MathWorks reviews

Heavy workload and lots of pressure. And the pressure only increases. Although I was ostensibly hired to build a new product, there was still a HUGE amount of maintenance to be done on the huge amount of existing code. Very strong culture. Which is a strength in some ways, but it also means that only a "certain kind of person" is a good fit. Are you that kind of person? Ask a lot of questions. And don't assume that MathWorks is uniformly great in all groups. Much of the code in my area (Simulink) was overly complex. Entire frameworks were created to insulate business logic from technology choices (e.g., Java implementation, Qt implementation). Result: a large amount of work was typically required to implement even the simplest feature. In my group, management did not have very good management skills. Running the new project seemed to be an "afterthought"...the top job was making all the bug-fix numbers. And the new project ended up getting canceled.

Extremely bad management. The middle managers are the most inept group of people you could have the misfortune to meet. Engineers who can't write code and can't ever get a project finished are the ones promoted. The internal processes, such as the build system, are a buggy nightmare. The templates for writing internal documents, including performance reviews and software specs were all designed by people who have no idea of how document templates work. The performance review cycle is ridiculously elaborate and rewards inaction and ineptness.