Autodesk is a great company to work for. However, it’s really sad to see that the greatness of the company is very far off in the Barcelona office. It’s like two different worlds/companies.
Management (hub based): All managers in the hub are very unexperienced. This means that nobody has a clue what is going on. Most of them are hired externally, because only the favorites get promoted. They have no clue how to manage people. The fact they were average or good in their previous sales position, does not mean they are capable of managing people. When they become managers (mid-management/team managers), they don't have much imput nor have the ability to make their own decision. These are made one level up (senior management). Team managers have to ask for permission to the senior managent for basically everything.
Team lead program: Every year you have the chance to apply for a team lead program (trains you to become a manager), but they already decided who’s going to get a spot before people can even apply. Then they don’t even bother to communicate to people that they didn’t get the spot. Also, some people don’t even have to apply and get a spot (there’s like 6 spots and 500 employees) anyways.
Call center KPI’s: ‘’We are not a callcenter’’ is what they love to tell themselves. However, since mid 2018, we have all the call center metrics and talk time is more important than your actual achievement or how productive you are. Calling a reseller for 1 hour and talk about the weather? Great, 1H TT done. Bringing in loads of business but no 1h TT? Not good enough, you’ll receive an email with name shaming the people who didn’t do 1H.
Micro-management: the inside sales department consists of severe micro-management. Working from home (even for a good reason), no option. Emails about talk time every day, name shaming. No flexibility. They look over your shoulder all day, for some of them, its quite literally (as in: check what you’re doing on your screen, listening into your calls without informing you). It’s like kindergarden and they don’t trust any of us.
Politics: Favouratism is the best way to describe hub-based management. If you’re liked, you’ll get far, if not, forget about your career at Autodesk. Want to have a career here? Make sure to play your political cards very right.
Speaking up: Something they love to ‘’encourage’’. But when you do, you’re out. So basically you cannot say anything otherwise you will pay a very big price. They'll find a way for you to say yes and amen or you'll get fired.
Perception: Perception is also very very important here combined with favouratism. They don’t care about how you really are, they’ll form an opinion about you and will base everything on this. ‘’Perceived’’ as arrogant? No salary increase.
Faking achievements: There are many favorites who’s continuously faked their results. Then they get awarded for this by hub management. Even get awards. Real talent doesn’t get rewarded. Neither in salary nor awards. During my time here I've seen many big talents leave because of this, which is a big shame.
Career growth: During onboarding and interviews they say you can advance your career within ADSK. Not true. Only if you’re liked and favoured. There have been several occasions senior hub management has blocked people from moving to different positions for no reason. If you’re looking to grow your career, ADSK is not the place to be. Many good people have left despite various calls to action, as they were stuck. It’s only the favourites who get lucky. There is no career plan like in every other big IT company.
Retention: Last year many people got fired, some without even knowing they got fired and mostly without valid reason. They will receive a nice severance package as the company has no valid ground to fire people for no reason on the spot. If they don’t get fired, they leave. Mostly the good people that are just lacking the favouratism. These are mostly top performers who’ve been waiting for 3 years to get somewhere and don’t get anywhere, so they have no choice but leave and earn double somewhere else.
Bonus/target/quota: Quotas are not rolled out until the middle of the year. This means that TSR’s only get paid 50% of the variable salary before the quota has been rolled out. HR tends to forget to tell new hires so they come in thinking they're earning more than they acutally are. For the other roles: target changed every month (and therefore they earn way less money than the target they signed for), no stability, capped at 200% etc.
Salary: Used to be quite high and nice for Barcelona (TSR position), still quite low for SaaS companies. But recently they have gone down drastically. SDR's and BDR's are severely underpaid (similar to outsourcing companies). Big differences between TSR's. This is not based and aligned on being junior/medior/senior, but by how much they want to offer. This causes loads of problems between colleagues, as one colleague could earn 10K more for the same job, without having more exprience etc. You're not allowed to talk about salaries, you'll get in big trouble (because it's not fair).
Salary increase: Doesn’t really happen. Only once per year IF you are one of the lucky ones (read: favourites). They will use everything against you (how you’re ''perceived'' rather than your achievements). If you want to change roles you’d better quit and get re-hired otherwise you get a lower salary as they use an excuse they can only give you 2% more due to your old salary, even if you’re changing to a different department where the salary is much higher. HR will also rather not hire people internally with a lower salary because they don’t want to increase much. There is no annual increase/inflation increase. People that do get a promotion get at least 10K less than externals getting the job (even if they don’t have more experience).
HR: Totally not trustworthy. They talk about confidential things of employees to colleagues or managers who shouldn’t be involved, causing the employee problems with both colleagues as well as management. Even when confidentiallity has been signed by both HR and employee. Nobody feels they can trust them as there have been various incidents where this happened. They are also best friends with senior management, so best not to include HR into youre confidential problems, especially when it considers a manager. Also, they don’t inform current employees about vacancies and head of recruitment doesn’t want to push internals to get a job or even help them look for a suitable change, as they rather hire externals.
Diversity: great that ADSK is so focused on this. However, in the hub in BCN, it seems there is more possitive discrimination than that it's benefiting the hub. Promote the best person, not because it's a woman.
