Working at National Instruments in Austin, TX: 31 Employee Job Reviews by Real Employee working in Austin, TX Area

"Company is great to work for but I feel somewhat trapped by the inability to advance my career. The company has gone through some tough financial times which limits growth potential despite the positive feedback I have gotten from my managers."

"Great place to work coming out of college, don't work there past your first promotion."

"I worked for National Instruments for 3 years. It was a great place to work out of college, and I was able to pick up a lot of practical hardware engineering experience, but after 3 years the glass ceiling closed in and it was time to move on."

"Just not a lot of opportunity to move up."

What do you like about working at National Instruments?

"They are a very stable company with casual dress code."

Do you have any tips for others interviewing with this company?

"They only hire the best of the best academically. However, being a culture fit is a huge deal as well. Be passionate about technology and pretend that you salary is not important."

What don't you like about working at National Instruments?

"If you are not an engineer you will go nowhere in the company. Most of their leadership is home grown which leads to lack of valuable outside experience. Their compensation model is not that great, they lean too heavily on handing out company t-shirts and small having parties in lieu of competitive pay."

What suggestions do you have for management?

"I would bring in more experienced external hires to disrupt the group think and I would pay employees more competitively. I would also let MBA holders be the business owners not engineers."

"Experienced career stagnation and technical-skill atrophy while working here."

"A company starving itself to death with bureaucracy. Employees are retained and promoted through attrition and risk adversity which has left the bottom 10% running the company simply because they were never required, or even encouraged, to accomplish anything productive. Systems are setup to inhibit resolution of any issue and preclude well developed innovation and initiative that would normally come from experience. The only available alternative to driving good behavior has been to offshore many jobs through attrition, finalized by layoffs, because it is easier and looks decisive in quarterly accounting in lieu of actual long-term growth. It doesn't matter what country employees reside, pay will be relatively constant but return on investment depends solely skill and environment. If you treat employees as incapable, then they will always be incapable, become less valuable instead of more and produce little over that period. Advice is to get the right people for the job, foster their growth and empower them to attain efficiency, effectiveness and job satisfaction. These are the few things good employees look for before they start questioning marginal salary and is far better than the spite some feel by being told they are working for a great company instead of achieving something meaningful."

"NI is great for young engineers or R&D engineers. Unfortunately, most people with 10-20 years of tenure are not compensated or titled appropriately and are looking for new employment. While the culture aims to be youthful and full of spirit, it's also fading into the sunset as we grow and when you are old enough to have a family, little to no respect is given to your personal time... NI expects long hours, global assignments, and compliance without giving anything in return to its tenured."

"Poor pay great life"

What do you like about working at National Instruments?

"Great work/family balance. Young people. New ideas. Good people."

Do you have any tips for others interviewing with this company?

"Get a 4.0 and be technically astute."

What don't you like about working at National Instruments?

"The worst pay in the world for a technology company. I mean seriously. The senior managers make less than entry level engineers elsewhere."

What suggestions do you have for management?

"SALARY HIKES!"

"Great place to start but not to stay too long"

What do you like about working at National Instruments?

"Great benefits package (excellent health plan, profit sharing, sick leave etc.) Flexible environment, very smart people."

Do you have any tips for others interviewing with this company?

"NI is used to interview only people with GPA 3.7 Expect tricky questions on your subject, be able to present different views and detailed analysis."

What don't you like about working at National Instruments?

"Flat strucuture with single big group (LabVIEW) sucking in most of resources. Hard to get promoted. Little diversity among the staff (absoulte majority is young, white, unmarried, recent graduates and alike...)"

What suggestions do you have for management?

"Standardize the development process, diversify the people."

"Great place to work"

What do you like about working at National Instruments?

"Flexible work hours. Good work/life balance"

What don't you like about working at National Instruments?

"I'm stuck in a cube all day"

"Academic culture for academic people. Good folks. Somewhat limiting for career growth."

"Low pay, much brainwashing."

"Greatest place on Earth - for engineers."