Native Instruments reviews

Strap in. More than anything, the biggest downside is there is little to no stability here. There are constant departures from senior positions, and the threat of layoffs is always seen in everyone's eyes. Every all hands feels like a layoff is coming. People who've worked for the company for decades have been jumping ship for years with no real effort to rehire to these roles. Very low possibility for career advancement. Especially in creative roles, people do not commonly get promoted or even given raises. The pay is also massively substandard for a company of NI's size and industry notoriety. No bonuses, many years without a raise. The company is always strapped for cash, despite how badly it wants to make every year like 2020 when we were all inside making music. After being bought by private equity, it's gotten much worse. The executive team feels like they're just coasting on big salaries until the company folds. C-suite frequently in flux, with 6+ CEO changes over four years and a revolving door of other leaders, it always felt like NI wasn't on stable footing. Overall, the frequent change in leadership and management by private equity transitioned the company from a passionate audio company focussed on making interesting and compelling products people wanted, to a business that was more focussed on constantly re-releasing old products with few updates to squeeze what cash they can out of their customer base. Creativity both in app development and marketing was quashed in the interest of making the safe sale. Finally, they treat their people like statistics. Frequently, layoffs and firings happen right after product launches; as soon as you finish a massive campaign or project, someone will come in with an AI-written termination notice and drop you like a hot potato.

When Francisco Partners took over a majority stake in all three companies and consolidated them into a singular NI entity, the layoffs and changes drove a lot of talented and amazing people away. Customers noticed right away and voiced concerns. Profit trumped all other things. There were private equity share holders to please now. Education, innovation, and community fell by the wayside. Pillars that were once driving forcings were now tertiary. Customers noticed right away and voiced concerns. When in company meetings, employees were told it was a safe space to share concerns, ask any questions, etc. Then after the meetings, depending on who your Executive lead and Directors were, you would be berated, yelled at, and penalized for "making them look bad" by asking your questions in that safe space. It doesn't help either that when sharing how the layoffs and changes to the work balance affected mental health, the response from those in charge was very politely worded: "Maybe this place isn't right for you and you should look for opportunity elsewhere." Instead of saying let's work together on finding the right work/life balance and ensuring the teams can handle the work. Let's fix this and find a way to make things better. The man who replaced Rob Singer as CEO is a hatchet man from Franciso Partners. Telling wild stories on his first day about making tough choices for other companies he worked at and gloating about his history as if it were war stories. Rob Singer refused to keep laying folks off and did everything in his power to keep people, so the Private Equity firm removed him and put in someone not afraid to cut anything for the sake of saving profits for them. The company also stopped issuing normal cost-of-living pay increases, bonuses, and regular raises. By the end, my salary was almost 8 percent less than other competitive companies. I've heard from others that their salary differences compared to competitors are north of 15% for certain specialized roles.