Nokia

Excellent work-life balance: Even in 2018-19, we got a lot of WFH opportunities, even as freshers, at our manager's discretion. During COVID, WFH was mandated, and they were thinking about restructuring to a 4-day WFH-1 day WFO when COVID cleared. Some of the staff actually moved to a permanent WFH role too.

Work: The work was structured, well-documented, ordered, and almost always fairly estimated in terms of time and effort.

Workforce: Knowledgeable peers among the technical staff.

Benefits: Good, nothing over the top. Included company cabs/tempos, an own-vehicle policy if you needed to buy one, fuel reimbursements, and good insurance coverage.

Management: Depending on the team. Ours helped me by granting an extended break when I could not work due to multiple family emergencies.

Promotion reserved for people who presented their relatively average work in a better way - talkers over workers.

Salary: Average to begin with. Promotions did not go over the current inflation at the time, so effectively it was the same pay or less.

Management: Jargon-loving managers who did not have a lot of technical knowledge. The introduction of Scrum PIs made productivity reverse.

Benefits: Every benefit came with an exhaustive list of "terms and conditions apply," even though they were presented as straightforward. For example, mobile purchase benefits were applicable only to Nokia specific models from the same year, with older generation specs compared to rivals. Also, rival company models (read: all others) did not qualify for benefits. This was taken away the subsequent year and shown as profits while the hikes and promotions were stalled.