Autodesk laying 925 people off

joebount

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/02/04/autodesk_announces_redundancies_for_ten_percent_of_workforce/

Due to a massive cloud strategy orientation, Autodesk decides to axe 10% of their workforce ...

All my best to affected people.

thomasp

this quote referring to autodesk is amusing, sounds like it's coming from a former 3ds max developer -


"The really bad part about laying off developers is the loss of mindshare about a product.

It takes years and years for devs to gain knowledge about a product. Then they are let go, then a new generation of developers come in who don't know the software. It takes them years and years to learn the software.

Meanwhile a customer logs a bug and no one knows how to fix it.

When I was there, we were on our 4th generation of developers. Some came and went, but there were huge swaths of code completely abandoned. No one knew how it worked nor even cared. There was very little code that people actually knew how it worked.

All those plugins that got acquired were bought, thrown in, and abandoned. No unit tests were purchased with them, None of them compiled at warning level 4.

Anyways with each layoff it diminishes the chance that any real rewrite of the software can ever occur. (Refactorings were strictly frowned upon, or you have to have political connections with management)."


from: http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?p=8144782#post8144782

JacqueChoi

Being fired and laying people off are 2 VASTLY different things.

Can you please change the title?

ExcessiveZero

thomasp said:

this quote referring to autodesk is amusing, sounds like it's coming from a former 3ds max developer -


"The really bad part about laying off developers is the loss of mindshare about a product.

It takes years and years for devs to gain knowledge about a product. Then they are let go, then a new generation of developers come in who don't know the software. It takes them years and years to learn the software.

Meanwhile a customer logs a bug and no one knows how to fix it.

When I was there, we were on our 4th generation of developers. Some came and went, but there were huge swaths of code completely abandoned. No one knew how it worked nor even cared. There was very little code that people actually knew how it worked.

All those plugins that got acquired were bought, thrown in, and abandoned. No unit tests were purchased with them, None of them compiled at warning level 4.

Anyways with each layoff it diminishes the chance that any real rewrite of the software can ever occur. (Refactorings were strictly frowned upon, or you have to have political connections with management)."


from: http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?p=8144782#post8144782

Huge swaths of code abandoned due to shitty coding commenting practice, this to some degree explains the lack of significant improvements to max over the years.

with employees taking years to learn the software, the code uncommented and them not giving a shit for what have the code does id be firing people left and right too.

marks

It really feels like consumer faith in Autodesk is at an all-time low right now. I mean, I personally can't really justify recommending their products for any reason other than being the established status-quo. 

JacqueChoi

skyline5gtr

They need more programmers not less, not sure why they are doing this. Like others have said only reason people use 3ds max is because it is status quo but it wont last with so many other companies exploding with far greater innovation 

VelvetElvis

Sounds about right in leaving chunks of shitty code. Considering Autodesk totally cocked up the Max 2016 release. I mean the grouped object bug was probably the most hilarious bug I've ever seen.

And speaking of which, and I the only one who is a bit pissed at how slow Autodesk is dealing with fixes with the 2016 releases or is it just Max that isn't getting shit done to it.

thomasp

well, years back there was this guess-timate about how large a development effort there might be at autodesk m & e. sounds like we're not exactly talking large teams of software engineers -
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/User:Ton/Autodesk_report

assuming his interpretations are halfway correct then some mid sized gamestudios should have more developers on internal toolsets than autodesk has e.g. on maya.

linkov

thomasp said:

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/User:Ton/Autodesk_report

The CEO gets 5 times more money than all Maya developers together

this is just sick

Hito

linkov said:

thomasp said:

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/User:Ton/Autodesk_report

The CEO gets 5 times more money than all Maya developers together

Not to justify the CEO's 6+ mil compensation... "5 times more money than all Maya developers together" sounds grossly inaccurate. 

20% of 6 Million = 1.2 Million; lets be conservative and say average Maya developer is paid 40k/yr; that equals 30 developers... laying off 925 people would be laying off entire Maya developement staff 30 times over. 

thomasp

it's early morning here so my brain isn't quite booted up - but are you saying 40k/yr - we're talking US-dollars, right? - is what you think a software engineer is making at autodesk as an average? i for one wouldn't bet the farm on that...

PolyHertz

Hito said:

lets be conservative and say average Maya developer is paid 40k/yr;

$40K is more or less entry level salary for programmers...I would hope AD pays them better then that.

spacefrog

thomasp said:

this quote referring to autodesk is amusing, sounds like it's coming from a former 3ds max developer -

from: http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?p=8144782#post8144782

Chris Johnson aka "alpineman" was a former seasoned 3ds Max developer who got hit by one of the last layoff cycles. I was quite shocked about this news back then... Chris posted a few messages on his blog after that event  giving some insight on what he actually worked at that time and how things generally were at AD. One could argue wether some of his statements are really 100% facts, but they are certainly his view on the things  and nevertheless a good read. A little google will lead you to his blog.
I for one can only hope that the Max team has'nt got a too severe hit, as 3ds Max's progress and future has changed from doubtfull and unclear to good over the last couple of cycles, since Eddie Perlberg took over the role of product manager

thomasp

thanks for the hint. i'm not surprised at what i'm reading there but am quite surprised that he gets to talk about his former employer(s) inner workings like that. do they not know NDA's in silicon valley?

almighty_gir

ExcessiveZero said:

thomasp said:

this quote referring to autodesk is amusing, sounds like it's coming from a former 3ds max developer -


"The really bad part about laying off developers is the loss of mindshare about a product.

It takes years and years for devs to gain knowledge about a product. Then they are let go, then a new generation of developers come in who don't know the software. It takes them years and years to learn the software.

Meanwhile a customer logs a bug and no one knows how to fix it.

When I was there, we were on our 4th generation of developers. Some came and went, but there were huge swaths of code completely abandoned. No one knew how it worked nor even cared. There was very little code that people actually knew how it worked.

All those plugins that got acquired were bought, thrown in, and abandoned. No unit tests were purchased with them, None of them compiled at warning level 4.

Anyways with each layoff it diminishes the chance that any real rewrite of the software can ever occur. (Refactorings were strictly frowned upon, or you have to have political connections with management)."


from: http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?p=8144782#post8144782

Huge swaths of code abandoned due to shitty coding commenting practice, this to some degree explains the lack of significant improvements to max over the years.

with employees taking years to learn the software, the code uncommented and them not giving a shit for what have the code does id be firing people left and right too.

Uhh... Well, i was taught to try to write my code in a way that it's readable without comments. 

Different practices i guess.

oglu

working  through a tool that has million lines of code isnt that easy... readable code is not enough...

Savannakhet

skyline5gtr said:

They need more programmers not less, not sure why they are doing this. 

The Register said:

The move comes less than two months after the company woke to find not one, but two “activist” investor funds on its share register: Eminence Capital and Sachem Head Capital.

marks

skyline5gtr said:

They need more programmers not less, not sure why they are doing this.

$$$$

skyline5gtr

marks said:

skyline5gtr said:

They need more programmers not less, not sure why they are doing this.

$$$$

Funny how a CEO can make as much as an entire team even if the company is failing

EarthQuake

Sorry to hear about this! For those effected, we're always looking for talented engineers at Marmoset. Get in touch if you're interested: http://www.marmoset.co/jobs

Blond

linkov said:

thomasp said:

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/User:Ton/Autodesk_report

The CEO gets 5 times more money than all Maya developers together

this is just sick

Hahah what? To think a concurrent developper would go and write openly articles like that against them...

Ton really has an aversion for AD it seems...

Kitty|Owl

Savannakhet said:

skyline5gtr said:

They need more programmers not less, not sure why they are doing this. 

The Register said:

The move comes less than two months after the company woke to find not one, but two “activist” investor funds on its share register: Eminence Capital and Sachem Head Capital.

Just to add to that

As Reuters notes, the two investors had signed an agreement about nominating directors and influencing management.

When two investors decide they want your company there isn't much you can do (unless you find a bigger one). Either a bigger investor wanted a slice of costs gone or the other two have only just begun with "streamlining" the company.
Unfortunately when big people start swinging their money-dicks, its people below who are going to end up as collateral damage.

Aabel

Kitty|Owl said:

When two investors decide they want your company there isn't much you can do (unless you find a bigger one). Either a bigger investor wanted a slice of costs gone or the other two have only just begun with "streamlining" the company.
Unfortunately when big people start swinging their money-dicks, its people below who are going to end up as collateral damage.

Indeed. This one of the things I factor into personal tool purchasing decisions. Publicly traded companies care about share holder value first. Customers and employees only matter as much as a function of increasing share holder value.

Deathstick

well I guess I'll have to start learning modo sooner than I thought....

Then again, I didn't seem to notice anywhere in the article what percentage of what was laid off or how the developers were affected. I'm going to guess some of those were sales and retail packaging jobs, customer support, etc.. Nevertheless, layoffs suck and hopefully everyone involved lands quickly on their feet!

ulricr

thomasp said:

well, years back there was this guess-timate about how large a development effort there might be at autodesk m & e. sounds like we're not exactly talking large teams of software engineers -
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/User:Ton/Autodesk_report

assuming his interpretations are halfway correct then some mid sized gamestudios should have more developers on internal toolsets than autodesk has e.g. on maya.

I think its a terrible article, as anyone at a studio who's been with a meeting with Autodesk - who often show up with a half a dozen Maya developers would know: the entire dev team is not 20 people.   He starts by estimating that "Animation" has a 110M revenue, and then concludes that they must be spending only 3M on Maya because I think he thinks Maya is only 10% of Animation revenue (11M) and would only spend a fraction of that on R&D.  Really! Animation is Max and Maya and everything is rounding errors, are we saying that Max is 90% of that? 

Anyway, Autodesk Canada, which is basically M&E because they do all the CAD stuff in the US except Alias, was listed has having 643 employees when they submitted themselves to "best place to work in canada" http://www.greatplacetowork.ca/great-workplaces/best-workplaces-in-canada-large-and-multinational. Then there are animation developers in tons of other countries, like china, singapore, US, if you`ve been in any discussion with Autodesk you know.  It`s not "20 developers" unless there were only 3 per country.  Even if you questioned that number and went with the old adage of M&E being  "only 10% of autodesk", then that would be 900 people (of a total of 9000 employees). They have a 300M R&D budget so they could have around 2000 engineer company-wide, but the vast majority of Canada employees is engineering because it's all about tax deductions and the head office is in California.

thomasp

maybe so but by far not all employees in those divisions will be software engineers directly assigned to the product's development which i think is what ton referred to. you'll have tons of other staff who are not directly contributing to the codebase of these apps and i'd expect they will not send their core coders to meet up with clients either - outside of exceptional circumstances?

shaderfx

We are occassionally send to customers if we are interested and there is a need for customers

ulricr

As I wrote m&e has offices in Canada, china, Singapore, and its all for r&d tax credits, not administration, so you can't go and just dismiss the headcount and just say only 5% of that is "real" r&d. Autodesk makes only software, making it is its main expenses, m&e doesn't have hundreds of people just sitting around not contributing to making the software. It doesn't have 10 secretaries per developers. The resellers network and all of that, they are not employees of autodesk, and the marketing and documentation is practically non existent.