When Personal and Professional Core Values Align
By Maruthi, development
Three things come to mind when I think about MathWorks and what I enjoy about working here: people, process, and culture.
The People
I am amazed by the people I work with at MathWorks. I work in the development and deployment of automated driving applications, which requires a high level of collaboration with different product teams working in perception, planning, controls, and dynamics areas. Our developers have deep technical expertise and experience and are easy to approach, highly collaborative, amicable, and willing to share knowledge and grow together. I feel comfortable when I know that I can rely on my cross-product teams to deliver the functionality needed for the application. Respect and invest is a core value that people highly practice here.
Process and Quality
Everyone at MathWorks believes in doing the right thing. This guiding principle is embedded in the very nature (like the DNA) of the organization. I have always been a strong believer in doing the right thing, which makes me highly invested in the company’s philosophy. It greatly inspires me to see people around me also commit to this way of thinking and working.
Embodying the core value of rational workplace, the company has well-articulated guiding principles and documented processes for almost any task that you need to perform—not just for the development workflow (involving feature development, design review, qualification, and integration) but also for other needs like working with the HR, Systems Services, and Office Services departments.
I have always been a strong believer in doing the right thing, which makes me highly invested in the company’s philosophy. It greatly inspires me to see people around me also commit to this way of thinking and working.
One instance where documented processes really helped us streamline our development workflow was during the first release of RoadRunner Scenario. Five teams spread across five office locations on two continents worked together to deliver this feature-rich product for automated driving. Using tried-and-true processes helped us identify the key stakeholders, share responsibility, establish guiding principles, scope features, and most of all, ensure that everyone stayed on the same page, which was essential for the successful delivery of the product with its intended features and examples.
Commitment to quality is something that I have observed in every MathWorker across the organization. In a talk attended by all new hires, our CEO, Jack Little, provides a great perspective about how commitment to quality is everyone’s business. Just a few examples of that commitment are the RFAIN (requirements analysis, functional design, architectural design, implementation, and integration) and design review processes. RFAIN is a structured framework for software development that helps developers and cross-functional stakeholders answer the whys, whats, and hows of the project. Design reviews help developers connect with cross-functional teams, assess upstream and downstream impacts, and understand and refine customer workflows. I feel blessed to work with cross-functional teams such as quality engineering and the documentation teams. Only with their constructive feedback can we ensure world-class quality standards for our features and examples.
The Culture
I am also fascinated by the MathWorks core value of continuous improvement and pursuit of excellence. We continuously evolve and improve our processes based on staff feedback to ensure they are relevant to the changing requirements of the industry and market. As an example, all MathWorks staff traditionally worked in the office, but during the pandemic the company shifted to a work-from-home model. This change required a lot of creativity and adaptation of multiple processes. I was truly amazed by how the company worked at multiple levels to ensure minimum disruption and was caring to employee concerns, while still maintaining productivity. With the pandemic slowing down, I am excited to embrace the hybrid work model, which will provide the opportunity to meet people and have those hallway discussions and tea time chats, while allowing for the flexibility of working from home.
I work at the MathWorks Hyderabad office, which opened in 2017 with about 200 employees and has almost doubled in size during the last five years. We have a great campus across two floors with many conference rooms, a cafeteria, and indoor games for a quick break. I strongly cherish the memories of the company’s 35th anniversary celebration in Orlando in 2019. It was a great experience to the see the whole company in one hall! This get-together provided me an opportunity to connect with MathWorkers from all around the globe and build interpersonal connections with my counterparts. It was truly phenomenal to witness the coming together of various people working on more than 100 products.
Today, I see MathWorks as a 38-year-old start-up investing in newer products with cutting-edge technologies across different mega trends, with the goal of accelerating the pace of engineering and science. It is a fantastic place to work, where challenging opportunities present themselves at all engineering and managerial levels. It is always gratifying to see how my career investments are making an impact for a better world.
