than continuing with Symbian and having to lay off all the employees in a few years time.

The stock market appears to predict otherwise, believing that this move lowers the net present value of the company. Of course, stock markets aren't necessarily accurate prediction markets, but given suitable efficient-market hypotheses they're an approximation of such a thing.

The stock market isn't predicting anything. It just believes given the current information and Nokia's decision, $NOK's value deserves to be lower now than what it was prior. It's just a current snapshot - no indication of the company's future whatsoever.

Re: 1000+ Nokia workers have walked out in protest (in English via Google Translate)

#34

Post by robgough »

stcredzero wrote: post #24
marshray wrote: post #9

Let'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.

Perhaps, but those employees work for a company that was out of touch with the market. Something has/had to give.

I think the move to WP7 may well be a savvy one (though I too would like to have seen a demo of it running), but can completely understand the employees concern.

Perhaps it would have made more sense to be more specific about what is going to happen with their employees, and done it internally - before rushing to tell the world about their new partnership. The resultant leaks wouldn't have been much bigger than what we already had this week.

Re: 1000+ Nokia workers have walked out in protest (in English via Google Translate)

#35

Post by brudgers »

arethuza wrote: post #31
jarek wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I really wouldn't be surprised if the decision to shut down work on their own software platform had already been taken and he was hired and told to decide between Android or WP7 - with the expectation no doubt being that as he was from Microsoft he'd favor the latter.

The germ of this deal probably dates to the early days of WP7 development - seriously, Microsoft would have been negligent if they were not shopping for partners early on. For those deep inside the phone business, it probably has been a well known rumor for some time, which would explain the course taken by Motorola and HTC more plausibly than the corporate spite the article assumes.

Re: 1000+ Nokia workers have walked out in protest (in English via Google Translate)

#36

Post by protomyth »

pclark wrote: post #5
Kilimanjaro wrote: post #2

No PR campaign can save Nokia from this well-deserved disaster. Btw, NOK is down 15%

Better than continuing with Symbian and having to lay off all the employees in a few years time.

Is Symbian really that bad or is it a case of not cool/new?

Re: 1000+ Nokia workers have walked out in protest (in English via Google Translate)

#37

Post by marshray »

arethuza wrote: post #31
jarek wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I really wouldn't be surprised if the decision to shut down work on their own software platform had already been taken and he was hired and told to decide between Android or WP7 - with the expectation no doubt being that as he was from Microsoft he'd favor the latter.

But if the board wanted to consider switching to "someone else's platform", why would they hire someone from Microsoft?

Does this suggest that the board wanted to do a deal with Microsoft all along? If so, why would they need to hire him to do it?

Or that they didn't know what they wanted and this guy seized the initiative?

Edit: answering my own question. I think the board probably brought this guy in to take the heat in case this deal goes really bad from a PR and legal perspective.

Re: 1000+ Nokia workers have walked out in protest (in English via Google Translate)

#38

Post by stcredzero »

roel_v wrote: post #26
stcredzero wrote: post #22

It'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).

It doesn't matter if the employees leave for startups or other companies, or if they just don't cooperate wholeheartedly. In either case, resources they used to have access to are lost. Management needs to do something, or they'll bleed intellectual captial.

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).

If their jobs were based in something technical and had significant value, they'll be able to find employment elsewhere. This was also true of former employees of the Smalltalk vendor.

The thing to remember here, is that your most valuable employees are also the ones that can find new jobs fastest.

Re: 1000+ Nokia workers have walked out in protest (in English via Google Translate)

#39

Post by adolph »

marshray wrote: post #19
arethuza wrote: post #10

Earlier 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…

Doesn't that pretty well describe the reasonably successful approach Apple used in moving to Mac OS X? Sure there are differences: Jobs was at Apple before; Apple bought Next; .... There are also similarities in that the MS/Nokia partnership represents a pivot from the current course that has no migration path other than total change.

Re: 1000+ Nokia workers have walked out in protest (in English via Google Translate)

#40

Post by stcredzero »

robgough wrote: post #34
stcredzero wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Perhaps, but those employees work for a company that was out of touch with the market. Something has/had to give. I think the move to WP7 may well be a savvy one (though I too would like to have seen a demo of it running), but can completely understand the employees concern. Perhaps it would have made more sense to be more specific about what is going to happen with their employees, and done it internally - before ru…

I think the move to WP7 may well be a savvy one

So was ObjectShare's move to Java. That's not the issue. The issue is management being so out of touch with the employees. It's like a car with a loose steering linkage. Lots of things can go wrong, but a mechanism by which you'd even feel those things is also compromised.

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