Pros
* Established, stable company * Lots of smart people * Customers do amazing things with NI products * Learn basics of software development NI was a great place to start a career. I learned a ton and worked with very smart coworkers.
Kontras
NI was once a fast growth tech company with lots of innovation and excitement. Now it has matured and hit a plateau, becoming a medium sized company where it's hard to be more than a cog in the machine. A handful of senior technical people are the gatekeepers to what and how things are done. Those ways are not usually industry standard or industry leading, but somewhat home-grown, "we do things differently because we are different from other software development companies", and so you will not get exposed to better concepts because these senior tech gatekeepers will disallow them. Also, the range of technologies you will work on is narrow: primarily desktop software, not web or mobile. Without having been at NI for ten to twenty years, you will not get to become one of these gatekeepers. NI has long prized hiring from college, promoting from within, and even people who have been at the company five years are considered relatively new. This is a strength and a weakness. There ends up being an in-bred tunnel vision on improving things because everyone at NI thinks they are an exception to the rule that is proven to work in the industry.