National Instruments Reviews

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

Relaxed environment, fair management, interesting work...overall a great company to work for with a bright future ahead of it.

Cons

Somewhat disorganized. Feels like there are growing pains, since the organization is growing at such a fast pace; the small-company feel is still there, but it feels slightly disorganized.

Advice to Senior Management

Tighter organization will be necessary in the future if the company continues to grow so fast. Other than that, wonderful job.

Pros

- Culture: NI has a strong culture and its evident in the way management treats its employees and how employees treat their peers.
- Freedom to choose what you want to do.

Cons

- No domain expertise. The work is not very challenging.
- Very Conservative mangement. This is can be listed under pros aswell cos during recession there was no lay off due to such a conservative management which takes good care of the money in safe investments.

Advice to Senior Management

NI as a whole can be more aggressive in terms of the kind of product that comes out and they way it is marketed. A 30 year old company still not a billion doller company with such good product line is very sad. I strongly feel lot of investment needs to done in marketing products such as LabVIEW which are among some best of the best tools but not getting the deserved market.

Pros

Too strcutured, lots of managment levels, low morale. I think they could do better by helping employees succed by training and grow.

Cons

There was n doen side. Be happy we had jobs with good pay booses theat care and a place to go everyday

Advice to Senior Management

Too strcutured, lots of managment levels, low morale. I think they could do better by helping employees succed by training and grow.

Pros

very flexible working hour, everyone respect each others

Cons

Compensation, salary is below average

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

They have a very friendly environment that allows someone to ask questions and learn from others. While some people don't have a great understanding, the management was aware of people's technical skills and gave them projects that they were capable of.

Cons

The pay is not as great as other companies. And for someone who would want to continue education, they only had three options to get your Masters which is very difficult to do (as in hard to do the school and work at the same time) from what I've heard.

Advice to Senior Management

The leadership at National Instruments is very smart. While some people say that only the bad stay and get promoted, I only experience good leadership around me that were able to meet my needs for the company.

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

Pros

You will get a lot of expirience and get to know many cool people

Cons

The place it is at lacks of more technology and stuff