Autodesk To Cut 1,000 Jobs (yahoo.com) 20
Autodesk said today it plans to cut approximately 1,000 jobs, or roughly 7% of its workforce, as part of what the company described as the final phase of a global restructuring effort aimed at strengthening its sales and marketing operations.
The maker of AutoCAD and other digital design software said a significant portion of the cuts will fall within customer-facing sales functions.
The maker of AutoCAD and other digital design software said a significant portion of the cuts will fall within customer-facing sales functions.
Liars (Score:3)
"...effort aimed at strengthening its sales and marketing operations."
"...a significant portion of the cuts will fall within customer-facing sales functions."
Contradictory statements.
Re:Liars (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:1)
They'll replace the marketers with AI slop. Nothing of value lost, nothing gained. Nobody ever bought Autodesk because of sales and marketing. Ther products are bought because they are industry standard, and/or the best tool for the job. Might as well sack all of these people, and not a single sale lost.
For individual and SMB customers, Austdesk sales is not important, but marketing is. Specially to making customers aware of other autodesk products beyond AutoCad...
But for Big enterprises, with thousands of seats, and huge training budgets, that can shift tools relatively easily?
Sales in those cases is important, who is gona wine, and dine, and golf a big customer to convince not to shift to an autodesk competitor? And who is gonna dine and wine and golf a big customer to ditch a competitor and go to autod
Re: (Score:3)
Who exactly is this mythical customer who is not aware of Autodesk products? In any of the fields where they are present, it is impossible to not know of them.
And the idea that a company with thousands of seats can shift tools relatively easily is such a wild statement that I don't know whether I should laugh or cry at it. The bigger a company is, the more difficult it is for it to change anything about how it does anything. If it were not that inertia and corporate culture are paralyzing, they will be done
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I have watched some of our EPC customers switch toolchains and it's clear that they think it's "relatively easy" even when it's a disaster when they actually do it. It's pretty clear that "the sales guy took me to Morton's and a strip club" really does drive purchasing decisions of thousand seat deployments.
Re: (Score:3)
Maybe it makes more sense in cases where 'sales' includes a fair amount of sales engineer to help customers who don't know the details of specing a full virtualization infrastructure or something; or cases where which SIEM the customer picks will involve some careful wi
Re: (Score:2)
They said they are strengthening the operations. Operations strength need not be a function of number of people. Esp for a very well-known product.
Sometimes people can inhibit sales, in order to meet sales targets. I have seen sales folks coax customers to spread purchases over multiple periods instead of buying it all in one go.
It's a recession (Score:2)
We already know the current administration is fudging the numbers or just plain not reporting them and we know why.
Take away the spending on AI and we are in a massive recession that even all the fudged and hidden numbers in the world couldn't hide. And you can't hide it from your pocketbook we all feel it.
Looking for something to do? (Score:2, Interesting)
Put them to work making a Linux build. People would gladly dump windows.
Re: (Score:3)
Put them to work making a Linux build. People would gladly dump windows.
These are sales droids. Would you really want them doing a Linux port?
Heh (Score:3)
a global restructuring effort aimed at strengthening its sales and marketing operations.
How could a workforce cut ever result in strengthening sales or marketing operations?
Best case scenario -- it saves money and doesn't tank the remaining sales too badly.
So, only programmers and designers were laid off? (Score:1)
Is CAD even their biggest revenue stream? (Score:3)
Autodesk is more than CAD. 3DS Max is pretty much the industry standard for 3D modelling in video games. They also sell the character modelling/animation suite Maya since they acquired Alias/Wavefront years ago. Their software is used extensively for special effects in feature films, too. I wouldn't be surprised of 3D modelling and rendering is a bigger business for them than CAD.
Re: (Score:3)
3DS Max is pretty much the industry standard for 3D modelling in video games.
20 years ago yeah, now it's more aligned with blender.
Reporting (Score:3)
"(Reporting by Jaspreet Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Shilpi Majumdar)"
I am not against outsourcing stuff, but how does a couple of dudes in INDIA have the info on this and not people where Autodesk is headquartered?
And btw, that entire "report" .. which was just a regurgitation of stuff in the 8K filing .. could easily have been done by AI. In fact I just tested that theory by pasting the filing into it .. in fact it produced a better article with useful outside context. I won't paste it here, you can do it yourself by asking your favorite AI to detect and discuss layoffs in the SEC 8-K filing (here: https://investors.autodesk.com... [autodesk.com] ) and provide analysis.
The other aspect, of this is that Reuters selected the news report for a main story .. that too can be done by AI .. just ask it what companies are popular and newsworthy and put that in the top news.
When we used to have real reporting and journalists, we'd get news from the 8-K filing PLUS the reporters would have info on top of that via connections .. human connections .. within the company being talked about and we'll get some scoops like "the new VP is a jerk, here's the real deal etc"
Should go cross-platform to Mac OS (Score:2)
Had Autodesk been serious about increasing profits, they would make a Mac version.
Re: (Score:2)
No Linux ports? (Score:1)
I'm guessing they won't have the man power to port Autodesk products to Linux? Really want Fusion 360 on Linux.
competes with PTC? (Score:2)
The company, which provides software such as AutoCAD and competes with Adobe and PTC
PTC is at the fag end of CAD market. It was even put up for sale in 2009, with no takers. PTC is profitable now and does IoT and other non-CAD stuff. It purchased OnShape a couple of years ago. Otherwise, it's not a big player anymore.
The bigger ones in 3D CAD are Siemens (NX) and Dassault Systemes (SolidWorks and CATIA). PTC is a far flung third.