After missing Q2 revenue expectations Autodesk announced that it’s laying off close to 500 employees due to restructuring efforts. Mashable reports that those numbers include “3D developers and several product managers”. The restructuring is “focused on [the company’s] continued transformation and shift to more cloud and mobile computing”. More on Mashable, Forbes, Graphic Speak and ZDNet.
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Are you kidding me? Autodesk have no idea what their clients want or how to make good software anymore; that’s why their revenue is down.
The Borg working harder to finally dissolve like a cloud.
Looks like this wasn’t so far off originally: http://cgpress.com/archives/16349_autodesk_mentions_switching_all_software_to_online_use_only.html
That was refuted by Ken, who said that the mention of ‘the only way’ meant more that it would be ‘the best way’ rather than it would be the only option.
All I know is that I would never use something that was solely reliant on an internet connection, and by the looks of things I’m not alone.
Reliance on both your internet connection and server-side reliability is not somewhere I’m interested in, and there’s the issue of security/confidentiality.
An optional short-term rental model is fine where the app is stored locally and can be activated for short-term hires per project, and is going completely against the model they currently have where it’s an upfront purchase of a seat of Max, plus strongly pushing for a yearly subscription, with the recent angling to buy a 3-year contract to beat the price hikes.
If 7% of their workforce is 500 people then Autodesk has to have 7000+ employees. No wonder everything’s such a mess.
MS has +90000 employees. Adobe has amslost 10,000. Blizzard has 4600 employees. What’s wrong with Autodesk having 7000 employees. Geez…
Considering how many markets AD serves I think 7000 employees is quite conservative.
The real question is how many are administrative versus production, of course you need admin but if it is anything like healthcare in America then it is way out balance. 🙂
it sucks when you are losing revenue or not meeting expectations and are forced into a corner – but I hold firm on the idea that it is impossible to cut your way to profitability. You hire good people, and if the products or markets aren’t performing – you build a new strategy and move those good people into other revenue generating areas. OTOH, i’m the worst form of capitalist because I believe at some point you can ‘make enough money’, and should be reinvesting in your team, technology, R&D. I didnt look at the numbers, but is ADSK actually losing money, or did they just not make ‘enough’?
Its all about not achieving prognosted revenue growth. They announced a growth of 10% total and where only able to get 4%. Thus shareolder ar ein panic, and so is Autodesk.
Looking at the particulare sections, M&E department is actually the only one which saw a drop in revenue ( compared to Q2 a year ago): it dropped about 10%, mainly in Eruope, followed by Brazil and India..
But of course the M&E sector makes only a very small part of AD ‘s revenue ( i think arround 10-15% ) and allaother parts are still growing…
Looking at this from a sane ( non-shareholder orientated ) perspective, there is no serious need for panic or a layoff of that amount of staff
Some charts & numbers can be found on this page:
http://gfxspeak.com/2012/08/23/autodesk-execution-challenges-lead-to-flat-second-quarter/
CEO says July was an “unmitigated disaster: while “Net income in the second quarter was $64.6 million”
response: lay off 500 million.
hmm. yup, sounds about right.
Panic button response