Pros
- Great and fun place to work. Lab is small yet tightly knit with each member exceptionally talented in his/her own right with some superstars of the past - interestingly no bench warmers or dead wood here yet.
- Very high profile place to work for and definitely seen by the upper management as the spearhead of innovation for Nokia. Interestingly the head of Nokia Research is based in the Palo Alto lab and not the Helsinki/Tampere labs. Within the first year, pretty much met and got a chance to talk to every big wig in Nokia and quite a few from outside.
- Each individual and team has *a lot* of freedom in terms of responsibility and to some extent budget, to go out and do what they need to (within scope of Nokia's current or future business interests). This seems to be unique to the Palo Alto lab.
- Has a startup feel with flexible hours, free catered food, interesting guests each week. Flat organization so a lowly researcher can walk in and have a chat with the head of research about a new project.
- People are encouraged to perform and are rewarded on basis on Ps - Patents, Publications, Prototypes, Publicity.
- Lab itself has a very organic feel to it with large screen displays, fancy artwork, bean bags and colorful walls.
- Compensation is comparable to other top places in the Silicon Valley (though not the highest) but unlike lot of research labs has a variable component which may fluctuate based on Nokia's fortunes. Interestingly, even in Nokia's worst year in its history, the variable component of pay was fairly high.
Cons
- The lab as a whole is still trying to fit into the overall Nokia culture which is more staid and European. This sometimes leads to Finnish management getting wary of the out-of-box thinking that goes on in the Palo Alto lab though with the recent track record of successes this is slowly going away.
- The agile capabilities of the research teams does lead to some backlash from Nokia product groups which are slower in terms of development and in the uptake for new products which are not already on the product road map. You sometimes have to convince the product group managers or their bosses that your research is not a threat to their livelihood. Also, have to fight the tendencies of product groups to grab the low hanging fruits of the research and discarding the main outcomes.
- Tech transfers can take a lot of your time towards the end of a research project, due to reasons given above.
- Some teams are too focused on academic publication oriented research while others are too focused on system type research.
- Management of individual teams varies with some more loosely managed than others. You are expected to steer your own course and have the ability to sell your own research.
- Far removed from the Finnish headquarters which makes major decisions for Nokia yet has high visibility inside and outside Nokia - sometimes this causes some discomfort between the upper management.
