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...

Pros: Free cold drinks and nothing else. Kindly take this seriously. I joined MW too because I had no option, and it's difficult to live or leave here.

Cons: From management to employee appreciation, and from working environment to honing one's skills, if I could give 0, I would give 0/100. 1.) People from IITs/NITs/BITS/IIITs are hired at decent salaries and forced to do Technical Support. Now, I am not only against Tech Support, I am also against the micromanagement that the department follows for the employees. Each morning, they have scrums – good, but the managers expect you to speak up something, even if that is out of context or doesn't make any sense. If you don't, you will be bashed in your 1:1. 2.) Project work – You will love working with your project teams and on your project work because most of the teams are good and follow best practices here. But, EDG managers will make it sure to needle you for every small thing here. The reason being: EDG managers are non-technical. They will ask you to explain all about the project, the challenges you are facing, and will not understand the challenges you explain to them. Even for challenges for which the project managers would support you and completely understand the delay. In the end, EDG managers will still thrash you and will put the blame on you for every small thing – "Project being late" and all sorts of small things. 3.) Constant Feedback – Once in 2 weeks, you will be presented with your feedback. Feedback on every small thing. "Not speaking in meetings." "This is what I heard from him/her." "This is what I heard from your project manager." "You are not working on this area." The story doesn't end here. All the small and negative points will be extrapolated, and all the good feedback will not be told to you by the EDG manager. While, when you ask your reviews from your project manager, he would always tell you the true story – plusses and deltas, which would help you push in the next project. Most of the feedback you get from your project manager and EDG manager will not match. This leads to an employee in a depressed/demotivated state, and this happens in a loop (every 2 weeks). But, remember, you just graduated from one of the top institutes of India. Keep your head high and keep working. 4.) Manipulation – Managers manipulate you. They force you to go to the Quality Engg. department, even if you don't want to, or they will insult you so much that you will be forced to either leave the company or go to QE. There is no future and self-growth in the company, and you won't learn any marketable and competent skills. In the end, you will be left with nothing; all your experience will be considered void in other companies. 5.) They expect you to join and organize parties (HR work), which they somehow consider to be part of your leadership and initiative skills (remember, MW is a technical giant). If you don't organize, they will insult you again, blaming you for how terrible of a leader you are. 6.) Micromanagement – EDG managers' job is to help you in managing daily activities and your projects. That's the only job they have, and they fail to perform that too. The story doesn't end here, though. Late to a meeting by a few minutes? – You should have told us you will be late. Can't join a meeting because your mother was sick? – Keep managers informed next time, which means they want us to stop caring for our parents and prioritize work over even your or your relatives' lives.

Pros: MathWorks creates some of the best (and in some cases, only) scientific computing tools in the industry and is very well recognized. There is an impressive base of engineering grads (an MS is basically required for entry-level positions). In the large majority of cases, people work well together, and there is a cooperative atmosphere. Honesty is placed in very high esteem, and people try hard to conform to that standard. Benefits are very good (401k match percentage is almost unheard of in the industry). EDG/ASE does provide a good opportunity to try out different departments before making a transfer. If you do a good job and are well-liked, you will move up in the ranks fairly quickly.

Cons: In EDG, if you are given the wrong manager (basically assigned by luck), then your career is doomed. Too many mandatory meetings and micromanagement. In some cases, I was asked to write a "plan" for a project that took as long as the actual project itself. There is a strict culture of doing things "the MathWorks way," even if there are better ways out there. Because of this, it takes forever for new features, and even bug fixes, to make their way into the customer's hands. Transferring between jobs inside the company is way more difficult than at other companies that I've worked at. The CS grads tend not to be as talented as engineering grads, yet they are courted more aggressively due to a lack of these types of people. Top-notch engineering grads will come here, whereas top-notch CS grads tend to turn down offers here because they would rather work for Google, Microsoft, Facebook, etc. Base salary is very mediocre. My starting salary at my new job was 25% higher.