National Instruments Reviews

Pros

NI has a great culture, honest management, competitive pay, great benefits, awesome products, an on site doctor, on site gym, three cafeterias, Austin is a great city. It all adds up to a great place to build a career.

Cons

You might be able to make a few dollars more somewhere else, especially mid career, but if you stick it out and perform you will be rewarded. This is a rare company that you can spend a career at.

Advice to Senior Management

Keep your eye on the 100 year plan and do not fall into the trap of paying attention to the analysts quarterly expectations.

Pros

The people are fantastic. The opportunities are endless. You can take the chance and make a name for yourself. Innovation is encouraged as part of the NI Culture.

Cons

I'd like to see NI embrace a little more top down vision than it has now. There is a lot of consensus driving that it not necessary.

Pros

NI is a young company. It is a fun environment with many benefits on site. It is a pretty laid back atmosphere.

Cons

There is very little room for advancement in the sales department. The compensation for the job required is not sufficient.

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

Wonderful culture. Brilliant, wise, and open executive leadership. Superior corporate responsibility. Awesome place to jump-start a career right out of college (or even while in college through internships), especially engineers. Very wise, fiscally conservative, long-term corporate strategy. Executive leadership is intentional about valuing employment stability and keeping organizational structure relatively flat.

Cons

Pay, politics, and obliviousness to the way the rest of the world works. While people at NI generally don't get hung up on titles or superiority, career advancement seems based more on one's social circles and being an extrovert than based on performance/skills. Hiring is definitely focused on fresh-out-of-college talent, and the flat organizational structure prevents career growth for experienced pros. While it may seem nice to try to de-emphasize job titles, the fact is the rest of the world goes by resumes and the titles you put on them. NI prides itself on the "NI Way," which means its tight culture, etc., and it is very nice in general, but it often seems that NI is unaware of the way things are done in the rest of the professional world, at least as far as managers go, especially if those managers got their start at NI and have never worked elsewhere (which is common). Pay is below industry average, and raises are miniscule. While executive management is brilliant at establishing vision and valuing employees, middle and lower management seems cliquish and disorganized. But overall, if you value work-life balance, a positive, fun work culture, want to jump-start your career, NI is the place. If you're an experienced pro, don't get starry-eyed just because of the Great Place to Work accolades, negotiate your offer and don't expect big raises, and practice your social skills.

Advice to Senior Management

Execs, keep up the good work, but don't be tempted to isolate yourself or lose value for employees. Middle-managers, pay attention to the skills of your employees, not just their social skills. Introverts deserve promotions too. Also, be careful of death by committee for ideas with NI's consensus focus. And things are starting to get political because now that the company is really growing, middle managers may feel like they have to put up red tape to protect execs from honesty.

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

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

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