Native Instruments reviews about "upper management"

- upper management is completely disconnected and lives in an ivory tower - middle management busier protecting a sub-optimal status quo that benefits them than making the changes the organization desperately needs - very little opportunities for career development and lots of office politics involved in getting these opportunities - company strategy changes every 3 months, lack of transparency in how and why these changes are justified - agile dogmatism: agile coaches with little understanding of the tech or the challenges the teams face have more influence in the company than the teams actually building the products

Chaos at all levels, constant changes in staff and structure, upper management does not care about the people or company culture, knowledgable staff continually ignored to serve the whims of the CEO, no investment in teaching the staff how to use company products, no advancement opportunities, no women in higher management positions, no attempt to connect departments and make cohesive decisions, no onboarding process for new staff, being a data driven company only important when it suits the upper management, zero confidence from the employees in the company strategy, feedback points from terrible employee survey results never addressed, employees in constant fear of being fired for no reason, no bridge between technical teams and the rest of the company, long, boring quarterly meetings with no real information, just staff forced to listen to the CEO go on for an hour

It has been going downhill since a few years now. This company is in a devastating, irreparable state. Upper management has proven its incompetence again and again. Burned a 50M€ Investment with a pipe dream. they are so disconnected from reality and their employees, it's absolutely ridiculous. I have never seen such a terrible, incompetent management in my entire career. This has been the least professional company I have ever worked for. The new CPO and rest of the C-Level management have absolutely no clue what they're doing, in which business they're in. They don't give a damn about the customers, or employees, the only thing they care about is their own career. I have seen some of the most talented people in this industry being fired without any explanation or social selection. NI was a good place to work a long time ago, but everyone who contributed to the success is gone, because the most loyal employees are treated without any respect. The biggest joke is the "Chief Innovation Officer" who doesn't have the slightest clue about the products, the customers, technology, or the business.

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.

Management constantly changing their mind and not listening to users. Passion slowly drains away after a tidal wave of bad management decisions. People fired without warning (illegal in Germany) and often given 10 minutes to clear their desk.

- Higher ups do not care about employees at all. They will lynch you in a second and hire the next guy or girl in line who is eager to work for the company the moment you try to give input or suggest changes. I have seen many colleagues come and go because they did not agree on certain aspects of a project, and many negative scenarios and unethical practices/tactics to fire employees for no cause. Their marketing works in terms of making them look good externally, but from an internal perspective it's toxic, narcissistic, and a cesspool of people who think they are better then everyone else. - Lack professionalism and work under fear tactics. - Always telling you that you are replaceable and using "the brand" as a way to keep you under control. - higher ups gossip, and create toxic situations. treat regular employees unfairly and look to them as inferior additions to the company. - morale of the office is super strict and a bit rough to walk into after working here for a while. You really start to notice the self entitlement that the company prefers when they hire people. It feels like highschool again. Groups of "clicks" who gossip and pretend to be your friend but really, they are just there to drop the words "I work for NI" and "I'm a *insert job title* for NI". - hypocritical. their marketing suggest they want to help musicians and showcase a welcoming home but it is anything but that. - Zero support, training, and growth. They are not here to help you succeed. Instead, they are wait for you to screw up and not tell you so they can use it against you and toss you under the bus. - No valid reasons for staff firings and layoffs. I saw many of my talented colleagues let go out of nowhere. This is not a trust worthy company.

The whole time I was working there, the teams I worked with didn't release anything innovative or particularly exciting. This is because upper management were micro managing our backlog and forcing us to build whatever feature they had dreamt up that morning, a feature that had no connection what so ever to anything our users were asking for. By being completely out of touch with the entire actual user base, they managed to squander the largest amount of capital that had ever been invested into the music tech industry, and have absolutely nothing to show for it.

Upper management has zero idea what is going on and launch company wide strategy changes every other week. Constantly promising no layoffs and then major layoffs happen CEO and executive level changes every few months No clear roadmap There is no real room for growth

Organisational structure changes once a year or with every personel change in upper management. Customer‘s or employee‘s opinion isn‘t of any importance. Payment is very low.