Petra Söderling spent 12 years
working for Nokia, and she was sorry to leave her job as Open Source
Director for Symbian recently – the mobile operative system which is
now being axed. But she is also realistic. Nokia’s progress has been
fantastic, but when the company cuts jobs new opportunities
arise.
“Nokia was the best thing to happen to Finland. The next best thing
was that Nokia went down,” says Söderling, who now wants to build her
own company.
There is a massive exodus underway – more than 10,000 jobs have
already gone or are going in Finland alone, 30,000 globally. At the
same time she has noticed how people who have left Nokia no longer want
to work for large organisations. They want to start companies, they
have the experience and they have the money.
“This is an unprecedented opportunity.”
According to Petra Söderling, Nokia has proven to be very
responsible. For a while still, people who have been made redundant
will continue to be paid according to how long they worked for the
company. There is also a €25,000 contribution for people who want to
start their own company and Nokia will provide security for bank loans
up to the double of that sum.
Hobby became job
Since 2009 Söderling has been running her company Mobile Brain Bank
as a hobby while working for Nokia, but now it has become serious. The
service helps companies which need to develop mobile apps get in touch
with and offer jobs to programmers.
“We look at all offers and analyse those offering a service before
advising our customer.”
The company charges 10 percent of a contract’s worth as a fee. The
main idea is to help unemployed engineers set up their own company.
Some 2,000 engineers are now part of the network and so far 25
projects have been put out there. But this is only the beginning. Petra
Söderling has also established a company in the US and believes her
network of people within the trade will prove to be very useful. She
hopes to find work for around a thousand engineers as a result of
Mobile Brain Bank.
Petra Söderling, who has become a bit of an unofficial spokesperson
for those who are leaving Nokia, is also worried that valuable skills
will disappear. A former colleague wanted to become a farmer, another
started water colour painting.
So far Nokia has supported around 100 business ideas, but perhaps as
many have been turned down.
Seeking support
For highly educated people with money in the bank the lay-offs might
not represent the same catastrophe as for people at the mobile
telephone factory in Salo – 1,000 of whom lost their jobs as production
moved to Asia. The Finnish government has applied for support from the
European Globalisation Adjustment Fund to help all those who have lost
their jobs to retrain and find new work.
In a town where unemployment has already reached more than eleven
percent that is not an easy task. Although Nokia’s rise and fall means
the release of resources which can benefit other sectors, it is clear
to many that what is happening is a personal catastrophe, even if Nokia
also here helps those who have lost their jobs to move on.
