If you chose Autodesk, you'll probably like it. If you didn't, you might not.
Pros
This company is cannily managed, well-diversified, and will almost certainly ride out the current financial crisis. They are also extremely well-capitalized, with no debt to speak of. It's a secure, systematic place to work, especially for those who prefer the safety of a large, well-run company. Carl Bass is whip smart, and he and all senior staff have taken a pay cut themselves to lead the company by example. There are some good--even great--people. Overall salary is on par with other tech companies (base salary lower but generous bonus pay), and the benefits are above average.
Cons
In many ways, many of these comments are pointless. Autodesk has a tight hiring freeze now, and probably won't even be hiring to balance attrition until 2010. As with many large companies: there are significant internecine skirmishes that diminish energy, productivity, and alignment; the cumbersome hierarchical structure has created strata where communication gets "stuck" at different levels, and middle and upper management is starting to lose crucial information; management of the different groups varies significantly -- as does the overall respect with which people in different divisions are treated. If you are working in a weaker or less respectful division, the current lockdown on hiring makes it impossible to change your circumstance, and the poison drips all the way down to every level. In general, senior staff (reporting to Carl Bass) not nearly as competent as he is. For a technical person, there are some negatives at Autodesk. Management often seems more interested in checking off the required tasks from their well-structured to do lists than in genuinely thinking out the best or smartest way to achieve something. There is not a career path for senior technical staff who are uninterested in management. There is a significant amount of work allocated to employees in China and India, while European offices are being scaled back or closed. Layoffs are global (on par with software companies of this size). The current practice (again, somewhat common in large companies) of mandating exactly when employees must take vacation (in order to clear AR from the books for accounting purposes) is antithetical to the very idea of what vacations are for. This combined with no change in expectations or deadlines to adjust for staffing cutbacks means that the current staff will be working much harder for the next year or two. Since life/work balance was not good to start with, some long hours are ahead. Highly creative people may not fare well at Autodesk. Individual thinking or acting in a way that is different than standard is something that happens in spite of, not because of corporate encouragement. Legacy software -- particularly AutoCAD -- and legacy thinking create a serious drag on novel approaches, so product innovation is achieved principally through acquisition, rather than through "from within" efforts. Autodesk can then slowly but systemically crush the processes and culture of the acquired companies that generated the innovations they wanted to buy in the first place. Often the smartest and most passionate people from the new companies have the worst fit with the existing hierarchy -- or worse yet, are seen as threats to already-established personnel. If you are used to working in a flatter, faster, and more creative environment, being assimilated into the structure of a huge, multi-national corporation -- even a well-run one, as Autodesk is -- can be just as unpleasant as you might guess.
