Yes, you read that right. A Lumia 630 in exchange for putting pen to paper to terminate your contract. Only that this is not the whole deal. It is just meant to get as many workers facing the sack as part of Microsoft’s downsizing as possible to take the send-off package prepared by the company before they are sent home anyway. More like volunteering to resign before the inevitable.
Microsoft will be laying off around 18,000 employees over the next one year (a process that has already started). Most of these workers are those carried over from Nokia, the company Microsoft acquired in a US $7.2 billion deal closed back in April. Since they were still to be losing their jobs anyway in the next few months, Microsoft is seeking to encourage many of such employees to resign before that time comes. The Lumia 630 is simply an incentive. According to MarketWatch which broke these news, upto 300 employees per day are eligible for this.
This move comes after reports emerged that there had been protests in Beijing by employees over the job cuts.
Is that a bad thing or a good thing? Depends on who you ask and what you want to make of this. A $150 smartphone on top of your severance package is not a bad thing if you ask me. More so when it is a product you helped create in one way or another. It could serve as a souvenir. A reminder of the good old days and on the extreme, the painful exit. Still, I doubt I am alone in imagining that a much better Lumia like say the 930 would have been a great incentive.
Via WPCentral