Autodesk’s culture code
Oct 25, 2021 by CGPress Staff
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Forbes has published an article that takes a look at Autodesk’s recent”Culture Code”, the outcome of months of “focus groups, workshops, discussion forums, and feedback loops” that aim to “shift the company’s operating culture”. According to the article it centres around 3 areas. First, Autodesk aims to be a customer company, second are three core values summarised as “think, feel and do” and the third element relates to working procedures to encourage employees to “act as one Autodesk”. You can read a little more about what this all means in the Forbes article.
Source: Nomad
bullshit
Think, feel and do? Sounds about right:
Think….about ways to squeeze customers for more money while delivering less to them.
Feel….the increased revenues, profits and rising stock prices.
Do….it over and over.
Autodesk if you only paid a full time developer the same amount you paid that joke of a focus group to work me some new skinning and rigging tools inside Max, you wouldn’t have needed this charade in the first place.
I am thinking Houdini
I am feeling the pain
I am slowly doing it!
Been there, done that. I’m now two years max-free and it’s great. I hope you’ll manage as well!
Hey Robert my good friend! It’s a slow burner Houdini, but I can smell the napalm in the morning with it.
Working on it….
jesus tapdancing christ:
“Rita Giacalone is now the Vice President and Global Head of Culture, Diversity & Belonging…”
corporations have officially reached socialist government level of gaslighting, it really is pythonesque.
as a parody it would be a bit too far though, that is the ultimate joke.
i thank god on a weekly basis not to have anything to do with this absolute abomination of a company.
the less funny thing is that the clowns that come up with this crap make tenfold from the actual ground level devs that create value for autodesk.
Couldn’t agree more!
All this diversity and culture crap is there to cover the stench which they all know is there. Smoke and mirrors show for the media and sheep.
The only company making magic these days of all these clowns is SideFX and they are private company your every day Mom and pops shop next to these billionaire soulless corporations.
Theatrical job titles are an immature habit of tech companies in general. I have no idea who they are supposed to impress. Why a whole sentence when three words will do (Head of Culture)? I have a hunch they see Linked-in related brag-rights as part of the perks of the role.
So far as Autodesk is concerned, it just feels like a new evolution of the vulture Pokémon.. Now its grown to be super-powerful, it envies the affection all those baby firms get.. so pretends to be cuddly.. Mandibuzz swoops down from the sky, attacking weakened Pokémon. It builds its nest out of bones it collects.
not sure tbh.
what particularly irks me to no end is that, after years of shafting customers left and right with straight up mafia tactics, these companies will turn around and act like some arbiter of ethics and morality.(autodesk being far from alone in this)
and to make it all even more surreal, these focus groups end with the most banal conclusions a five year old could come up with it. no doubt they spent more resources into these strategies then in 3ds max development last couple of years.
i can just see the charts and venn diagrams they drew out for this laughable load of horse shit.
this is what really fucks me up, and it all has to with ego of the management.
the pompous titles are just simply reflecting the self-absorbed and detached nature of these vapid idiots – on one hand sipping blood from martini glasses and eating hors d’oeuvres out of human flesh while discussing “how do we fix this world”, “the problem today is…” to elevate themselves among their peers. they even gaslight themselves into thinking they are doing something positive.
fuck. these. people.
Bravo, couldn’t I agree more with you.
As cynical as this stuff is, they must think it works for them.
Like the oil company spending millions on a ‘green-wash’ campaign. Make palm oil based products? > sponsor a wildlife charity and only use ‘natural’ ingredients. Make sugary drinks that can tip people toward diabetes? > sponsor sports. So they spend a fraction of capital to smooth over cracks in their image and defend future income.
The bigger the front, the bigger the back.
look at this horseshit:
First, Autodesk aims to be a customer company. It’s how the firm fulfills its vision of “Helping people imagine, design and make a better world.” Autodesk denotes exceptional customer service and understanding the customer’s needs as pillars to successfully enacting the Culture Code.
Second, three core values titled “Think, Feel and Do” and corresponding behaviors help align employees to be smart, innovative, adaptable, inclusive, impactful, humble, courageous, accountable, and pragmatic.
The third element to Autodesk’s Culture Code is signified by the “Ways We Work.” It’s here where team members act as “One Autodesk,” empowering decision-makers, acting authentically, and demonstrating integrity.
“Informed by our Culture Code,” said Giacalone, “our guiding principles were to care authentically, establish inclusive work practices, over-communicate, and create a sense of belonging.”
Knowing that there was uncertainty and stress in those first few days and weeks, Giacalone’s team created various resources for leaders and employees that “specifically called upon our Culture Code as a source of guidance and strength.”
“For example,” she continued, “as part of establishing inclusive work practices, we advised teams to develop virtual norms. These could include things like defaulting to video for Zoom calls, reminding everyone it’s okay for kids, roommates, and pets to barge in, or asking for all team calls to take place between 9:00 am and 3:00 pm, with a break from noon to 1:00 pm. By establishing these simple agreements, teams better understood expectations and how to work with one another.”
____
this is incredible. i have never read a more dense mixture of lies, self- unawareness, corporate platitudes and unironically employed garbage buzzwords. its stunning and a bit awe inspiring, like seeing cthuhlu or a black hole up-close.
paul verhoeven, terry gilliam, mike judge couldnt do satire these days, thats for sure.
honestly, this pathetic “culture of code” sounds like a joke, no way to be a truth
what a load of shit
autodesk are one of the most evil anti customer software companies out there.
Think….how can we scam out customers
Feel….revenue for the men in suits, feel the pain of users, feel the profits
Do….less, just do way way way less, as little as possible. do chamfer modifiers 4 releases in a row.
they really don’t understand what the problem is, again and again, stupid approach,
as a customer I don’t need such an useless garbage article, I need a working tool with an adequate price.
Oh, they understand it, all this is because they want you to not understand it, that what all this kind of movement / behaviour is for.
Nothing new under the sky for marketing experts and psychologists, others have used this kind of technique while the way of really doing things is totally and absolutely bad.
The most frightening this is this one:
”to encourage employees to “act as one Autodesk””
I think people don’t get what really is behind those words, really scary
The word Autodesk in an article is the absolute guarantee for at least 25 comments below. 😀
So they just formalized they are a company that think about everything except their core function: giving valuable products to clients.
I don’t know what you are all moaning about! When our benevolent Chinese Overlords take over the west, we will be released from this decadent western ideology!
Yup they will put a gun on Autodesk’s head and shut it down for making too much money, they will also merge Maya and Max and bring back softimage and merge that too under the “equality act” for all software are made “equal” we will then have one big communist 3d program to rule them all, and the “updates” Autodesk’s are doing right now would seem like leaps of evolutionary engineering compared to nothing that we will get under the emperor. Becuase so long as the software isn’t used to making propaganda 24/7 then its of no use at all.
I wouldn’t be so quick to mock China. Have either of you ever used a DJI drone? China has developed the best consumer drones available. There is a significant level of technology, both hardware and software, involved.
Exactly 🙂 They are best because they have best price/performance ratio. Almost unrealistic one, almost as if a part of the price was subsidized by someone 🙂 Perhaps some sort of entity who has total control over all the Chinese companies, and can persuade those companies to implement any software backdoors at will.
I mean, if you were responsible for spying on other nation’s infrastructure, why waste the resources and risks of doing it yourself, when you can get the given nation’s citizens to do it for you 🙂
It wasn’t meant to mock China. The western culture is self immolating itself with wokeness, and Asians are seeing an opportunity.
First, update the srouce code of your bugged and dated softwares, then we can talk about your culture code…
If you do a global search and replace for “culture” to “vulture” the article starts to make sense 🙂 Head of Vulture…
But seriously.. how hard is it to simply sell software and invest 80% of earned money back into development/R&D. Use rest for Karen to run the office and do some marketing, The rest is unnecessary fluff
Lol
Vulture code.
So to put those three points into one it would be shapeshifting.
What’s interesting is that Forbes writes an obvious PR piece for Autodesk. Wonder what the deal looked like. Maybe Forbes didn’t even do anything here and Autodesk provided the piece, and Forbes charged 50K for the audience they ‘provide’ and said thank you.
In any case, this is journalism at its worst – to get a picture of a company you typically don’t interview 2 top employees only. Also, not once do they talk about what they really do – software that they sell to someone. There’s no mention of customers at all, besides the common BS.
This piece is only there for current and potential stockholders – to make sure the investment folks know that Autodesk thinks they do not suffer from the pandemic like others and has installed measures to make sure everyone is happy and everything is awesome.
That’s it exactly – its just for the shareholders
The public face of Autodesk just acts in their interest. Not that of the users, or the industries they are so deeply intrenched with their applications
What I find personally ironic is my permanent licence has just been stopped. I’ve paid for every update on time since version 1. Over the years I’ve had numerous threatening letters etc about audits and updates etc, all unfounded. I’m not going into lack of development.
They talk about ethics and customer care as they give me the boot. How do you square that circle?
Definitely time to move on.
EX Autodesk customer.
I got a barrage of the legal/audit threats a couple years ago when I hadn’t renewed my maintenance two months before expiration. Magically, it all went away when I renewed maintenance. That was a real eye opening experience and confirmed for me Autodesk’s true colors. I also heard an hours long sales pitch where an Autodesk salesperson was trying to convince my boss to give up perpetual licenses and switch to subscription. The complete lack of integrity on that sales call was astounding and desperate. In my experience, Autodesk is universally hated in the VFX industry. I was working at a prestigious Hollywood CG studio on the day it was announced Autodesk had purchased Shotgun. You could literally hear the moans and groans spread throughout the otherwise quiet studio as the news spread.
Ouch – when did you stop renewing the maintenance?
How ironic that Autodesk ends up being the real pirate here…
This is the first year that I didn’t pay maintenance. This was the last year it was ever going to be available anyway, and I hadn’t even installed the version I paid for last year, so really I got nothing from the last maintenance I paid for. Now, I happily donate to blender monthly about half the money I would have spent on Autodesk maintenance. I don’t even really use Blender except for tinkering with the smoke simulation. But, Blender development is exciting to follow and I actually look forward to it, unlike the lame improvements Max gets nowadays.
I didn’t. As of this year, in my case October 25th 2021, you are no longer allowed to renew your maintenance. Ironically, the article coincided with my forced end of service.
Effectively I may as well be starting afresh. When I began using 3ds Max V1, the price point filled a hole in the market. 3ds Max is the wrong app for me now. It’s expensive, and there are other modern programs out there that do more,
I am moving on.
So both of you were forced out of maintenance when it ran out and didn’t go with the switch to sub… same here. Wonder how many “customers” (I’m putting this in citation marks as it’s an unknown term in the Autodesk universe) they have lost that way.
AD won’t release that information. The way I see it is AD are financially discouraging new animators. New licencing systems might be good in the short term for big companies but it’s expensive for the individual animator who services it. Also, if you look at the way 3ds Max has been pushed into an ArchViz program, you can see that even that market is drying up. A lot of ArchViz programs can now do render outputs. Everything 3ds max can do can be done in something else. I think AD’s strategy is a controlled way of winding the program down.
No doubt the shills will disagree, but if you look at plugin developers for 3ds MAX they are disappearing.
On reflection, if some decent features are added in the future, I might move onto the Indie licence, but I feel insecure under that model.