5 ms·

Not surprising. I worked at NI for my first job out of university and developing software there was so painful

by etimberg 2y ago

CoastalCoder 2y ago
Sounds interesting. Can you elaborate?
- Kirby64 2y ago
  NI has a nickname in the industry: NI = No Income. Keep in mind, they're also HQ'd in Austin, TX, which is essentially the most expensive city in Texas.
  - etrautmann 2y ago
    Interesting, I’ve ended up spending thousands on NI hardware at my last four jobs
    - Kirby64 2y ago
      The cost of their hardware and software is unrelated to the salaries they pay their employees.
      - Rinzler89 2y ago
        That goes for every business. Their purpose is to increase shareholder value, not employee wages. The last part only happens due to market dynamics forcing them to, but they'd gladly pay engineers minimum wage if they could.
    - positr0n 2y ago
      A lot of their products are relatively far into the long tail of hardware projects. Enough demand in the market that it makes sense for a company to design and build them, but not so many units sold that all those design costs are easily amortized away.
- etimberg 2y ago
  Some highlights that I remember include: * One project where the CI took something like 48 hours * Trying to apply waterfall hardware engineering processes to software development * Mostly hiring devs fresh from university so there was a ton of group think due to a lack of new ideas * Low salaries so most of the devs left once they got promoted beyond a junior level
  - josh-sematic 2y ago
    I had similarly painful experiences. Also the project I was on was mostly in maintenance mode, with mostly junior engineers out of college on it who had little experience with that particular code. Not many tests. Lots of code archaeology and "I'm crossing my fingers I didn't just break some subset of the enormous configuration space of this tool"
    - etimberg 2y ago
      The code archaeology was probably the most fun part for me but I had so much free time to do that because my projects were mostly maintenance as well
      - positr0n 2y ago
        Fun NI archeology story. When I was there in the early 2010s, I met a greybeard hardware engineer with a big chip mask poster on his cube wall. He told me they lost the schematics and all documentation to one of their first timing chips that was used in lots of products. They ended up calling the manufacturer and asking for the mask image back, and any question anyone had had to be reverse engineered from the mask.
    - jolt42 2y ago
      Did they leave and go to CrowdStrike?
  - sidewndr46 2y ago
    You forgot "cuts the salary of everyone each year, ensuring anyone who can update a resume finds a new job"
Ocerge 2y ago
Same, I left in 2014. I left after a couple of years to almost double my pay and not work on a Linux RT USB driver directly out of college for which I had no desire to be a SME, but in hindsight I think the coworkers I had there were smarter than anywhere else I've worked since (including Google). They paid absolutely nothing but seemed to have good culture, at least where I was at the time.
- Rinzler89 2y ago
  >in hindsight I think the coworkers I had there were smarter than anywhere else I've worked since (including Google) Why do you think that is?
  - formerni 2y ago
    This matches my experience too. I'm a software dev in my 40s, started career at NI out of college, multiple companies since then. NI had a fantastic college recruiting process. They sent engineers (not HR people or recruiters) to college career fairs all across the country, often back to their own alma mater, to snag the best-and-brightest from good engineering programs. They then organized big interview days where something like 50 or 100 college applicants would be flown in to interview on Thurs/Friday and then be taken out to downtown Austin on Friday night. Their interview process was technical, rigorous but fair, and avoided the pitfalls of pointless puzzle questions or of favoring elite credentials over abilities. And their managers, product and sales positions all started from that same pool of entry-level engineers, so even if you were interacting with someone who's title was like "Product Marketing Manager" they had a BSc in engineering, comp sci, physics, math, etc. The end result was that you always had very intelligent and capable coworkers surrounding you every day. I left for the same reason many other posters have mentioned- by mid career, I was getting paid substantially less than I could make elsewhere.
- a-dub 2y ago
  ahh i see, now i understand why there's still no 6000 series usb driver for linux. so annoying!
georgeburdell 2y ago
Any insight into why NI binaries were so large and interconnected relative to competitors such as Keysight?

Not surprising. I worked at NI for my first job out of university and developing software there was so painful

CoastalCoder 2y ago

Sounds interesting. Can you elaborate?

Kirby64 2y ago
NI has a nickname in the industry: NI = No Income. Keep in mind, they're also HQ'd in Austin, TX, which is essentially the most expensive city in Texas.
- etrautmann 2y ago
  Interesting, I’ve ended up spending thousands on NI hardware at my last four jobs
  - Kirby64 2y ago
    The cost of their hardware and software is unrelated to the salaries they pay their employees.
    - Rinzler89 2y ago
      That goes for every business. Their purpose is to increase shareholder value, not employee wages. The last part only happens due to market dynamics forcing them to, but they'd gladly pay engineers minimum wage if they could.
  - positr0n 2y ago
    A lot of their products are relatively far into the long tail of hardware projects. Enough demand in the market that it makes sense for a company to design and build them, but not so many units sold that all those design costs are easily amortized away.
etimberg 2y ago
Some highlights that I remember include: * One project where the CI took something like 48 hours * Trying to apply waterfall hardware engineering processes to software development * Mostly hiring devs fresh from university so there was a ton of group think due to a lack of new ideas * Low salaries so most of the devs left once they got promoted beyond a junior level
- josh-sematic 2y ago
  I had similarly painful experiences. Also the project I was on was mostly in maintenance mode, with mostly junior engineers out of college on it who had little experience with that particular code. Not many tests. Lots of code archaeology and "I'm crossing my fingers I didn't just break some subset of the enormous configuration space of this tool"
  - etimberg 2y ago
    The code archaeology was probably the most fun part for me but I had so much free time to do that because my projects were mostly maintenance as well
    - positr0n 2y ago
      Fun NI archeology story. When I was there in the early 2010s, I met a greybeard hardware engineer with a big chip mask poster on his cube wall. He told me they lost the schematics and all documentation to one of their first timing chips that was used in lots of products. They ended up calling the manufacturer and asking for the mask image back, and any question anyone had had to be reverse engineered from the mask.
  - jolt42 2y ago
    Did they leave and go to CrowdStrike?
- sidewndr46 2y ago
  You forgot "cuts the salary of everyone each year, ensuring anyone who can update a resume finds a new job"

Ocerge 2y ago

Same, I left in 2014. I left after a couple of years to almost double my pay and not work on a Linux RT USB driver directly out of college for which I had no desire to be a SME, but in hindsight I think the coworkers I had there were smarter than anywhere else I've worked since (including Google). They paid absolutely nothing but seemed to have good culture, at least where I was at the time.

Rinzler89 2y ago
>in hindsight I think the coworkers I had there were smarter than anywhere else I've worked since (including Google) Why do you think that is?
- formerni 2y ago
  This matches my experience too. I'm a software dev in my 40s, started career at NI out of college, multiple companies since then. NI had a fantastic college recruiting process. They sent engineers (not HR people or recruiters) to college career fairs all across the country, often back to their own alma mater, to snag the best-and-brightest from good engineering programs. They then organized big interview days where something like 50 or 100 college applicants would be flown in to interview on Thurs/Friday and then be taken out to downtown Austin on Friday night. Their interview process was technical, rigorous but fair, and avoided the pitfalls of pointless puzzle questions or of favoring elite credentials over abilities. And their managers, product and sales positions all started from that same pool of entry-level engineers, so even if you were interacting with someone who's title was like "Product Marketing Manager" they had a BSc in engineering, comp sci, physics, math, etc. The end result was that you always had very intelligent and capable coworkers surrounding you every day. I left for the same reason many other posters have mentioned- by mid career, I was getting paid substantially less than I could make elsewhere.
a-dub 2y ago
ahh i see, now i understand why there's still no 6000 series usb driver for linux. so annoying!

georgeburdell 2y ago

Any insight into why NI binaries were so large and interconnected relative to competitors such as Keysight?