Vantaggi
If you are just finishing higher education, National Instruments offers great opportunities for smart and agile young engineers ready to complement their academic knowledge with the real-world engineering experience. Whether it is technical, marketing, or sales track, if you put enough effort into your career, you will end up where you want to be. The idea of advertising the company as the best place to work for (Fortune's 100 best places to work) helps to describe the atmosphere in the company where average employee age is probably under 30. You will feel like you are on extended college education the first couple of years. Benefits are good, including stock, 401(k), medical, etc.
Svantaggi
The above mentioned benefits are good. However, everything comes with a price. In National Instruments' case, the price is the below-average salary, and live-to-work philosophy. With the workforce primarily comprised of recent college grads, usually with no family or other responsibilities waiting for them outside working hours, those work hours have tendency to get extended. The project management staff either takes those voluntary hours as a rule, so the project schedules get created with 50-60 hour weeks in mind. As a consequence, projects perpetually get into situations where extra time is called for, and as there is always someone new around that has a desire to prove him/herself, the rest of the team (already proven engineers that have no need to repeatedly burn midnight oil to re-prove themselves) is dragged into the mayhem of effectively reducing the hourly equivalent salary to the $20s-30s range. Eventually, the word gets out, people get in touch with friends and relatives, learn of other opportunities and leave the company when they are most valuable to it - when they have learned the ways and developed the sense for what the product development should be.