Symbian Reviews

Former Employee – 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 While the software was getting outdated and contained a lot of legacy that could not be removed, they should have used the technical talent, management capability and development process experience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

Former Employee – worked at Symbian full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – So much Employee friendly and good pay

Cons – no future for product and any way Nokia closed this product development

Advice to Senior Management – wrong step

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

Current Employee – 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

Former Employee – 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

Former Employee – worked at Symbian

Pros – A very diverse environment with a number of lovely, bright people. The industry is certainly very interesting and the opportunity to work with some truly brilliant industry developers was great.

Cons – Possibly the most dysfunctional work environment I have ever been in. There were intense amounts of gossip and insecurity and generally speaking there was less focus on quality product than there was on personal issues and ego.

Advice to Senior Management – Business decisions made to placate emotionally unstable middle managers or feed someones ego despite the full awareness that is is a bad business decision compared to other options available is foolhardy beyond the telling of it.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend – I'm not optimistic about the outlook for this company

Former Employee – worked at Symbian

Pros – Get the tech update from different people and be at the tech geek in mobile tech.

Cons – Symbian took over by Nokia...

Advice to Senior Management – Keep the OS still for many phones to come.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Symbian

Pros – Great team feelings. Lots of competent people. Great leadership. Management willing to listen and take comments onboard.

Cons – Hard to get promoted above a certain range. Certain roles have a limited job grade level meaning you have to move to a new and different role to get promoted.

Advice to Senior Management – This is perhaps not really relevent now what Nokia has taken over Symbian: Ensure salaries are in line with the industry.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – 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

Current Employee – 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

Current Employee – 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.