Local office was great, before they shut us down in a pandemic - Senior Software Engineer KUKA Employee Review

2.0
Oct 28, 2021
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The Austin office was great. Supportive, willing to innovate, and management always had their employees' backs. And we used cutting edge web development technologies as well. KUKA Austin was great while it lasted.

Cons

Incompetent would be too kind of a word for the management of KUKA. Here are just a few examples; many have been omitted, simply because I have already wasted too much of my life on these people. Pre-pandemic, notable failures of KUKA include inventing/pioneering cooperative robotics (co-bots, for short), and promptly losing the entire market share to a start up robotics company. Their incompetence continued to be displayed when, during the COVID pandemic, they shut down the Austin office (the office they admitted had the most software expertise in the entire company), and moved the entire IoT engineering project back to Germany, as well as to China. This quickly tanked their entire IoT effort -- I still get messages from engineers who found my email in the git logs asking for my help fixing their platform, losing all the goodwill from KUKA customers that we slowly built. To add insult to injury, they laid off the entire Austin staff during the COVID pandemic, but made sure to add that "COVID was not a factor in their decision", thus preventing their former employees from collecting federal relief funds. This company is cruel to its employees, wildly incompetent, and it would be frankly astounding if they continue to be in business five years down the road.

Explore other reviews about KUKA

5.0
Aug 29, 2025
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

In my experience Kuka has a family style environment. Everyone is easy to work with and the team is flexible.

Cons

Although some managers are helpful when there are home life situations there is no plan for any type of remote positions available.

1.0
Mar 21, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Established company, lots of travel, cutting edge technology

Cons

Low salary, need overtime to make money, lots of travel, no career growth

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