MathWorks Application Support Engineer reviews

- In EDG, if you are given the wrong manager (basically assigned by luck), then your career is doomed. - Too many mandatory meetings and micro-management. 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 its way into the customer's hands. - Transferring between jobs inside the company is way more difficult than the 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.

Downsides of this role, well after a year maybe your learning curve becomes stagnant and you want to move out of this role. Unfortunately, the organization is very conservative, so positions in your field of choice might not open up at all. You are literally wasting half of your time, doing Technical Support and talking to customers who mostly can't get anything done on their own. More than half of the management is non-technical so they have no freaking idea of what they are talking about most of the time. Just smile and take it. Huge disparity in pay scales for the same role. If you went to a branded school, you get a lot more than you deserve, performers are not rewarded aptly.