Matrox Electronic Systems Reviews

Pros

Young spirit with young people who want thing (project) to move.
On the edge of the technologie.
Not very structure but the company can turn on a dime.

Cons

Since the pyramid of management is a maximum of three levels: You, your boss and the president of the company. Don't think to move high in the hierarchic.

Advice to Senior Management

Please don't sell the company to US interest!

Pros

Flextime
one hour lunch
people mind their own business

Cons

Overworked
Understaffed
People are nice
Pay sucks
Benefits are ok

Advice to Senior Management

I don't know "Good Luck"

Pros

-Flex-time.
-Liberty to innovate. The design process isn't controlled so you can make it work the way you want.
-Also the structure is light, so you don't need to go through a lot of people to convey information.
-Kindergarten is very good.

Cons

-Marketing doesn't know what they want.
-Short sighted middle management.
-No salary adjustement for many years.
-The message doesn't get to the owner: Employee have NO HOPE of a the situation getting better.

Advice to Senior Management

If you degrade the employee condition (including monetary conditions) while there is an economic downturn, then you do nothing when economy (and sales) are exceptionnaly good because you don't feel you need to do something, then you do nothing when there MIGHT be an economic downturn in the future, it means the situation will neven enhance for employee. Every good one of them will quit and the loss of profit will happens in the following year.

It is already started, you are paying for it right now and it will get worse until you start respecting employees.

Pros

* Trust fresh grads to deliver major products... this is great training
 * Some opportunity to travel if you are on the right project/department
 * Low stress
 * Interesting problems to solve

Cons

* Difficult to move around even if you are a good performer due to org structure
 * No program management... deadlines are always missed
 * Thick departmental silos and no communication between teams and functional areas

Advice to Senior Management

Invest in modernizing engineering processes, program management, and product management to see higher output. There is stagnation.

Pros

Cool technology. Free flowing. You can pretty well do what you want. No real supervision. Lots of independence.

Cons

Too afraid to take any chances. A lot of people stay there forever and are too afraid to ever leave. They don't know anything other than Matrox and don't ever bring anything new.

Advice to Senior Management

Used to be great. But just going through the motion. Owners don't have any fire in the belly. One owner is more interested in trying to explain to his employees how brilliant he is about all things and will do it for hours and hours on end 'a la Castro'.

Pros

- Challenging job from a technical point of view
- Nice, understanding employees and managers
- No stress (maybe not enough? Is this normal?)
- Quiet stable company but slowly going down (is this a pro or a con?)

Cons

- Bad salary
- Salary increase happens when owners decide so and it doesn't happen very often. At the very least, I would expect an explanation every year to explain us why we have no salary increase
- Everyone gets very similar salary increase, no formal performance review
- Bad schedule management. Usually, management guess a number, which always ends up being 2 times too short. Is this normal that I know from the start that a project will take 2 times longer than estimated? Ask for schedules then you may get better ones!
- Management unwilling to make changes so that things become more efficient.
- Quiet stable company but slowly going down (is this a pro or a con?)
- Owners don't get along very well and they are very careful with their money, not willing to take any financial risk, which makes employees not as motivated as they could be.

Advice to Senior Management

Owners, you've done a very good job over the years. Matrox is still making money after more than 30 years. But please, it's time to sell the company to someone who's willing to take risks and make appropriate changes. And lower manager, please, listen more to younger people. It's not because things were made this way for the last 20 years that they still should be made this way. Matrox can do better.

Pros

Friendly people
Interesting work
Very nice environment (pool, hockey ring, basketball and volleyball court)

Cons

Lack of organisation
Financial advantages are small

Advice to Senior Management

Improve strucutre in compagny

Pros

They used to operate in the exciting and very competitive GPU industry. Sadly there isn't much going for this company these days as they've stripped their R&D budget to the core and new releases tend to be to late to the game and outdated by the time they hit the market place

Cons

Uncompetitive salaries, low comission levels of 1% or less of gross profits for expensive niche products with very long sales cycles, a capped yearly comission rate that can be as low as $10,000 / year, a general lack of vision and an ownership feud that has been hurting the company and it's employees for several years.

Advice to Senior Management

To senior managers in direct contact with the ownership to continue milking it for all it's worth although they could probably be doing better elsewhere and to lower ranking managers who have ambitions in life to move on to companies with brighter outlooks.

Pros

Note: The following applies to the video product group; I don't know much about the other groups.

It is a relatively dynamic working environment. The products are at the leading edge of the technology.
There are some close relationships between marketing ("what is planned"), engineering ("what is done") and SQA (insures "what was done" matches "what was planned") with respect to your everyday work. Often in bigger companies, these interactions seem missing or intangible.
There is an efficient video SQA process that helps engineering deliver the best products as possible.

Cons

Low paid vacations.
Some of the company's policies are a bit annoying, but I saw the equivalent in other companies too.

Advice to Senior Management

Make at least 2 feedback meetings per year with the employees.

Pros

Stability: There is a very low turnover rate at Matrox, in part because it is a privately own company that is very proactive on market changes and they keep their good people through bad times even if it costs them.

Other advantages are collateral but important for some: parking on site, pool, gym, showers, onsite cafeteria with good and fairly cheap meals, the location is out of the downtown area permitting suburbians to go to work without traffic concerns. It is also right beside a managed wooden area, great for a run or walk at lunch time.

Cons

My main problem with Matrox is the lack of trust in its employees. For example, the gym and pool are closed during working hours. I would love to go workout around 2:00 when I am just not productive anyway, but I can't. Same for the internet, half the web is blocked. I can't even check my mail at Google. Consequently, telecommuting is out of the question.

The salaries are also generally low compared to the rest of the industry.

Advice to Senior Management

Trust your employees. Provide guidelines, but assume your employees are good and don't punish everyone for a few ones that exaggerated. Monitor if you feel the need, but don't block everything broadly.