Nokia issued a press release back in late April 2011 that said they were going to get rid of their Symbian employees. Instead of firing them, Nokia said they’d transfer them to Accenture instead. Why? Because it takes people off Nokia’s payroll, which improves earnings, which makes the stock go up; that and it’s easier for Nokia to contract work from Accenture instead of dealing with the huge overhead typically associated with human resources. Anyway, how have those employees been doing at their new home? Not good according to the Finnish news site YLE, who quotes Sami Sallmén, Product Owner at Accenture:
“Around 40 percent of those who were transferred have sought the pay-offs. A majority of them have signed leaving agreements. That’s based on the survey we commissioned. Workers have not exactly been pleased with their new employer, and they want to seek new challenges outside the company.”
Sallmén is a former Nokia employee, turn Accenture employee, and he admits that he’s going to take the resignation package that was offered to everyone. He goes on to say that:
“Sure, at first it was a positive thing. There were maybe more different tasks at Accenture than at Nokia. After it went through, it has been hassle and negative feedback the whole time.”
The YLE piece suggests that 1,200 Symbian employees moved to Accenture last fall, so if 400 of them go then that’s basically one out of every three people. Not exactly a good thing, but then again none of this should be too surprising when you recognize Nokia’s commitment to Windows Phone and their plans to stop supporting Symbian within a few years.
The funny is that over the past 12 months we’ve seen Symbian evolve at a such an astonishing rate, first with Anna, then with Belle, that we’re actually kind of sad to see Nokia throwing a mature operating system out the door.
But then we also look at MeeGo, and we start crying at what could have been.