National Instruments reviews about "work environment"

Little growth in career opportunities, poor work life balance in spite of what is claimed.

Mostly Proprietary Tools get used

The pay is way below average. New grads should not be fooled by all the hype centering around the casual work environment. Although this is true, the low salaries and lack of raises are also very true. If you truly feel you are the best and brightest, you should go elsewhere. It's easy to get promoted and take on more responsibility, but pay increases barely keep up with rising cost of living in Austin if they even occur. Also, the annual bonus is a joke...it doesn't even cover half of a monthly mortgage/rent payment.

If you do not have a 4 year degree, you will go nowhere. Marketing is the place to be. Butt kissing is the key to success here. Honest work and performance count for little. No raises for a few years. appear to be dumbing down the professional service NI used to offer their customers by the Technical Sales department. Customers complaints are unheard. And somehow, management thinks it's the Representatives fault for not conveying the new structure to the customer. They do not want to hear that the customer wants to speak to their loyal service provider, that has been supporting them over the years, directly. This used to be such a great company. Lack in monetary compensation was offset by happy customers, perks, respect from management and comfortable work environment.

- First of all, NI is a marketing / self-promoting / recruiting....MACHINE. They know exactly what to say, how to say it, and to whom to say it to when they want to win you over. We can't completely fault NI for being this way; it's partly due to the corporate culture we all live in. However, NI knows how to turn this up to 11 when needed. - NI is desperately trying to become a "performance-based" work environment. Management openly references a slide deck from a very popular internet flix streaming company that praises a performance-based culture. Unfortunately, NI management fails to also see in the same slide deck that this company also pays its employees very well. Hmmm....two sides of the same coin? Could performance be closely tied to compensation? NI doesn't think so. They pass this minor technicality off with a slight-of-hand gesture as if to say..."These are not the metrics we are looking for" -- The consensus-based culture might have worked well 15 or 20 years ago when the company and their product offering was much smaller. Now, it just stifles productivity, creative / unique thought, and individual accountability and responsibility. If you are a creative thinker, NI is not for you. -- As mentioned above, NI pays slightly-below average in spite of being known as the "Cadillac" of hardware and software in the industry. Their gross profit per employee is among the lowest among their competitors. Until they start generating A LOT more revenue and/or start laying-off the poorest performers, salaries (and bonuses) will continue to be average at best. -- There's a well-known formula upper management uses when determining how much of a bonus should be payed out when it posts a profit. This is great...we all love openness and transparency when if comes to these things. On the flip side, how they determine how much of a dividend should be paid to stockholders is a well guarded secret. Smells fishy. - HR and middle management have been forced to start giving "stay interviews" to immediate reports. Company's shouldn't have to be doing this. And if they are....there is something terribly wrong. Again, NI fails to see the significance of this.

- Compensation and benefits are lackluster and don't seem to be improving. From the sound of it, NI has always lacked competitive compensation but Austin's recent growth is making this worse. - Lack of faith in upper management. NI has a bit of an attrition problem. Management first tried to write this off as due to the economy improving. But no one leaves because the economy gets better, they leave because there's something wrong. In May, management acknowledged that attrition was a problem and said they were going to address it. They formed a committee of employees (all VPs or Directors) and will propose ideas to Dr. T sometime in August. Compensation has been a know problem for years. Does management really need 3 months to figure that out? It seems like they're just buying time. Upper management is either incompetent or dishonest, I don't know which is worse. - Attrition. We're losing plenty of employees that have worked here 5, 10, even 15+ years. NI's compensation seems to be driving people away. Management thinks they can fix this by hiring new grads or overseas. Not only do we lose a lot of NI-specific expertise, but it's a blow to morale. NI is basically sending the message, "You are replaceable". Just ask our manufacturing division in Austin. - The amount of buzzwords. I really want to enjoy Weird Al's Mission Statement, but it's just too depressing.

Decisions slow to be made, slow industry standard compensation, good benefits

decisions take to long, tries to meet market expectations instead of exceeding them