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National Instruments

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National Instruments Software Developer reviews

3.6

80% would recommend to a friend

(161 total reviews)

Alex Davern

52% approve of CEO

29% positive business outlook

Software Developer employees have rated National Instruments with 3.6 out of 5 stars, based on 161 company reviews on Glassdoor. This indicates that most Software Developer professionals have a good working experience there. National Instruments is rated in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) by Software Developer professionals compared to other employers within the Manufactura industry (3.5 stars).

Reviews by job title

161 reviews
2.0
Nov 7, 2015

Software Engineer

Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The onsite cafeteria is super convenient. Decent benefits. Smart and helpful/friendly coworkers.

Cons

You have to have a certain kind of personality to work here and enjoy it. This is a heavy engineer culture, so you get a lot of very straightforward, logical, traditional people who are very comfortable going to work everyday and living out the American Dream. The lack of cultural diversity and creative expression can very quickly become suffocating if that's not your thing. Especially if you're a new grad and don't have much experience choosing a workplace yet, be aware of this. Don't just go for NI's impressive name, but be sure to evaluate how comfortable you really feel here during the interview process. The other major problem is salary. This is particularly a problem with the software people. NI continues to try to sell candidates and employees on its stability and reasonable benefits, but it's still thinking like a hardware company. NI isn't fighting for software devs against companies like Agilent; it's going up against Google and Apple and Amazon and every other company in the world willing to pay to attract top software talent. In the last year of my employment, the (fairly small) org I was in saw probably around 10 people quit. Many of the senior people have had increasing amounts of work and stress placed on them, without anything close to competitive pay.

2.0
Nov 1, 2015
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- People are extremely nice to work with and incredibly smart. - Flexible work hours. - Some interesting product lines.

Cons

- There is a large portion of the workforce that's incredibly lazy. Getting people to work for projects outside their groups is discouraged, I've been discouraged multiple times from helping out other teams. Emphasis on quality goes out the window in order to meet deadlines. People who try and improve the quality of work as seen as obstacles to meeting the deadlines, when it should be the opposite. Blame is very easy to dish out, but not everyone owns up to mistakes. - Career growth is limited, especially if you are in AE. I have met multiple people who said that going into the ELP program was not what they thought they were signing up for. - Compensation is way below market average, and the management seems to have its head in the sand about the increasing costs of living in Austin. - If you switch teams, you can pretty much expect all the work you've done before to count for nothing. - Poor business planning for continuous years has led to non-existent bonuses and just rumours of raises. Every single time some external conditions are blamed, it's about time someone took a good look at our business strategy and owned up to the constant mistakes that have been made.

2.0
Oct 29, 2015
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The people at NI are great. Everyone is very friendly and willing to help in any way possible.

Cons

Raises once again this year were minimal. No company bonus for 2015 and medical benefits cost is going up again. Getting harder to "make a living" working at NI.

Viewing 118 - 120 of 161 Reviews

Glassdoor has 2,924 National Instruments reviews submitted anonymously by National Instruments employees. Read employee reviews and ratings on Glassdoor to decide if National Instruments is right for you.