MathWorks

Good company culture overall. Employees are treated well. Respectable CEO. Mostly very nice people. Good office environment at HQ (less so in other offices). A good place to work overall, especially if you’re an engineer, but I’d be wary of other roles.

1. MW is an engineering-led company. That may sound great to an engineer, but it does have its downsides: old-school management styles, deep hierarchies, fairly rigid structures, and not always competent managers who have a hard time understanding non-technical roles. I got the impression most managers are good, but I had a terrible experience with mine.

2. Pay is adequate but not great. You don’t go there for the money, and you won’t be buying anything in a major city.

3. Office location and in-office requirements: You are required to be onsite 2 days/week. That’s not terrible, and I do understand their rationale, but the facilities are outside of major areas, so you have to drive. At HQ in Natick, MA, commutes in metro Boston suck unless you live close to the exurbs of Boston, and neither campus is particularly convenient via transit. (There are shuttles to/from a commuter rail station, but that adds a ton of commute time unless you happen to live along that rail line.) There were days when I found myself going into the office not because it made any sense or added any value, but simply because that is company policy.

Train your managers better, re-evaluate compensation in expensive markets, think about ways to make getting to work easier and greener, and improve the experience in the remote offices.