National Instruments Hardware Engineering Manager reviews

After a couple of years you will have learned most of what there is to learn about data acquisition hardware design (I was a hardware engineer there). Being underpaid and underappreciated it is time to move on at that point. Although senior management has their act together, the mid-level managers that I dealt with were generally not very competent. Mid-level managers promoted a culture of finger pointing, blame deflection, and kissing up ahead of teamwork. This type of culture can be toxic for a technology company, which is proven by the company's financial and stock performance the last several years. The company touted the fact that it could/should grow 20-40% a year; that hasn't come close to happening since I began working there in 2001, and probably will never happen if its culture doesn't change. Unless if you are fresh out of college I think that you would better serve your career by working somewhere else.

The salaries are competitive (especially for new grad hires) but the salary growth is not ideal. The management relys too heavily on the company stock making up for salary shortfalls when it has not grown nearly as quickly since the 2001 tech bust. These issues along with how long it takes people on the technical track to achieve promotionshave led to a problem with retention of new grad hires after the 5-7 year mark.