MathWorks reviews

4.3

88% would recommend to a friend

(2,560 total reviews)
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Jack Little

94% approve of CEO

86% positive business outlook

MathWorks has an employee rating of 4.3 out of 5 stars, based on 2,560 company reviews on Glassdoor which indicates that most employees have an excellent working experience there. The MathWorks employee rating is in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) for employers within the Information Technology industry (3.7 stars).

Reviews by job title

3K reviews
2.0
Aug 26, 2008
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The products work. They have great customers. On the whole peers are talented and skilled. Work life balance is impressive. It is one of the few places in Boston where the employer does not demand that you make your work your life. Benefits are quite good. They have freshly baked cookies on Friday afternoons.

Cons

The firm is in the midst of a transition between medium to large company. Given the consensus driven, non-confrontational culture, I'm not entirely sure if the tough decisions will be made. Very long term employees in middle management means there is very little exposure to other employment environments, strong not invented here syndrome and rank is not necessarily tied to effectiveness. Premium on consensus and loyalty often means that people are reluctant to make politically incorrect recommendations. Low turn-over in management translates into little upwards mobility for senior staff. Profit sharing program spreads the fruits of one's labour across the firm like peanut butter, everyone gets a taste but no one is really satisfied.

5.0
Aug 11, 2008
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

This is a company that values engineers very highly. Jack Little is an engineer and his DNA shaped MathWorks more than anything else. The work is very interesting and you can be rest assured that no matter what project you work on, you will have impact on the customers. While it is not a sweat shop, you can find many MathWorks employees to be highly motivated to make a difference. Managers are grown from within and they typically work much harder than the people who report to them. For example, my manager usually comes in before everyone else and frequently the last to leave. Not to mention the nights and weekends where he can be counted on to fight fires, reply to urgent emails and even fix bugs. In general, this is vastly different from other companies where my friends work where managers are just paper pushers. It is just fantastic to have your manager be as strong technically as you are. Being private and profitable means that MathWorks does not have to flip-flop to market gyrations. We can think and invest long term. There are quite a few projects I know of where millions were invested over the last few years with huge teams and these products are not paying for the salaries of even half of the team. I can see that Jack persists with these efforts despite the steep initial cost with eye towards building products for the long term. MathWorks has a fairly non-political and rational workplace. While ugly and open dissent is discouraged as it is often counter-productive, true dissent based on sound technical reasons is not only tolerated but encouraged. I know of at least three different technologies that emerged over the years purely because no one said you only have to do it one way. While this can be inefficient at times, it often paid handsome dividends by creating some really disruptive technologies that no one thought were possible initially. The pay is very good and very competitive. While you may be able to make marginally higher money elsewhere, it is hard to match the quality of life you can get here.

Cons

MathWorks has a six-monthly release schedule which can be very taxing at times. Getting big things done is a challenge due to a fairly large and complex code-base. As I mentioned earlier, engineers are highly valued. The other side of this coin is that they are also highly accountable for the success/failure of the products. Sometimes, it feels like every new process, rule and regulation applies only to the engineers and not marketing or other functional areas. For example, the quality initiative that we started a few years ago spawned myriads of new processes and guidelines and almost all of it is dumped on the shoulders of engineers. Office space is getting to be ridiculously scant. MathWorks started off with the noble idea of offices for everyone. However, we could not scale this well with all the growth we have had in the last few years. We now have cubicles in the famed idea zones and people sharing offices etc. We should have planned better for this.

2.0
Aug 3, 2008
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

MathWorks is a growing, highly profitable company with interesting technologies and products.Its structure -- many small highly interrelated product and market units -- should present many opportunities to innovate and take initiative. MathWorks will not tolerate abusive interpersonal behavior.

Cons

1. Numerous directors told me no one can speak directly, that it is unacceptable to discuss differences of opinions in the open. You have to do it one-on-one. This culture often makes it dangerous to take the initiative when you should. The end result is that many people settle into secure positions and stop thinking and innovating, and wait to be told what to do. Accepting this compromise is destructive for dynamic people, and in the long run it will have serious consequences for the company. 2. Management has said that the main purpose of the performance appraisal system is to improve employees through intense criticism. Recognizing contributions to the company is a secondary objective. This poor policy is compounded by the fact that the senior management lacks the insight into people and culture needed to exercise anything approaching this level of control over people. 3. The company line says this is a high trust environment. A colleague told me after he left that it is a low trust environment, and he could have survived if he had played it that way from the start. I agree with his assessment. 4. For a person who wants to do his job and go home without a lot of personal engagement, MathWorks is on balance no worse than the average company, and in some ways it is better.

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