National Instruments reviews

- 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.

I did not feel valued by the company. I felt very valued by my team and my manager, but that's about where it stopped. I wasn't compensated properly, paid 40% below where I should have been. We were told to win opportunities at all costs, so we innovated and created software solutions. It was quickly shot down because my group wasn't suppose to "make products". Because we were suppose to "win opportunities at all cost" and what we needed to do to win wasn't supported by the company, we were very successful in getting in the door, but shortly kicked out. In short, no repeat business and every customer left on bad terms. All the while the leadership was trying to create a software application that mimicked what we had already done, but wouldn't be ready for 3 years. Way too late in the game. In other words, they wasted a lot of money on my team because what we were doing wasn't "adding value" to the company. Fast forward, now RnD is supporting our software solution and the one leadership wanted is getting killed. At least a move in the right direction, but too little too late.