Native Instruments reviews about "team"

There are only 3 stars because there were too many ill-considered decisions by the investors at the time.

Unorganized leadership from C level to department leads. C level and execs have no experience in the audio industry and thus place horribly unrealistic expectations on development and sales. Decisions seem to be made on a whim with little research done and often lead to disappointing outcomes. They do not invest in their employees. I worked there for nearly 4 years, was promoted several times, and saw absolutely obismal pay increases that didn't come anywhere close to matching the amount of responsibilities I took on or the meet the increased costs of living 5 years behind on industry salary rates. No clear goals to grow company other than "to make a profit". Absolutely no internal growth. They will put up opportunities for interal hires and have them go through several stages of interviews, and then decide to simply not fill the role. Hiring and wage increases are negociated through the German Works Council even for American employees, which greatly hinders any career growth. Time zones difference between Berlin and USA makes collaboration very difficult. Slowly removing benefits that have been grandfathered in since the beginning days of iZotope

The offices could do with a bit of modernising. They need to do work on diversity. The exec team is pretty diverse, but other teams are very white/male heavy.

A few of my own peers and colleagues have a hard time to adjust to our new structures and ways of working. It makes me sad that some of them have provocative comments during company meetings - it's not good for morale and I hope they will decide to leave instead of making us listen to all their whining and gossiping. It's really not nice to hear them being so negative.

none that i can think of

NI has the resources, attitude, and headcount of a start up but the structure and management style of a much larger company. The result is a lot of process, bloated management structures, wasted time in meetings, and fewer resources to do tangible work. There's a strange culture of positive confirmation and back-slapping that distracts from the actual challenges faced in the company. I am not sure this will change. Top-down strategy changes on an annual basis and has done for years. The market is changing, but senior leaders should be able to make 5-year calls with confidence. (This has improved with the current senior team in-post much longer than their predecessors) Career progression is almost non-existent, and pay is lagging. Initiatives to map this out are taking YEARS. Lots of residual resentment from previous years of instability. Slowly ebbing but remains. NI previously had a start-up culture paired with German job security. It has shifted (for better or worse) to a US-style company, backed by PE, and with the pressures that come with that. This is important to understand when working there.

None - great place to be with lots of buzz and enthusiasm. Fantastic products too!

When Francisco Partners took over a majority stake in all three companies and consolidated them into a singular NI entity, the layoffs and changes drove a lot of talented and amazing people away. Customers noticed right away and voiced concerns. Profit trumped all other things. There were private equity share holders to please now. Education, innovation, and community fell by the wayside. Pillars that were once driving forcings were now tertiary. Customers noticed right away and voiced concerns. When in company meetings, employees were told it was a safe space to share concerns, ask any questions, etc. Then after the meetings, depending on who your Executive lead and Directors were, you would be berated, yelled at, and penalized for "making them look bad" by asking your questions in that safe space. It doesn't help either that when sharing how the layoffs and changes to the work balance affected mental health, the response from those in charge was very politely worded: "Maybe this place isn't right for you and you should look for opportunity elsewhere." Instead of saying let's work together on finding the right work/life balance and ensuring the teams can handle the work. Let's fix this and find a way to make things better. The man who replaced Rob Singer as CEO is a hatchet man from Franciso Partners. Telling wild stories on his first day about making tough choices for other companies he worked at and gloating about his history as if it were war stories. Rob Singer refused to keep laying folks off and did everything in his power to keep people, so the Private Equity firm removed him and put in someone not afraid to cut anything for the sake of saving profits for them. The company also stopped issuing normal cost-of-living pay increases, bonuses, and regular raises. By the end, my salary was almost 8 percent less than other competitive companies. I've heard from others that their salary differences compared to competitors are north of 15% for certain specialized roles.