Nokia to Cut 10,000 Jobs After Weak Second Quarter | Hacker News Reader

Nokia to Cut 10,000 Jobs After Weak Second Quarter

nytimes.com

63 pointssew55 comments

If you run a tech company and are hiring, now is a good opportunity to try and hire some ex-Nokia hackers. Most of the talented ones probably took the pile of money offered in the last series of layoffs but there may be some still left.

During the last series of layoffs, my company hired a whole team of Linux kernel hackers, together with the team's former manager. The guys already knew each other and were up to speed in no time.

I worked for Nokia briefly two years ago, and while they never seemed to know what to do with them, they really managed to attract very skilled people.

The team on maps did a great job. I still prefer their mobile maps over the google version.

Where are most of the Nokia technical employees located?

Does this mean Nokia is falling apart?

I guess that mean that Microsoft's strategy (implemented with that Trojan horse guy) of "don't let them do Android even if it means destroying them" is working in a way.

Then again, Nokia were the guys who popularized the paradigm of "make phones that destroy themselves if they detect non-original accessories" and they are Microsoft front now (and thus on the other side of War on general purpose computers than me), so I'm not really sad to see them leave, should that be what's actually going on.

Absolutely not. As I mentioned in a separate comment, they still have over 100,000 employees. And they're building new factories in Asia. And their Lumia phones are best sellers in several countries. I don't think they're going anywhere yet.

Edit: Nokia alone had 53k, and counting Nokia Siemens they had over 100k. Now it's -10k from Nokia.

I think this was bound to happen after the decision to hedge most of their bets on Microsoft's operating system. This need not necessarily be seen as Nokia falling apart. All the engineers working on the software side had to be let go at some point of time.

Don't think the strategy to also-use Android as a latecomer and go against Samsung et al. without subsidies would have worked well.... The 'trojan horse guy' seems to me more like a friendly enabler for the only/most successful looking strategy left.

The fact that he's ex-Microsoft ends up looking fishy. I mean the guy leaves Microsoft to head Nokia and his first (?) major decision is to make Nokia a Microsoft shop. On the other hand, if you're constantly using hammers, then every problem can start to look like a nail (i.e. he felt that WP was the best solution because he spent a lot of time drinking the MS kool-aid, so to speak).

It is fully possible Elop was hired after the decision to go to the dar... cough ... to go Microsoft.

The previous CEO compared using android as 'peeing in your pants to stay warm', i wonder what using WP would have felt for him.

And pretty sure Elop's memo is evidence enough he was the one changing Nokia (Symbian -> Meego) strategy.

That Elop was the one to announce the Microsoft strategy doesn't really prove he invented the idea since going there.

Why else hire Elop specifically? The guys hiring him could have found a lot of CEOs with more telecom background.

Why would Android as a latecomer have worse prospects than "OS nobody wants as a latecomer"?

They have been capable of creating good hardware, which is all Android users really want. Of course it is an ego thing, but I think in the beginning Symbian also did not belong to Nokia and they didn't mind using it for their phones (I might be wrong about the history here).

Other companies like Samsung even manage to publish Android phones and phones with other OS.

(a bit late with replying, sorry..)

The field is already well occupied by Samsung/HTC/Motorola. I suppose Android users care more about 'high-specs' than well done devices with more modest specs. Google would not have given specific help/subsidies to Nokia, but Microsoft does.

As I own a Lumia, maybe I'm too subjective: but I like the device/OS and expect WP to become more popular with time.

Nokia could have kept developing Symbian and used Android instead of Windows Phone.

Nokia is about to compound their mistakes by trying to sell Windows 8 tablets.

Yes, they must sell off assets and fire more employees to stay in business a while longer at the rate they are losing money.

There is indeed "a burning platform" and that is Windows Phone OS for Nokia.

Will Microsoft buy what remains to save face?

It's also possible that microsoft sees itself as next Apple, that is combining HW and SW vendor (and they always had HW division with xboxes) and wants to lower Nokia's price so it can buy it.

> microsoft sees itself as next Apple

Thanks, There is coffee all over my keyboard now. Can the SEC do something when the CEO and board become obviously delusional?

The thought of only having two choices of mobile phone OS is disturbing. I hope that Nokia's gamble on Microsoft pays off and they keep the pressure on Apple and Google to keep things moving forward. More competition at this point can only be good for us consumers.

It is, of course, sad that so many jobs will be lost. Although I can't help thinking that since Nokia no longer has to develop an entire OS, it would have quite an excess of engineers. Obviously that's only part of it.

Nokia had alternate operating system and they abandoned it. Maemo was well liked by the people who used it. It seems Nokia decided to board another company's burning ship. It's a shame to see all that engineering talent go to waste.

By the _few_ people who used it... No chance at all that Maemo could have become the mainstream platform/ecosystem needed for Nokia to prosper.

Uh and IIRC a lot of engineering talent was wasted with gtk/qt/meego changes. The Maemo UI (imho of course) looks boring and dated in comparision to Metro. It's a shame, yes. But it's good they not only whine but change something!

What if there were only few users because it was rather hard to get devices and it was never really advertised outside the tech circles?

And is still well liked. My reaction to the burning platform rant was to immediately buy another N900 to leave in the box, because it may be a long time before we get another decent GNU/Linux phone. The presales on the Vivaldi tablet are giving me a bit of hope, though.

Bada is Samsung's third ecosystem and has always sold more than Windows Phone.

interesting fact about the layoffs - they have wiped out their Linux/QT team (in Ulm and other areas).

Nokia has hereby given up any development Meltemi on featurephones for emerging markets ("the next billion" as they dubbed it). a bunch of their top developers already are tweeting their defeat notes.

Choice blog forum post: "Meltemi product creation was in Ulm and Oulu. SW development in Espoo (UX, Linux core), Tampere (UI FW + Qt) + all Qt sites (Trolltech heritage). Over 1000 people focused on that. Nokia security working hard to ensure code does not leak outside Nokia, they already closed development enviroments and wikis this morning before announcements. By now they most propably have wiped hard drives where Meltemi code was residing."

http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2012/06/brief-c...

Whoa whoa whoa...they just fired all the old Trolltech employees???

I bet Digia is about to hire a lot of people.

Its almost like Microsoft has a mole at Nokia.

Having never worked in such a large company I'm always surprised at these round numbers. Is it really standard practice to pick a large round number and just start firing? Or perhaps is this the reporter favoring round numbers over accurate counts?

It will be an estimate. You want to do some voluntary offers over picking each guy if you can (because it is also an opportunity to get rid of demotivated/already checked out staff who you aren't aware of).

Some big decisions (close area/team X), some voluntary offers, some selections on individuals. Give a rough estimate of what it will mean, announce it along the big decisions, iterate to see what happens in the voluntary area and then do extra mandatory selection cuts if needed to hit your savings target.

Also, in countries with labour-friendly laws (like Finland, I assume) there is usually a process to follow where the company has to justify the cuts, so they have to actually set target numbers.

Oddly enough, Elop and the board who hired him are not among those...

In more civilized societies, they'd be expected to commit ritual suicide.

Large companies lay people off when they change direction or the market shifts.

http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/Apple_Layoffs_In_Educ...

http://gizmodo.com/5164082/apple-layoffs-confirmed-50-let-go...

http://layofftracker.blogspot.com/2009/04/apple-layoffs-1600...

http://www.macnn.com/articles/10/02/19/affects.signature.app...

http://macs.about.com/b/2008/05/02/apple-layoffs-in-elk-grov...

They still have over 100,000 employees. And they're building new factories in Asia. And their Lumia phones are best sellers in several countries. I don't think they're going anywhere yet.

Edit: Could you explain why they should commit suicide? Are you saying the executive board has failed? I think it's much too early to tell.

Can anybody say that the executive board hasn't failed? I don't see how Nokia could have fumbled the ball more totally than they have.

The Stock price: https://www.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1...

They're making a long term investment with Windows Phone (WP) -- with the current plan they probably won't reach profitability for another several quarters. If the plan succeeds, Nokia will be profitable again when the point comes where WP gains a significant enough marketshare where Nokia is able to completely replace the drop in Symbian sales with WP phones (and their new cheap feature phones).

If you follow the path of no-Elop, Nokia would still be investing in Symbian and Meego. Are you claiming the stock would've been better if following that path? It's very unlikely, especially if you look at the steep drop in Symbian phone sales over the past few quarters.

The drop in Symbian sales came after it was announced to be a dead platform. Without that announcement, no steep drop. And from all indications, the Meego N9 would have (or did according to some) outsold the Lumia 800 if it had been generally released.

Nokia was stagnating before, but not drowning. The major problem that they had was management of their software projects, which were becoming a tangled mess of unfixed bugs and missed dates. Instead of buying a new car, they just needed a new transmission.

1. From my understanding all reports were that Symbian had just become too heavy to maintain and improve. Thus not worth it.

2. I don't think it matters too much if Meego would have outsold Lumia 800. Again, it's not about selling individual phones in the short term, but it's about the ecosystem. Meego may have been OK in the short term, but I believe unless it was massively better than iOS/Andriod (which to me it seemed like a poor copy in many respects), and it would be able to get the app count, I do believe it would have died before long. I believe Windows Phone is a great OS already, superior in many ways to iOS/Android, and has great potential still. In addition, I can guarantee that Microsoft has 10x the capability of Nokia to rally up developers to develop apps. And lastly, MS has massive additional weight to ensure it's a success -- to continually pump the money until it reaches success.

Although Nokia isn't the only maker of WP phones, MS has done a lot to give Nokia the advantage. I agree we're yet to see if it pays off though. I'm hopeful.

Symbian was definitely a creaky mess, and definitely would have to be replaced by something in the medium term, but people liked it a lot, and with the Qt ecosystem being ported to both Symbian and Meego, they were going to be able to use the same apps (depending on the power of the phone, of course.)

It wasn't in any way a copy of iOS or Android. It was a full multitasking Linux desktop that you could treat as a smartphone, and had (and has) a small, rabid developer community. Of course, the Meego move was a bit silly, but I think they were using it as an excuse to reboot the GUI systems, of which there were three, which is two too many.

There are still new apps being created for Maemo (and Meego/Harmattan was just tarted up Maemo) all of the time. What was lacking was a mass market phone that would encourage more commercial developers to target the platform. The N900 was a phone for technophile nerds like myself, but all of the glowing reviews of the phone accidentally made the N9 a massively anticipated phone, because it had N900 cred, yet looked pretty (unlike my beloved N900 brick.) They had to dump it outside of major markets in order to avoid comparisons of it and the Lumia, because people wanted and liked it so much. Me, I like a keyboard.

Firstly, I don't think it really matters if there's a small community. Or if it satisfies the nerds. In the end they need volume, that's it. That's also why I think Android will suffer long-term -- it just might be too (or overly) complex/confusing for many people.

Personally I agree Meego had/has potential. And the fact that it was fully multitasking, and based on Linux, is cool. I just don't think any of these facts (and most derivative effects) matter to the vast majority.

Lastly, FYI -- WP will have keyboard options when Windows 8 comes out.

It would be trivial to run Android apps on Meego. With Windows Phone, Nokia tied its fate to a product that has been on the market for some time and failed to gain attention. And it still fails.

Is it really failing? It's a latecomer, but it's gaining traction. Windows Phone phones are best sellers on AT&T in the US, and supposedly beating the iPhone in terms of sales in China. With Windows 8 coming out, who knows what will happen. Speculating on whether it's going to fail or not at this point is just that -- heavy speculation. The fact that the Windows Phone is a very decent OS, is simple to use, has a decent app market, and is being promoted on so many fronts (including the main service providers, because they benefit from a 3rd smartphone provider), all makes me believe that it is bound to be a success if they continue to improve the foundation that they have and don't make big mistakes.

"with the current plan they probably won't reach profitability for another several quarters."

... or Windows Phone could sell so poorly that they never become profitable, and run out of cash. And prove to every other manufacturer that Microsoft and Windows Phone are poison in the smartphone/carrier marketplace.

They won't go before, "in a bold move to save the company", its most valuable IP is sold to their strategic partner Microsoft.

Who will then promptly proceed to troll each and every Android phone manufacturer to either have a WP7 lineup or pay an even hefty patent ext^H^H^Hlicensing fee.

> when the point comes where WP gains a significant enough marketshare where Nokia is able to completely replace the drop in Symbian sales with WP phones (and their new cheap feature phones).

Does anyone outside Redmond really believe this? While I agree pre-Elop Nokia was in bad shape regarding their software projects, betting the company on WP7, a phone OS that was, at the time, demonstrably behind the competition in both features and sales despite the fact it was being sold by other manufacturers, was idiotic beyond reason. The only company that benefited from that announcement was Microsoft.

As for Lumia sales volume, I have to ask: how profitable those phones are? Or is Nokia self immolating to please its masters in Redmond?

It's still a whopping 10%

The only case of a failed leader committing ritual suicide I am aware of is in feudal Japan, which was far from "more civilized".

And perhaps ironically: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kari_Kairamo

The takeaway ...

"Chief Executive Stephen Elop is placing hopes of a turnaround on a new range of smartphones called Lumia, which use largely untried Microsoft Corp software. But Lumia sales have so far been slow, disappointing investors."

With WP7, Nokia is fighting with one hand tied behind its back. It can really only offer a handful of similar spec'd phones b/c of the platform's limitations. WP8 will allow them to do what Nokia does best and offer a wide range of products across a number of price points. So, I think it is a little premature to count them completely out. With that said, they will live or die with the WP8 launch. Personally, I hope they succeed b/c they have been doing a lot of cool things with their hardware and value added software.

Rumor is they also buried Meltemi today.

More details from Bloomberg:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-14/nokia-to-cut-10-000...

And thus Stephen Elop becomes the Trojan Horse of modern era.

Nokia still has time to diversify (albeit not much). Every successful gadget company out their (apart from Apple, but they have IOS and MAC OS) like Samsung (windows phone, droids and some version of in house dumb phones), HTC (windows, droids) , ASUS (Windows, Droids) have diversified. Nokia's Elop is betting 122000 jobs on an OS which has 1.5 % market-share. I get that they need to make Windows Phone flagship due to investment from Microsoft but they should still think about making Android devices. I am sure with Nokia's build quality, innovation (they really own some cool technology) and Android ecosystem they will give Samsung a good run for its money and will sold far more phones then Lumia with lesser marketing cost. People who use Nokia love it for its build quality.They make good phones. Wish they don't melt away because of management politics.

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