MathWorks

MathWorkers are friendly people and outstanding engineers. You will learn a lot working here, and many of your coworkers will become friends.

The MathWorks is a great company, but the Engineering Development Group is seriously flawed. These cons apply only to EDG and not MathWorks overall.

In EDG, you are in a technical support role. On a typical day, you log in to the phone queue at 8:30 am sharp. You can't sign off until 5:30 pm. Sometimes your manager will listen to your calls. You have a scheduled lunch hour. You message your coworkers to tell them you are going to the bathroom. About once a month, you get a late shift, meaning you answer calls until 8 pm. None of this is explained during the recruitment process.

Each day, you are either "on support" or not. You will quickly grow very tired of technical support, and time away from it is precious. There is a shadow economy where engineers swap shifts so that they can focus on professional development or take a bit of personal time.

When you are in EDG, you are laser-focused on transferring out, which often happens after a year or more. Transferring entails applying for any of the non-EDG openings that are listed on the MathWorks careers site. You have to interview for a permanent role, and you will compete with both internal and external candidates.

Your EDG manager gives final approval on your transfer. Occasionally, a hiring manager will make a job offer that is shot down by an EDG manager. Engineers feel pressured to take any opportunity that presents itself because they are afraid of being forced out by management and because they have been exhausted by the tech support schedule.

EDG engineers are too talented to sit this low on the totem pole. They need to be given the whole story before they join.

EDG engineers didn't get advanced degrees in technical support. The TS grind is chasing talented people away. Sure, EDG engineers learn a lot about MathWorks products, but it comes at a cost. The people who oversee EDG need to find a way to get anonymous feedback on the program. Most EDG managers have good intentions, but the department fails to uphold the company's core values in some big ways.