Autodesk

Global company with the opportunity to work on large projects and huge, renowned applications used by tens of thousands of people.

Access to great hardware and tools. Often a high degree of autonomy, but that may differ from office to office.

Lots of poor decision-making, i.e., making a decision without understanding the impact; trying to implement global change without a strategy.

I've never worked anywhere with so many politics. It depends on who you work for and who they work for as to whether you can be given a raise or promoted. The standing of an office depends on the products it produces and how they are valued.

There's a lot of posturing going on because:

• Multiple teams are developing competing products or services (which shouldn't be happening).
• Acquisitions have been made of poor products but backed by senior people who do not wish these bad choices to be highlighted.

I've seen people sidelined or fired for saying the wrong thing, defending the wrong team, or for being associated with the wrong product.

Generally, the levels of management make enacting change or having an impact impossible. Given the scale of the organization, there is a lot of waste and poor execution of the vision of senior management.

The company is able to make huge mistakes and survive because it has a monopoly on many areas and is making such a huge amount of money, where a smaller company would crash and burn.

It can also be lost in translation as to which team is responsible for a success or failure, and much of that is by design.

There are too many layers to management and too many people promoted to the level of their incompetence.

There needs to be more transparency and a better two-way dialogue.

Acquisitions need to be vetted more closely before committing. If buying to take the product idea and the company out from being acquired by a competitor, recognize when to ditch the codebase and re-architect. Don't promote people you've 'bought' through acquisition without their deserving it, especially if they are widely known to be borderline incompetent.

Stop sacking the coalface when there are plenty of middle managers who only contribute negatively.