Autodesk CEO on Investing in the Future

I was an intern at what was formerly Discreet in Montreal during some layoffs in the mid-2000s. While profitable, we weren&#x27;t hitting the magic 10% profit number and Autodesk decided that wasn&#x27;t good enough.<p>People&#x27;s lives were turned upside-down and dehumanized so that we could be a better part of a global &#x27;portfolio&#x27; of these mid-sized acquisitions turned divisions. Transfers to other divisions or retraining weren&#x27;t offered.<p>After that, I didn&#x27;t want to go back. I went to work on Apple&#x27;s video stack instead. Simply put, Autodesk is inhuman, and not in a malicious sense, they just don&#x27;t consider human factors.

Along with this, one of their unfortunate &quot;policy&quot; type moves is wanting a copy of everyone&#x27;s data. :(<p>So, anyone using Fusion 360, literally has to store the data in Autodesk cloud. There is no option to keep confidential&#x2F;private data out of it (by design):<p><pre><code> https:&#x2F;&#x2F;forums.autodesk.com&#x2F;t5&#x2F;ideastation-request-a-feature-or&#x2F;please-support-quot-local-only-quot-files&#x2F;idc-p&#x2F;5831809#M10320 </code></pre> Fusion 360 is a product that crashes often, sometimes several times a day (it varies). More crashes on OSX at the moment than Windows, but YMMV.<p>They want us to store potentially extremely valuable data in their cloud... and we&#x27;re supposed to believe the server side software will be of higher quality than the client side software (which crashes).<p>Also worth noting, Autodesk has no bug bounty nor similar sensible way to reward disclosure of security bugs to them. They really, really don&#x27;t want to know.<p>To me, forcing customers to keep stuff in their cloud at the same time as sticking their head in the sand re: security... that&#x27;s not going to end well. :(

Open source 3D software has made massive leaps forward in recent years. Specifically, the 3D modeling tools in Blender are on par with, if not better than, anything Maya or 3ds Max has to offer. I don&#x27;t see SaaS working out for Autodesk unless they can find new ways to differentiate themselves from open source offerings.

I wish he&#x27;d invest away from forcing Windows &amp; Office on me to use Inventor.

Autodesk once had best office layout. Individual glassed in office with room for desk&#x2F;chair and even 2 chairs for visitors. Even junior workers one had them. Returning to it would be some good investment for the future.

One way they had invested in the future was in student and education discounts for their products. In high school and college, Autodesk was everywhere. It was probably the most effective sales tool they had!

To clarify, their revenue isn&#x27;t getting slashed by 2&#x2F;3rds as Bass implies. Autocad perpetual license + 3yr support = $6000. Annual subscription price is $1700 (or $2500 if paying monthly). So revenue over 3 years is a little lower. Of course he doesn&#x27;t say how many customers are forced into a subscription who don&#x27;t get maintenance on some&#x2F;all seats or don&#x27;t always upgrade.