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National Instruments

Is this your company?

Great culture, Great for new grads, but experienced pros should use caution - Anonymous employee National Instruments Employee Review

4.0
2 Nov 2011
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Wonderful culture. Brilliant, wise, and open executive leadership. Superior corporate responsibility. Awesome place to jump-start a career right out of college (or even while in college through internships), especially engineers. Very wise, fiscally conservative, long-term corporate strategy. Executive leadership is intentional about valuing employment stability and keeping organizational structure relatively flat.

Cons

Pay, politics, and obliviousness to the way the rest of the world works. While people at NI generally don't get hung up on titles or superiority, career advancement seems based more on one's social circles and being an extrovert than based on performance/skills. Hiring is definitely focused on fresh-out-of-college talent, and the flat organizational structure prevents career growth for experienced pros. While it may seem nice to try to de-emphasize job titles, the fact is the rest of the world goes by resumes and the titles you put on them. NI prides itself on the "NI Way," which means its tight culture, etc., and it is very nice in general, but it often seems that NI is unaware of the way things are done in the rest of the professional world, at least as far as managers go, especially if those managers got their start at NI and have never worked elsewhere (which is common). Pay is below industry average, and raises are miniscule. While executive management is brilliant at establishing vision and valuing employees, middle and lower management seems cliquish and disorganized. But overall, if you value work-life balance, a positive, fun work culture, want to jump-start your career, NI is the place. If you're an experienced pro, don't get starry-eyed just because of the Great Place to Work accolades, negotiate your offer and don't expect big raises, and practice your social skills.

Explore other reviews about National Instruments

5.0
13 Apr 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

The people and the culture! Mostly very helpful, smart, fun loving group of employees. NI hired a lot for culture fit and that made the day to day a lot of fun.

Cons

Company vision from the higher ups suffered greatly after the pandemic.

3.0
30 Mar 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Work with a lot of smart folks

Cons

Management could have provided support to the team rather than asked employees to work harder

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