Nokia Reviews

Pros

Compensation
Benefits
Flex Time
Working conditions, facilities
Company culture

Cons

Limited opportunities for advancement
Jobs very geographically focused/positioned
High-performing employees can get "lost in the shuffle"

Pros

- top end salary and benefits.
- Good sense of company caring about employees.

Cons

- Culture of discussion with no decisions being made.
- If you are not based in Finland then forget it.
- middle-Senior management do not have the capabilities and personalities to motivate staff and make decisions.

Advice to Senior Management

"Accountability" is the new buzz word in Nokia, promoted by Stephen and is absolutely needed. But dont talk the talk, walk the walk.

Pros

Work-Life Balance
Good Benefits
Low Office Politics

Cons

Incompetent Senior Management
No clear company vision
To grow you need to be in HQ i.e, Finland

Advice to Senior Management

Focus on a goal and execute on it

Pros

There is still some degree of liberty in doing your job. Work life balance can range from OK to excellent, working hours are flexbile and also working location.

Cons

There's a strong lack of leadership and vision, the company is lost and has to face competition which is not used to. Restructurations are going forward but they're firing member of staff, some of which are even very bright employees, and leaving in place the very people that are responsible for years of failure.

Advice to Senior Management

Change the top layers, now

Pros

A company that has everything to be successful

Cons

But the management has let it down

Advice to Senior Management

wake up

Pros

Good work and life balance. Excellent paid time off. Good team of coworkers. Opportunities to travel to Europe and Asia.

Cons

Very little room for advancement in San Diego. Need to move to Finland to get opportunities for senior job roles.

Pros

Employees are welcoming and helpful.

Cons

Did not get to try anything different, same work to do through out the experience.

Advice to Senior Management

Internship program should be more organized and more helpful for the student to get to learn more.

Pros

Work-Life Balance is great - almost too great - some people never show up until after 10am and leave promptly at 4pm.
Good Benefits - $ for $ match on 401k up to 8%
Some very smart and very talented people - quite a bit of variability though - check the team before you join.
Good technology stack (Java, JBoss, Hibernate, REST, MySQL etc.) for your resume.

Cons

Company does not handle low performers and leaves them around for years.
Nokia is in a massive restructuring effort - firing lots of people and then suddenly changing strategy and hiring them back.
People who last in this company basically jump teams every 2-3 years before Sr. Management realizes (yet again) that they don't know how to build software without MASSIVE cost outlays.
Every major software project has ~ 3 years of life.
Year 1 - hire TONS of people - some mediocre some good
Year 2 - finally ship after Herculean effort (by the good people)
Year 3 - realize (yet again) the results aren't anything like promised and the costs are huge. Lay everyone off. Most of the long-timers jump after Year 2 to the next Project that is in Year 1 :-)
No-one really gets promoted unless their boss gets laid off and no-one from outside wants the role.

Advice to Senior Management

Stop the revolving door of massive hiring waves and massive layoff waves.
CEO needs to replace many of the VP / Middle Managers who clearly have no clue how to build effective software organizations (HINT: hiring 10 great people is better than 60 mediocre ones).
Stop paying a dividend - the company is collapsing - invest in the people and hope / pray the good ones save it!

Pros

Nice working environment, a lot of talented people around.
The benefits are good.
Good balance on career and life.

Cons

Too large a ship, and takes too much time to change course.
Right now facing fierce competition.
Has problems on the efficiency of the upper management.

Advice to Senior Management

Act faster.
For things like job reduction, better do it in one time. Then the rest of people could focus on their work.

Pros

Work life balance
Coworkers are great
Global perspective
Finally looks like there is a strategy to get behind
Lots of time PTO

Cons

Confused strategy
Reorg after reorg
Finnish management culture
Siloed culture can make it difficult to get things done
There is a lot of bureaucracy

Advice to Senior Management

Get out of Finland and focus on the things that will really make a difference, totally the wrong direction in withdrawing back to Finland.