I think you missed the point that the employees were trying to make.
Who determines what OS a device uses, Mangement or engineers? Who determines which models go into production, management or engineers? Who is better situtated to tell where the industry is going, managment or engineers? Who pays the price when the wrong decision is made?
Engineers follow the tech industry VERY closely - because this is what we are, who we are, and a part of our being. A business manager simply looks at numbers - and until the numbers change - they stay the course. This is why companies that exceed have engineers in Sr. Management (Intel, Apple, present-day HP) and companies that hire business “guru’s” fall aside (HP’s Carly Fiona, Nokia, Dell Computer, ect).
Bottom line, the reason that Dilbert is so popular is because a great many of the cartoons depict real life. Engineers are geeks and management are typically idiots.
The Engineers at Nokia were not given the option to program in Android - that decision was made for them by managment. Management also dictates what classes the engineers are to be sent to. Instead of training in Android, they were typically sent to classes on ‘Saving the Environment’, ‘Global Warming’, ‘Celebrating Diversity’, ‘Sensitivity of the Gay/Lesbian Lifestyle’, ‘Conflict Avoidance’, and ‘Multi-Culturalism’.
The cost of training an engineer in Android for a week, is about the same as sending him to one of these classes. Whereas the engineer would return from a class on Adroid having actually learned something; the same engineer returns from these managment dictated classes with a mind that has been closed down for a week - and a weeks’ wages have been utterly wasted.