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Nokia offers 50% bonus to MeeGo Developers if they stay until years end to deliver Nokia N950

| March 2, 2011 | 30 Replies

 

Finnish site taloussanomat.fi, ranked 19 in Finland by Alexa has posted that Nokia is trying to stop the loss of their MeeGo developers by offering them a 50% bonus of their entire salary starting from March if they stay until the years end to deliver the Nokia N950 – Nokia’s first (maybe last) MeeGo phone. Although the N950 is a successor to the N900, it is NOT the espected mass market device we were all hoping for. Instead, Nokia has labelled it as yet another, development platform of which N900 owners rightly fear will be another device that lacks support from Nokia. Such a shame given Maemo 5’s potential.

Frankly, I cannot blame Nokia’s MeeGo developers for jumping ship. Not just because of the shift to primarily focus on Windows Phone but because Nokia has been so utterly unclear what will happen to MeeGo.

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MeeGo was considered by some to be the “saviour” of Nokia, one that would battle Android and Apple at the high end whilst Symbian was pushed to the low-mid range handsets. Then as you know, as taloussanomat.fi puts it, they were pretty much just sent to exile on Feb 11. In Finland alone 13,000 people work at Nokia of which half are working on Symbian and MeeGo. Some of that talent has moved to Intel/Google’s greenerbot pastures.

As the comments in the article said, those smart enough would probably moved/in process of moving already. Think ahead. One year of extra bonus – what happens next year? Do you still have a job? I’m only basing this on the limited information provided. I don’t know if these people are contracted for longer periods and so may have more reason to stay, perhaps to be moved around the company and work at different departments.

With Microsoft at the helm of primary OS development, there is no shortage of developers there. But that doesn’t lessen the importance of Nokia having it’s own base of talented minds.

taloussanomat.fi, cheers Tim.

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Category: Rant

About the Author ()

Hey, thanks for reading my post. My name is Jay and I'm a medical student at the University of Manchester. When I can, I blog here at mynokiablog.com and tweet now and again @jaymontano. We also have a twitter and facebook accounts @mynokiablog and  Facebook.com/mynokiablog. Check out the tips, guides and rules for commenting >>click<< Contact us at tips(@)mynokiablog.com or email me directly on jay[at]mynokiablog.com
  • spybond

    as we say in my country
    οι μαλακιες πληρωνονται Nokia

    • yiannis smile :)

      xexe exactly! 😛 akrivos opos to ipes!

      • Bazil

        Many Greeks around, I thought I was the only one here. Καλημέρα.

  • mja

    The best are already departing (e.g. Valtteri Halla). Those who can’t get a job elsewhere stay to pick that bonus. Total PR disaster this whole 11.2.11

  • Jim

    I don’t blame them. Nokia didn’t make a clear conclusion about the future of meego in the company. All they said is that they will release 1 device by the end of the year. However in those slides it was showed that meego development will continue.
    The same thing happen for qt as well.

    We’ll know if nokia will support meego by the way the’ll support Qt framework.

  • http://i nocare

    so there is nothing to stop this wise elop from going crazy?

    end of nokia

  • http://www.cashbackforex.co.uk robert

    and that also will not work. it was just a very bad elop event on 11-02.

    it should have sounded as Shaun Murray wrote in a remark on allaboutsymbian.

    a new strategy, without doing harm to symbian and/or meego. and finally then the market will choose the winner.

  • Adnan

    wanst it ME who tipped the news to you. well whatever

    • Jay Montano

      Sorry Adnan, I didn’t see your tip. My phone keeps marking everything as read if I just glance at the mail app.

      The tip we used this time was sent from Tim about an hour before we received yours (according to gmail) though I should have seen both of them at time of posting. Will do a further scan check next time.

      Cheers,

      Jay.

  • Jack

    Those who cannot find a job elsewhere (i.e. the bad developers) will stay and rake in an extra 50%. The good ones will be leaving anyway, because for them a product they care about and a positive work environment matters at least as much as money. There is countless literature on this. Basically it means that Nokia lost the good developers the day of the announcement, no matter what they try to do now.

  • Ergonpandilus

    Won’t help too much and Valtteri Halla, Director of Meego Devices, just left today the company.

  • gordonH

    That Black Friday mark will remain on Elops forehead.

  • blert13

    A mass exodus could have been predicted from pretty much day one of the insane announcement, and this move reeks of desperation, and wont work.
    Nokia had in meego something that attracted QT fans, Linux fans, and open source advocates, the work force is probably primarily made up of these sorts of people. The exact sort of people who would despise the idea of working with Microsoft.
    I doubt these are the sort of people who do their job for the love of money, but rather for the love of something they they believe in and enjoy working on. Many probably have deep seated ideological reasons for working on these projects in the first place, they might even find the offer more offensive than tempting.

  • Deaconclgi

    Angry Birds and Seasons are FREE at the US desktop version of the Ovi Store:

    Angry Birds:

    http://store.ovi.com/content/103277?clickSource=browse&contentArea=games

    Angry Birds Season:

    http://store.ovi.com/content/101643?clickSource=browse&contentArea=games

    Choose send to phone and then install. I could not use the download to PC trick and then transfer to phone method.

    The Ovi Store on my N8 is having connection/loading issues so it seems that maybe they are adding new games/maintenance. The desktop Ovi Store has more new Free and Demo/Lite games than the Ovi Store client.

    • Deaconclgi

      Upon playing the free Angry Birds Seasons, it appears that the free versions are updated “Lite” versions with more levels and it has a “Buy Full Version Link”.

      Still, it is nice to see the Ovi Store get more developer support. I hope the Ovi Store gets cleaned up a little to remove the Lite versions now that the Free version is out. I am also glad to see many Demo and Lite versions of new games such as Drum Challenge:

      http://store.ovi.com/content/103032?clickSource=publisher+channel

  • Cocco Bill

    So this probably means that N950 will be late and buggy. The best coders will leave first, before they get sacked. Intel and Google will take them to develop their own MeeGo devices.

    Nokia is so fucked. Elop is a total idiot. One couldn’t have handled this thing much worse. Even a chimp would have done a better job. How long will Elop have before he’s thrown out? 2 years? Too much. One year? 6 months? The sooner the better. The biggest mistake Nokia made was hiring Elop as CEO. Think how different things would be, if they had made Vanjoki the CEO instead. Do you think things would be this bad? Absolutely no.

    • Jakob

      Here here

    • SoVatar

      I don’t know, I would not trust the old guard, including Vanjoki. These people are responsible for running Nokia for the last 3, 4 years, and they have proven that they are incapable. Still, Elop seems their worst decision, the peak of incapability.

      In so far every dude other than Elop could have done a better job.

      But there is not much time and not much value left.

      IMHO, of course.

  • Chester

    Nothing will runs trojan Elop if he survives Nokia AGM next month,some investors plan 2 vote him out.

  • Chester

    Nothing will stop trojan Elop if he survives Nokia AGM next month,where some investors plan 2 vote him out. Hope it’s a majority of shareholders.

    • dfa

      I don’t think investors will fire Elop. this guy has done this strategy with board’s benediction. investor have already left the boat.

  • Pingback: UniversoTek » Nokia ofrece 50% de aumento en salario a desarrolladores de MeeGo para que no dejen el barco()

  • Finnish N8 owner

    Btw, where the f is the new look of Symbian?! Just look at how fast Android and Apple are developing new stuff, while Nokia can’t make a decent browser, or any app for that matter, with an easy-to-use platform it owns (Qt)…

    • http://shmerl.blogspot.com Shmerl

      Firefox is becoming pretty decent on mobile, and will be available on Meego. Why reinventing the wheel here?

  • SoVatar

    Sounds like pure desperation on Nokia’s side.

    If I were a Nokia employee, I would not walk, I would run to leave this burning platform and its reckless arsonist S. Flop behind.

    Is there something that can be rescued?

  • Pingback: Nokia quiere retener a los desarrolladores de MeeGo | Vidapixel()

  • cgf

    i have done a research on webos,

    my first impression, nice icons and theme, best gesture and best ui! only missing is the standalone skype and good satnav apps like tomtom/garmin, good media player to play divx xvid and rmvb,

    may skip hp pre 3 and look forward to pre 4 or 5

    still have some chance to meego phone from non nokia

  • Pingback: Nokia offeriert einen 50 % Bonus für MeeGo-Entwickler » Nokia, MeeGo, Bonus, Entwickler, N900, Dies, Sache, Smartphones » mobiFlip.de()

  • f#cky@ m@ke$$h!t

    guess you fully qualify for “no brain, no pain”, don’t you?
    do you really think the N950 will be NOKIA’s last MeeGo phone? would they spend so much money getting it out, if it was to be the last one? and why would they put (so much) money in yet another developer device, if it was to be the last one?

    really, no brain, no pain…

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