As a former employee who worked for Altair Engineering for more than 10 years, I have to say that my experience was disappointing. Despite my loyalty and dedication to the company, I was paid a low base salary without any compensation benefits, and there were no discussions or evaluations of my performance. Hike letters were handed out without any discussions, and to get a decent hike, I had to work day and night, including over the weekends. Unfortunately, this kind of toxic work culture was normalized, and some of the teams became unbearable to work with. The higher management of Altair Engineering pitted two teams against each other to achieve a new product, and this created a toxic ego competition between the middle management. As a result, the work environment became more stressful and unmanageable, and this affected my health and personal life. Unfortunately, I wasn't the only one who felt this way, as a good number of really good engineers who had worked for close to 10 years at Altair all left within the span of 6-8 months for similar reasons. Altair Engineering misuses the low confidence of long-term employees who are afraid to look outside for opportunities and pays them less. In my experience, Altair pays a 10 years experienced person almost the same as a fresh out of college employee at a similar company. And there is no incentive to stay longer at Altair since it doesn't pay RSUs. They did issue RSUs for a short time after the company went public, but it was a joke or rather an insult to those who stayed for years at the company. To improve and attract top talent, Altair Engineering should look at its peers and improve its pay and benefits packages. More importantly, Altair should start paying RSUs to incentivize the long tenure of top talent. On the brighter side, Altair has started generalizing the levels based on experience at the company level. I hope that they will map the salaries to levels as well and implement clear paths for employee growth. Overall, I left Altair Engineering because of the toxic work culture that started affecting my health and personal life. While there were good co-workers and I liked the work, it was not enough to keep me there. I hope Altair Engineering takes these issues seriously and implements positive changes for the well-being of its employees.
