MathWorks

All the perks: 401k, insurance, gym, etc.

Friendly colleagues.

Company outings and anniversary celebrations.

Free Wednesday breakfast and Friday cookies.

No opportunity for growth! As a mid-size private company with no real competitors, MathWorks operates on the principle of "business as usual." This means you stay at the same engineering level and performance rating for a long time, unless you get lucky.

The promotions are a joke! With sophisticated and secretive formulas for level/rating calculations, you're guaranteed to get the same gross salary, or maybe less, even if you are promoted. Basically, if you're promoted to a higher level, your performance rating is reset so you have a higher nominal salary but a much smaller contribution from the profit-sharing pool because of the lower performance rating. It goes without saying that once at the higher level, rating increases are harder and slower than before.

The review process is another joke! Once a year, you write a self-review and a peer review (which the peer will get to read with your name on it). Your manager also writes a review. However, a couple of weeks before you write your self-review and your manager writes his, higher-ups meet to determine promotions and ratings. So, you're writing a review after everything is decided! I wonder why they call it "review." What you write and what your manager writes are essentially used to justify pre-determined ratings. I thought it should be the other way around.

If, in a team of, say, 10 engineers, the performance of two engineers exceeds expectations, only one is promoted because two exceed the promotion quota for the team. So, one is promoted, and the other one has to suck it up for another year until their name is thrown into the hat again.

This is the mechanism behind lower-than-industry-average salaries and the lazy culture. A few years ago, I expected the competition with open source to make a dent, but that was wishful thinking!

None!