Native Instruments reviews about "work life balance"

- upper management is completely disconnected and lives in an ivory tower - middle management busier protecting a sub-optimal status quo that benefits them than making the changes the organization desperately needs - very little opportunities for career development and lots of office politics involved in getting these opportunities - company strategy changes every 3 months, lack of transparency in how and why these changes are justified - agile dogmatism: agile coaches with little understanding of the tech or the challenges the teams face have more influence in the company than the teams actually building the products

- "Water-scrum" - They'll hire just about anyone with a pulse right now because of new funding. - Legacy code and tech debt is a crippling problem here, and frankly it will bite them soon. - Depends which team you are on, but management whims can de-rail roadmaps that teams have worked on for months. - Middle management can be so political and power-hungry it's almost too funny to be mad at. - Tendency to abandon product features after one or two sprints. - Some teams struggle to get necessary skillsets that they depend on.

A lot of smart people with their own understanding of how things should be done correctly clash with each other, creating: too long, sometimes very unnecessary discussions e.g. "planning on how to correctly make plans; discussion on what to discuss; agreeing on what has been agreed on" & a lot more. Very late important decision changes, leading to project cancellations; unplanned cost-ups.

No innovation, no wow plans, products and projects Salary and professional and career growth is problem Knowledge sharing and legacy NI lost professionals which was core - sadly it is company without bright future Your honesty is not needed, they neither like complaints nor activists Dark doors environment and Blabla show - you can learn professionally how to do it

Upper management has zero idea what is going on and launch company wide strategy changes every other week. Constantly promising no layoffs and then major layoffs happen CEO and executive level changes every few months No clear roadmap There is no real room for growth

When Francisco Partners took over a majority stake in all three companies and consolidated them into a singular NI entity, the layoffs and changes drove a lot of talented and amazing people away. Customers noticed right away and voiced concerns. Profit trumped all other things. There were private equity share holders to please now. Education, innovation, and community fell by the wayside. Pillars that were once driving forcings were now tertiary. Customers noticed right away and voiced concerns. When in company meetings, employees were told it was a safe space to share concerns, ask any questions, etc. Then after the meetings, depending on who your Executive lead and Directors were, you would be berated, yelled at, and penalized for "making them look bad" by asking your questions in that safe space. It doesn't help either that when sharing how the layoffs and changes to the work balance affected mental health, the response from those in charge was very politely worded: "Maybe this place isn't right for you and you should look for opportunity elsewhere." Instead of saying let's work together on finding the right work/life balance and ensuring the teams can handle the work. Let's fix this and find a way to make things better. The man who replaced Rob Singer as CEO is a hatchet man from Franciso Partners. Telling wild stories on his first day about making tough choices for other companies he worked at and gloating about his history as if it were war stories. Rob Singer refused to keep laying folks off and did everything in his power to keep people, so the Private Equity firm removed him and put in someone not afraid to cut anything for the sake of saving profits for them. The company also stopped issuing normal cost-of-living pay increases, bonuses, and regular raises. By the end, my salary was almost 8 percent less than other competitive companies. I've heard from others that their salary differences compared to competitors are north of 15% for certain specialized roles.

- The worst management I've ever experienced. - Many layoffs. Not stable environment to work. One day you're told that are the best in what you do (which of course, they don't mean) and the next day you're fired. It's random without pattern. - The layoffs are quite expected as the management is sinking the boat, but the way they do them is ugly and nasty. - Depending on the team you're working you may get a lot of micromanagement. - Most of the people that were highly skilled already gone. - Responsibilities are blur. You don't really know what others do. - Cross-team collaboration is very difficult and it takes a lot of time and effort. That's also a management issue not between the colleagues. - There is no stability and plan. Everything changes dramatically every few months. - Unproductive. Too many lost working hours in useless meetings. - There is no transparency. - Management is invisible. They only show up to parties or to announce the new fancy strategies, which will be changed again in a couple of months. Also, they are not open to any suggestions and you get just ignored. - The whole environment is completely unprofessional. Very amateur environment. - Skills don't matter. As a matter of fact, you'll soon find out that it's worse when you have them. - You must do what you've told. There's no room for personal expertise and experience. - There are so many things wrong in there that the list is endless. But all starts from the top and there doesn't seem anything that will change this.