Losing Its Engineering Roots - Anonymous employee Autodesk Employee Review

2.0
Oct 27, 2017
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Good snacks. Free food twice a week if you stand in line for 20 minutes. Located above a BART station.

Cons

Highly political. Too many useless meetings. In my organization, our non-technical program management group has taken over. They are hell bent on implementing Agile SCRUM as the solution to all of our problems, real and perceived. It is a sign of a lack of trust in the engineering team to get something done. To make matters worse, it isn't fixing much of anything but we pretend like it is working because politics. I worry some of our agile champions will migrate to other parts of the company after proclaiming success, like a cancer slowly spreading until we have 40 hours of meetings every week. Morale is down and many solid engineers openly daydream about leaving. The former co-CEO was considered an engineering guy and left - or was forced out - when he lost the CEO race. Current CEO is a nice guy but he was promoted from Chief Marketing Officer, further proving who calls the real shots at Autodesk. Hint: it's not the engineers anymore. I can only give my perspective. The internal Autodesk Pulse surveys show a workforce of mostly happy people. It's hard to reconcile the positive survey results with the general atmosphere of my group.

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5.0
Jun 1, 2026
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Pros

Good WLB Low Turnover Rates Interesting Projects/Work Full Benefits + 401k

Cons

Medium Pay, Not Amazing Stock Packages

2.0
Jun 12, 2026
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

The individual contributors, your peers you work with day in and day out are fantastic people! At the IC level, for the most part, it feels like everyone is in the fight together. The work/life balance is good depending on which business unit/team you're aligned with. The benefits are pretty solid, especially the 6 week sabbatical.

Cons

Autodesk moves at the pace of a snail, very slow to take action on anything. Selling is very difficult with all the undocumented approvals, processes, red tape and very few people are willing to actually help! Leadership doesn't care about the people their decisions impact. Feedback is rarely listened to and acted upon. Pay is terrible compared to competitors in this space. Autodesk has embraced a ton of change over the last few years with new marketing, sales and IT leadership and it shows. They are not shy in showing their desire to be the next Oracle at the expense of their people. They are constantly changing tools, processes, people, roles, you name it so you feel like you're under water constantly. Lipstick on a pig.

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