Vantaggi
Starting salary was better than I expected. I was offered about the average of what a mechanical engineer at my university made coming out of school, which is really good considering many of my peers went to work in the oil and gas industry where salaries are very high. The Applications Engineering department was a very fun place to work when I was there (2008-2010) - my peers were mostly high performers and young so we had lots of fun. My first sales manager was the best manager I've ever had. NI also makes some awesome products.
Svantaggi
AE management is a joke. Your "manager" is someone as tenured as you, which means they are about 24 years old and are supposed to be in charge of your career development despite the fact they haven't developed their own career yet. NI stands for "no income". Salary is nowhere near competitive over time. The worse part about this is management and HR know this and continue to spew corporate crap about how it's in line with the rest of the measurement/automation industry and our "whole package" is great. The problem is, even the "whole package" isn't great. The health benefits have been decimated and aren't as good as they are with my new company. I doubled my income when I left NI! NI talks a lot about corporate culture and how it's a great place to work, and 10 years ago it was probably the best place to work in Austin. However, Austin has exploded in the last few years with silicon valley giants like Google, Apple, Facebook and Evernote moving into town. Austin has become "Silicon Hills", and there are a lot of great places to work in Austin now. The culture at other companies in town is as good or better than NI, so many talented NI people have realized that they can make more money and not sacrifice culture and still work in Austin. The best people are leaving in droves. Although there are still many top performers at NI, there are a lot of average and low performing people still there because they don't have anywhere else to go. NI is a great place to work - if you are an average or low performing person. It sucks if you're a high performer and want to be rewarded for your merits.