Pros: Work with smart people. Challenging, exciting work that varies day to day. Many opportunities to get "training". You do not have to decide on a career until after you work here for a while, so there is flexibility. Career opportunities, though not as many as advertised during the hiring process, they are still there.

Cons: Management for the "Engineering Development Group" should not be managing a development group. They are basically technical support managers, and generally good at that, but do not have any clear mandate to focus at all on the non-support side of this group. This is clear as they continually make decisions that sacrifice engineers' long-term career development at MathWorks for short-term technical support goals. The work culture of the Engineering Development Group is not in line with the principles and values of the rest of the company. The dual demand for our time, coupled with homework assignments (yes, there is homework in EDG), routinely makes working after work hours or on the weekends necessary. The common complaint for this position is simply that the 50/50 support/project time split, which is repeated all throughout the hiring process and at career fairs, is simply not true. 70/30 is more accurate.

Pros: These are only my personal opinions after half a year in MW. 1. Benefits are sort of competitive. There are rather frequent social gatherings across departments. 2. Everybody, I mean literally everybody, in my department is nice and helpful. Great dynamics in the team. 3. The training process is smooth and helpful. You would find yourself quickly improving along the process. 4. Overall work-life balance. Light workload for most of the time.

Cons: These are the cons that are specific to my department: 1. While the ASE department (i.e., the technical support department) has good working dynamics overall, you would sometimes find yourself in difficult situations when dealing with the actual development team. You could definitely feel their attitude toward you because you were just trying to hang out with them for the purpose of transferring to their team. 2. The reviewing process is VERY unclear. They would tell you everything they would consider but not exactly how they review you (basically, nothing useful). 3. The transfer process is totally random and uncontrollable. This is kind of frustrating because you are sometimes good enough for a team, but there is just no opening. This encourages turnovers frequently. 4. The position essentially means you will provide customer service while doing some corner project works for other people. However, I felt it was described as mostly doing projects when you occasionally write people emails. This is not communicated well in the interviews. Not that they were trying to lie to you or hide it. When they have been in the company for a long time, they might have different views on how much time the technical support work would take. But you will be the TECHNICAL SUPPORT; you will pick up phone calls for a large portion of your time. DO NOT assume the support part of your job is negligible. 5. Not trying to be an *hole here, but the percentage of a certain nationality has been increasing. You would notice a lot of them are actually friends who know each other. Yes, referral has its magic here, but the current situation is too much. I mean, like 70% of the new hires are from a particular country. I don't have the evidence to say that the hiring process is rigged or something, but the company needs to investigate it. Mathworks has a limited interview question pool, which makes this even more suspicious. Overall, I think it is a great position for you if you are from an engineering-related area and want some super entry-level job to get onramp to software engineers. If you already have enough development experience, this might not be a good place for you to improve yourself. Mathworks is a good place for you to stay for the rest of your life, so if you are ready to commit in the long term, this is also a good position for you.

Pros: For someone without a background in CS, this is an OK deal, at least in principle, to pick up skills that will help you transfer to other teams within the company or find opportunities outside the company. The price one pays is, of course, spending the bulk of your time in doing technical support and salvaging the rest to pick up the skills you really need. The following stood out to me during my time in EDG: * Smart colleagues * Great office space and campus * Celebrations for important events, grand company outings, and other perks * Well-structured trainings and equipment * Strong culture of feedback and self-improvement, and generally doing the right thing.

Cons: EDG is a place one can stagnate very fast without knowing it. The department preaches a culture very different from elsewhere in the company. There is overemphasis on soft skills, and you are treated like a juvenile. The managers themselves have a history of a mediocre career in technology, and they're the ones deciding your fate. Your transfer out of the program is contingent on a myriad of factors working for you. No peers competing for the same position, open requisitions in your area of interest, and your manager's blessings are some of the key ones. You might have come on board with the perfect background for a certain product area, but if the company is expanding in a direction that is different from your target team, you might find yourself very frustrated with the lack of opportunities. Unfortunately, this is not communicated in the career fairs. A year and a half in, without transferring, you can find yourself sucked into the tech support spiral. Having lost your domain expertise from school and focusing most of your time on MATLAB and Simulink, which have very niche markets (try searching for MATLAB jobs versus other core languages on any job search engine), you become obsolete in the market very fast. Did I mention the increasing pressure from management to work on technical support initiatives or be booted out? They project themselves as a program with a high transfer rate, great marketing – they left out the folks they forced out. My advice: Join the program. If you don't make it to another team in a year, find yourself another opportunity before it's too late. If you do, congratulations; MW is a great place to work. Otherwise...