Jan 15, 2010
MathWorks Developer reviews
4.1
79% would recommend to a friend
Jack Little
81% approve of CEO
69% positive business outlook
Developer employees have rated MathWorks with 4.1 out of 5 stars, based on 323 company reviews on Glassdoor. This indicates that most Developer professionals have an excellent working experience there. MathWorks is rated in line with the average (within 1 standard deviation) by Developer professionals compared to other employers within the Informationstechnologie industry (3.9 stars).
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Reviews by job title
323 reviews
3.0
Oct 6, 2009
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook
Pros
It is the best of the companies to work for. It is the worst of the companies to work for. It all depends on where you end up in the company. MathWorks has two major product lines, one around MATLAB and one around Simulink. Both product lines are very successful and comprise the two halves of the revenue. The engineering organization is built into two halves around these product lines and evolved very differently from each other. MATLAB has been a historically "Learn and Apply" tool where the market is composed of very large number of small accounts. Simulink has been positioned as a serious engineering design tool which caters to large accounts in automotive, aerospace etc. I will compare and contrast these two halves and it turns out that, if you play your cards right, you can have a very nice life at MathWorks (just not a very successful one). The MATLAB half is in general, really fun to work for. There are not much market pressures as MATLAB users are mostly students and one-off engineers for whom MATLAB serves very adequately. The time lines for getting anything done in this organization are truly geological. People spend one year researching the requirements and the next year documenting the design and the next in various design meetings and so on. The management is organically grown, which means the hard-working years are well into their past and they are allowed to coast and concentrate on finer things in life. The relaxed, hands-off management means there is even less pressure on the foot soldiers. The incredible focus on process (specs, design reviews etc.) enables a large number of highly incompetent engineers to hide behind the process to get very little done. It is no accident that this organization is filled with native English speakers who are better at talking than in doing. There have been innovations on the MATLAB side, but they are rare and they happened in spite of the system rather than because of it. The 90-10 rule applies very strongly here. I do not have many good things to say about Simulink side, so let us move on to the cons.
Cons
Working on the Simulink side is brutal, mind-numbing and in general, career limiting as you will not be able to market these skills anywhere else. The management here is also organically grown and many of them do suffer from the same malady as their MATLAB counterparts, where they rest on the laurels earned in the 1990s. There are a few exceptions but they are just that, exceptions. The upper management in this organization puts a lot of pressure on getting things done as fast as possible. Large projects are never allowed to even take off for the fear that they will never finish. The extreme risk-averseness made this organization extremely incremental in its approach. There are teams that add no more than a few check-boxes to their product in a release cycle, but as long as they ship something, the management is happy. There is very little support or recognition for those who work on infrastructure and silently contribute to the products. Because of this, no talented engineer wants to work on infrastructure for fear of being marginalized. This meant that those who want to work on infrastructure full time are the lazy, talentless ones. This is causing this area to suffer a slow death which is certain to arrive in the next decade.
4.0
Nov 25, 2008
A very comfortable place to work with less than outstanding career opportunities for young stars.
Current employee
Natick, MA
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook
Pros
The MathWorks is a very comfortable place to work. The products are not generally the best in terms of usability or quality but the sheer number of users makes the job worthwhile. It is a fun environment for the most part with many interesting people.
Cons
Career opportunities are not great. There are two tracks within software development - technical and managerial. Progression along both tracks is essentially seniority based despite the performance review process. The company is growing at a good pace so promotions generally seem to occur as your team grows. Compensation is generally based on years experience and may not reflect your contribution.
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