Great company, toxic leadership culture - Senior Engineering Manager Autodesk Employee Review

2.0
Jan 29, 2024
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Great company doing good things for the world and is highly profitable Good RSU compensation Depending on the organization & VP you report into, great work-life-balance and meaningful work

Cons

Autodesk is constant change of reorgs with VPs departing, orgs being merged, and new VPs arriving. This makes for a fractured company culture and as an employee, its up to you to roll with the changes, often this can make for significant changes to your day-to-day. Within PSET (there are a few orgs within Autodesk), there is a top-down leadership culture that is suffocating. Its interesting that Autodesk is considered an innovative company, the pattern over the last few years has been to disempower engineering creativity, push out talented engineers, and replace engineering talent overseas. Cost cutting has been a fixture of Autodesk strategy, not investment in innovation. This has created an inefficient engineering culture and a slow pace of delivery. Its recommended to avoid any teams related to the Analytics Data Platform, the VP and the leadership team are unethical and toxic. The VP openly talks about being a 'dictator' (his words), says inappropriate things, often laughs about HR, and plays petty politics. There is a strong vibe that performance is more about 'kissing the ring' than building anything durable and reliable.

Explore other reviews about Autodesk

5.0
Jun 1, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

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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