Nokia employees in Ulm, Germany launch "Project KYVYT" to look for work

Two weeks ago Nokia announced that they would slash 10,000 jobs by the end of 2013. Buried in that press release was the terribly upsetting news that Nokia’s offices in Ulm, Germany would be shut down. According to the Finnish business site Taloussanomat, Ulm was where development on Meltemi was taking place. Meltemi was supposed to be the Linux based operating system that Nokia would put on their feature phones. According to our sources, Meltemi was thought of internally as MeeGo/Maemo for “the next billion”. Now Nokia’s employees in Ulm could have just headed to the local bar and drank their sorrows away, losing your job most definitely prompts such action, but they didn’t. They launched “Project KYVYT” instead. It isn’t an operating system, it isn’t even a software project. It’s a plea to companies to hire what they like to call “Ulm Talents”. The exact wording on their website states:

“Kyvyt will be a Talent & Job offer website that will focus on Ulm talents that probably will soon be available. We will be posting Team profiles for investors and Personal CVs for Companies that need true talents. There will also be information about activities that are happening.”

There’s no way to put this nicely, so we’ll just say it: Nokia’s management is killing the company. These guys in Ulm, who probably are incredibly talented, aren’t going to lose their jobs because they messed up. They’re going to be unemployed because the people on top want Nokia to focus on one thing and one thing only: Windows Phone. One source has told us that Antti Vasara, Senior Vice President of Nokia’s Feature Phone Division, will soon be leaving the company. We reached out to Nokia for some confirmation, but they said they don’t comment on “personnel changes”. Is Nokia planning to exit the dumb phone market? Maybe, we can’t say for certain.

About The Author

Stefan Constantinescu

Stefan Constantinescu (@WhatTheBit on Twitter) has loved technology since as far back as he can remember. It started with computers, but in the past few years his passion has turned to mobile devices. As a mobile phone enthusiast who lives and breathes devices that connect to the internet, he knows he is not alone with this radical fascination of all things wireless. He is strongly opinionated and enjoys a good debate so leave comments in his posts and he’ll get back to you! Stefan began blogging as a hobby in the fall of 2006 and joined IntoMobile in the summer of 2007. Later he got a job at Nokia in March 2008, but as of June 2009 he has rejoined the IntoMobile team. He is currently based out of Helsinki, Finland.

Yasir

Lucky me!! I was interviewed for a job there last year and was very disappointed not to get it. Later I came to know that job was not filled at all. Do feel sorry for these guys though.
- http://www.intomobile.com/ Stefan Constantinescu
  
  Likewise.
http://www.AtlantSchmidt.com/ Atlant

Nokia was *FULL* of excellent talent that was being hugely misused by Nokia’s “leadership”; the Meltemi team (and their Maemo/MeeGo progenitors before them) is an example of that.

This would probably be an ideal way for a mobile phone start-up to get rapidly bootstrapped. And if they acted quickly, such a startup could probably also snap up some excellent mobile phone manufacturing capacity in Oulu and other places.

The only places Nokia lacked talent were in the ranks of management (at all levels).
- http://profile.yahoo.com/QWBSYCW5QHLK76ZNFZLBM72P4I Henrietta
  
  My ?eighbo?’s m?ther-i?-l?w Ma?es $8O hou?ly on the lapto?. She has b??n out of w0r? for 7 ?onths but l?st ?onth her i?come w?s $8734 just wor?i?g on th? la?t0? for a ƒew hours. G? to this web si?e and ?ead mor?.. C&#97shLazy.com
  - Jesus
    
    Shure. And Santa Clause and the Easte Rabbit are having a party with Elvis.
http://www.facebook.com/vlad.bologa Vlad Bologa

“Now Nokia’s employees in Ulm could have just headed to the local bar and
drank their sorrows away, losing your job most definitely prompts such
action, but they didn’t.”

Hey, what do you think we did in the first two weeks?
http://kyvyt.com/ Slaimi

vlad, don’t forget we didn’t only drink, we were also singing!