Being fired from Nokia isn’t actually that bad

During the years of Nokia’s decline, culminating in the sale of its mobile phone division to Microsoft in September, thousands of workers were made redundant. But the ex-Nokians have now created hundreds of new companies – thanks partly to a very Finnish level of support from the employer to its departing staff. Like many university graduates in Finland, Kimmo Koivisto only wanted to work for Nokia – the country’s biggest and most successful company. He fondly recalls the four years he spent working in its research strategy team in Helsinki. “Working for Nokia was my dream job. It was good fun, having the geek inside me enjoying all the geeky stuff that was happening,” he says.