TL, DR: Old fashioned company, fixed mindset, job offers and salaries under the market trends, you have to wear multiple roles simultaneously to might get considered for promotion, hard to get promoted.
- Nokia's job offers and salary options are way under the market trends, which is one of the main reasons why the company is facing enormous fluctuation and being understaffed. During my three years at Nokia, I got one time raise under 5% due to my contract's mandatory raise agreement. The purpose of these raise initiatives should be to keep employees competitive, but to be honest, compared to the inflation back in 2021 it was nothing technically.
- Moving forward and getting promoted is almost impossible. I had to take multiple extra roles and work a lot to "maybe get considered" for promotion. At some point, it felt like I have to pray to get promoted to a higher job grade. Nokia is not capable to give you a promotion or salary raise at any time in a fiscal year, so you have to wait for a specific period. But don't expect too much anyway... Nokia has country-specific limits for salary raises so your dream raise percentage is going to remain only a dream. They are hiring a lot of fresh graduates and interns to save on employment costs. So if you are thinking about joining Nokia as a senior or medior employee you should expect that you will be mentoring a lot of people. Nokia is proud of being agile and does not hesitate to promote it, but in reality, it is not true.
- The entire company is a pure waterfall or uses a waterfall-agile hybrid approach for project management. If you are thinking about joining Nokia, I highly recommend landing a job in one of Nokia's R&D departments instead of the internal IT department, since you might land an offer with a higher salary range than in the IT dept.
