Nokia’s US head of social media ‘pushed’ off the ‘burning platform’ amid major layoffs

Nokia’s Phillip Schwarzmann — a nine-year veteran of the company and one of its more public faces in various PR and communication roles — reports that he’s been laid off today, a victim of a much larger cull announced by CEO Stephen Elop last month. Schwarzmann announced his departure in a blog post on his personal site, saying he was “pushed” off a “burning platform,” a reference to an infamous memo from Elop leaked to the press at the time he made the decision to move away from Symbian in early 2011. He appears to have seen this coming, saying that he’d dodged layoff bullets from Nokia in the past and that his number had “finally come up.”

He goes on to mention several colleagues who remain on Nokia’s comms team, so the company hasn’t entirely cleaned house — but we’re hearing that significant fractions of its Finland, UK, and California staff will be affected in the latest moves, and odds are high that we haven’t heard the last of them.