MathWorks reviews

The benefits and compensation are slowly sliding downwards on competitiveness. Review process appears well laid out on paper per company policy but in practice it is very archaic and not transparent. Essentially the managers direct and skip level pre-determine the performance review well ahead of time despite what is stated on the review policy. Managers also have limited control over raises. After they predetermine the rating (which is not always necessarily unfairly rated), HR takes the rating and runs some algo to determine the raise. Despite good performance ratings that raise can be somewhat underwhelming and there is little transparency to the raise process as well. For such an otherwise great company there is little mobility to switch teams internally and the underwhelming raises cause some folks to jump ship for a better raise. This is a common problem in the industry but I think the company can try harder to be the exception to this norm. Lastly the company seems to be very hesitant on WFH policies and makes last minute decisions especially during the pandemic based on what other companies are doing. For a SW company already with a lot of collaborative remote work across global teams, I think there is a missed opportunity to be proactive and a trend setter in being innovative and flexible with WFH.

While a job at MathWorks work is very stable, it comes at the price of long-term stagnation. Understand that MathWorks is a private company and has been run by the same person for 40 years. Most managers have been with the company for 15+ years and there is an emphasis on the "slow and steady" mantra. Both salary increase and career advancement are slow. After 6 years, I left as a junior developer -- the same position as when I started.