Symbian Reviews

I worked at Symbian

Pros – I worked from the beginning of Symbian through to 2002. It was an awesome startup that really took over the tech press and dominated the mobile world...for a while

Cons – And then those pesky handset manufacturers got in the way. Shame that so much promise was squandered in the early 2000s.

Advice to Senior Management – Don't mix customers with shareholders

I worked at Symbian full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – Symbian was one of these rare situations where a team of brilliant people come together and make the most of a tremendous market opportunity. It was an incredibly well-led company that ran like a machine and produced some of the wides ever used software on the planet.

Cons – Tragically, Symbian's phone vendor shareholders did not realise the potential of the people in Symbian. While the software was getting outdated and contained a lot of legacy that could not be removed, they should have used the technical talent, management capability and development process experience available in Symbian to develop a new phone OS platform that could compete on a level playing field with Google Android.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

I have been working at Symbian full-time for more than 3 years

Pros – good thing that matters most

Cons – real good in benefits and bonus annually

Advice to Senior Management – very well

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm optimistic about the outlook for this company

I worked at Symbian as a contractor for less than a year

Pros – There were some decent people working there.

Cons – John Schroder, the project office manager.

Advice to Senior Management – Do not be sexist or racist.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

I worked at Symbian

Pros – There was a real focus on the software, and keeping the engineers happy. More so than I have ever seen at any other company.

Cons – Under resourced. Our internal and external customers asked for a lot - there was always too much to do, and not enough time to do it in.

Advice to Senior Management – Overall a fine job. We had a vision of the way forward, and apart from minor issues along the way, we tended to execute that vision.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

I have been working at Symbian

Pros – Work life balance is very good
Management are sensible w.r.t work practices..felxitime, no suits etc etc

Cons – pay/compensation is below average
middle management are often flaky
attitude towards promotion/work reviews isn't great

Advice to Senior Management – reward the efforts of workers in line with other companies. continue to respect the style in which employees may choose to work

I have been working at Symbian

Pros – The compensation is at least comparable with similar London-based companies, at least in Information Systems. ~This may be due to the presence of city-based companies (i.e. financial institutions) in the vicinity - although it will be interesting to see how their difficulties at present influence Symbian's compensation packages.

The benefits are good, especially medical insurance, which a number of people I know have made use of.

Management attitude to work/life balance is favourable, and it is always possible to take time off for necessities & emergencies.

The work is often interesting and challenging - although not always so!

Cons – IS management are definitely not people-oriented, and seem to make a habit of putting their foot in their mouth every time they try to make an announcement. Furthermore, one or two in particular seem to go out of their way to avoid exchanging even a single word with some of their staff. I'm sure that some middle managers don't even know who some of their staff are, despite working yards away from them!

Advice to Senior Management – Please try to get managers with properly developed people skills. And please stop avoiding peoples' difficult questions about the future.

I have been working at Symbian

Pros – Working atmosphere:
Friendly atmosphere. Graduates are treated great and get to form great relationships.

Work/life balance:
Flexible working hours and management is supportive when you need to be absent for medical/personal reasons.

People/fun:
Great people. Lots of drinks, social events. Chance to propose your own social events/sports.

Office environment:
The office environment depends on the floor you work at. The "worst" floors are going through major refurbishment though.

Opportunities:
There are hopefully going to be loads of opportunities now that we are becoming part of Nokia.

Cons – Graduates seem to be stack with the graduate group that they joined. There are a lot of people that joined 5-10 years ago and form the core of the company. There is a great gap between them and the new joiners.

Compensation!

Not enough information about different opportunities and career paths within the company.

Advice to Senior Management – -

I have been working at Symbian

Pros – Working atmosphere:
Friendly and relaxed atmosphere (no dress code) where people are hired for their talent and then trusted to do a good job.

Work/life balance:
Flexible working hours and 5 weeks' holiday plus opportunity to buy/sell 5 days' holiday make for a good work-life balance.

Senior management:
Senior management bring a clear direction and positive vision to the company and the company's success is well communicated to employees leading to us feeling proud of what we achieve.

People/fun:
The people are great and we regularly head down the pub for drinks after work because we all enjoy each other's company. There are also team days out and a sports and social club which organises company events.

Office environment:
There is an office redecoration program in place and Symbian doesn't underestimate the importance of a good working enviroment. Free tea, coffee and fruit!

Overall benefits:
Good stakeholder pension with company contribution, healthcare plan, free phone, season ticket loan, childcare vouchers, amongst others.

Cons – Job security:
The main downside at the moment for employees is that we are about to be taken over by Nokia which naturally leads to fears about job security and uncertainty about what sort of work we will be doing in the future. Additionally, Motorola have just pulled out of making Symbian phones so we have recently lost a major client.

Compensation:
The pay for graduates is comparable to that on grad schemes in other industries but within the software industry it is lower than many. I am not confident that the compensation situation is likely to improve in the near future, unless I leave and rejoin which is supposed to be the best way of obtaining a pay rise at Symbian.

Feedback/career development:
I don't believe it is that easy for graduates to progress in their career at Symbian, other than developing a technical specialisation. A few will make it to e.g. tech lead, technical architect or project manager but I believe managers generally have a preconceived idea of who is naturally "the best fit" for such a job, rather than encouraging everyone with some relevant strengths and some weaknesses to develop to the level where they would be able to apply.

Few line managers I have come across have been very interested in providing career development advice or opportunities for their reports to develop the skills they need to progress (or even giving feedback on what they believe those skills are) - for instance, in my department, appraisals are frequently conducted late, or even not at all. Having spoken to people who used to work in my department but left, I know it's not just me who thinks this.

However, having said all that, I'd say my department is worse than most at taking career development seriously, and there are a mentoring scheme and plenty of formal training courses available, an internal job board to see what else is available, and the opportunity to do secondments (though those have dried up a bit at the moment what with the Nokia acquisition), so it's not all bad, but you need to be prepared to take responsibility for your own development.

Advice to Senior Management – Consistency between teams (singing from the same hymn sheet):
I think that there are plenty of good improvement schemes happening within Symbian, but with the company growing at the rate it is, more needs to be done to ensure change initiatives are taken seriously across the whole company and rolled out in a consistent way - at the moment it seems to me there is plenty of variation between departments and line managers.

Communication/feedback:
While there are good channels for feedback from employees to senior management (employee satisfaction survey, sounding board) which is acted upon in a top-down way, I would also like to see more of a bottom-up feedback culture where employees can give feedback to and via managers.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

I have been working at Symbian

Pros – Symbian is a great company with very talented people. A Software Engineer can make a real impact on people's lives with over 200million devices out there. There is a great graduate scheme with brilliant recruitment process - The best I've ever experinced in any Tech company. There are good benefits in general with 5 weeks paid holiday and a 5% company bonus. Possible to become an expert in a certain area very quickly. Current employees about to become Nokia employees which can only be a good thing. Very relaxed atmosphere. market leaders. need eight more words to fill this box.

Cons – Pay within Symbian is very substandard. Graduates salaries do not reflect the technical nature of the jobs they do, with graduates in certain "lesser" teams being promoted before those in better teams where the technical side of the role is substantially harder. (Kernel verses System Test).
There is no salary negotiations, with the CFO dictating pay rises (or lack thereof considering inflation).

Advice to Senior Management – Treat graduates with more respect in terms of salary and grades P1 to P2 should be considerably higher pay increase.
LMs should be gunning for promotions for graduates, not scolding them when they ask for a pay rise.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend