National Instruments Reviews in Austin, TX Area

Pros

Career Development, Networking, Work/Life Balance, Benefits, Culture

Cons

Low Salary, Masters Degree doesn't help

Pros

The benefits are awesome, the people are nice, some of the senior technical staff are very helpful. The management decisions are transparent and for the most part the overhead is manageable. Low to medium stress level with good balance.

Cons

Consensus driven decisions make aggresive development impossible. Salaries and raises are mediocre. Growth opportunities are slim.

Advice to Senior Management

Let engineers come up with their own ideas and execute on them instead of having tech leads warp them into their own projects. Shorten development schedules in favor of releasing more products a year. It's more fun that way

Pros

NI has some bright people. They recruit at very good universities, especially UT Austin, and they focus more on technical interview questions than most other companies. This focus helps ensure that they hire people who can solve problems creatively, instead of just automatons with high GPAs who thrive within the school system.

The campus is attractive, and located in the great city of Austin. The campus has its own gym and cafeteria. The cafeteria is run by Sodex, so the food quality and portion sizes are disappointing compared to the price, but it's still convenient sometimes.

Cons

NI is a big company trying to pretend it's still a small company. At 5200+ employees, it's not a small company anymore, and as such, it suffers from the increased bureaucracy, impeded communication, and longer work hours that usually goes along with having a bigger company. Although it's not really NI's fault that it suffers from problems that plague most larger companies, it IS NI's fault that it still tries to indoctrinate people that its unique company culture makes it a superior place to work, when in fact there are many other companies with a more laid-back culture and atmosphere. NI may have had a superior culture and work environment many years ago, but that is no longer true today. It's still probably a better environment than someplace like Dell, but that really isn't saying much.

What's worse, NI uses that imaginary company culture to justify paying its employees below-average salaries. A quick look at Glassdoor's salary info suggests that NI's pay is lacking: an average software developer at Dell makes $84,427; an average software engineer at Cisco in Austin makes $102,600; but an average software engineer at NI makes only $61,679. You would have to have a *far* superior environment and work hours to justify that kind of difference in salary. The notion that throwing a few beer parties on the deck every year can compensate for a $20000+ difference in salary is ridiculous, and frankly, it's insulting to the employees' intelligence.

It may be the case that the lower salaries at NI are partially due to a younger, more inexperienced workforce -- but then, one wonders why there aren't more older employees. This phenomenon may be because NI gives fewer promotions or pay raises given to more senior employees despite increased work hours and responsibility, and therefore, employees find greener pastures elsewhere after a few years of experience. Although interns and new grads usually work about 8 hours a day, I frequently saw more senior engineers putting in 10, 11, or even 12 hour days. However, it seems that this increased seniority didn't always lead to increased pay or promotions. Although I was a co-op and didn't experience this firsthand, other engineers often joked that the best way to get ahead at NI was to go work at Dell for a few years, and then get hired back at a higher position or pay rate.

Advice to Senior Management

Stop pretending to be a small company, and stop using the "company culture" to justify paying below-average salaries. It's dishonest, and I believe it's causing older employees to seek employment elsewhere.

Pros

Employers invest in solid performers and provide growth opportunities

Cons

We are not paid fairly for how much we do

Advice to Senior Management

Invest more in IT and our website structure

Pros

great company culture; great people to work with; fun work environment

Cons

Sometimes interns are lost in the mix of things; email response times are slow

Pros

Relaxed work environment, pro-employee, job security

Cons

very established and structured processes, not much opportunity for growth and advancement

Advice to Senior Management

look for opportunities to challenge folks

Pros

If you are lucky to work in a group with a good manager, working at NI can be wonderful. A good manager being defined as someone who understands work/life balance and is flexible with your work schedule where possible, someone who advocates for you, etc.

Cons

NI needs to fix issues with salary compensation. The average salary increase this year, after talking to some co-workers, seemed to be around 2-3%. If you were one of the lucky few to get an increase in the spring and fall, you probably got a total of 4-5% across the two adjustments. However, if you look at the last proxy statement (public on ni.com), the senior officers of NI saw an increase in salary and bonus compensation (not including stock) of between 31% and 50% from 2009 to 2010. That's just ridiculous. And lest you think the difference is that the average employee salary increases quoted above don't include bonuses - the average employee isn't receiving an extra 50% of their salary in a bonus - not by a long shot - but the senior officers are.

Advice to Senior Management

Set up an ombudsman to accept employee feedback and mediate resolutions. The Human Resources department is not a substitute.

Pros

Competitive salary and benefits (for an intern, I hear pay's a little low for full time employees).

Mature and well executed intern program with lots of intern events and such.

Work that the company really cares about and wants to see done.

It's easy to forget that you're an intern. You feel like a full time employee.

Great city, although it gets very hot in the summer.

On site cafeterias, fitness center, and medical clinic. They pulled a giant splinter out of my friend's foot and put him on antibiotics at no charge.

Never asked to work overtime.

Cons

Sometimes I felt that my project was more experimental than an intern project should be. The parameters changed very often and I spent a lot of time discarding code and writing new code to keep up.

Advice to Senior Management

Keep up the great work. You have a winning internship program.

Pros

The people are very intelligent and great to be around.

Cons

I feel like there is little room for professional growth outside of engineering.

Pros

Very Technically oriented
Good for new grads
great culture

Cons

Unstructured
low pay, top management is pompous

Advice to Senior Management

Get new staff into management positions