Pros
- Friendly coworkers - Mentorship for new grads - R&D management have technical backgrounds - Low-pressure work environment (YMMV, as there have been teams in the past that were forced to work weekends to meet deadlines) - Annual tech conference where employees get to share new tech and ideas with each other. Shout out to the guy who ran python in the boot loader.
Kontras
- Compensation and benefits are lackluster and don't seem to be improving. From the sound of it, NI has always lacked competitive compensation but Austin's recent growth is making this worse. - Lack of faith in upper management. NI has a bit of an attrition problem. Management first tried to write this off as due to the economy improving. But no one leaves because the economy gets better, they leave because there's something wrong. In May, management acknowledged that attrition was a problem and said they were going to address it. They formed a committee of employees (all VPs or Directors) and will propose ideas to Dr. T sometime in August. Compensation has been a know problem for years. Does management really need 3 months to figure that out? It seems like they're just buying time. Upper management is either incompetent or dishonest, I don't know which is worse. - Attrition. We're losing plenty of employees that have worked here 5, 10, even 15+ years. NI's compensation seems to be driving people away. Management thinks they can fix this by hiring new grads or overseas. Not only do we lose a lot of NI-specific expertise, but it's a blow to morale. NI is basically sending the message, "You are replaceable". Just ask our manufacturing division in Austin. - The amount of buzzwords. I really want to enjoy Weird Al's Mission Statement, but it's just too depressing.