Autodesk's overall culture can best be described as passive-aggressive, conflict-averse, and consensus-driven. Read through the reviews you'll find here or elsewhere and you'll see this theme over and over again. Talk to someone at a senior manager level or higher, and they'll confirm it (unless they're someone who loves that sort of thing; they're usually blind to it). Everywhere has politics, of course. But Autodesk's culture significantly amplifies the internal politics to many times greater than they should be for a company of this size. Example: making a decision which might take 3-5 meetings over the period of 2-3 weeks in even a much larger, more complex company can easily take (no kidding) 15-20 meeting over a period of 6+ months. And even then, the decision or agreement is at least 50% likely to be reneged upon by some passive-aggressive manager who had no intention of cooperating, resulting in a reset of the entire decision process.
The politics are most intense within the corporate GnA functions, most notoriously corporate finance and IT. Deep in the recesses of the back of the back office, the politics amongst the heavily bloated middle management and their executives truly defines realpolitik. Coercion, threats, dishonesty, doublespeak, intimidation and deception wrapped in euphemisms and culture programs are the norm.
The bottom line is there are a ton of massively overpaid directors who enjoy working 20-25 hour work weeks, living in Marin, and never having to miss one of their kids' midday sports. They've managed to carve out their little feudal fiefdoms, and if you find yourself in any sort of situation which requires their cooperation--or worse their agreement to change anything--then prepare to defend yourself from an onslaught of smarmy politics. While I could provide examples, I'm pretty sure they would come off as exaggerations or hyperbole. All I can say is, Autodesk is a place where the unimaginable happens every day: especially within the realm of politics.
Lastly, Autodesk is a place people intentionally try to go to to retire. It is a lifestyle company. Many people don't go there to work hard, they go there for generous benefits, flexible work schedules and generally not to have to think too much. The company has an abnormally high tenure. There are lots of 15-20, even 25+ year lifers who enjoy "untouchable" status which they happily exploit. If you're a manager, you'll end up with at least a few of these folks on your team. All I can say is, good luck. Many of these folks literally have zero experience anywhere else but Autodesk, and they will not even recognize skills, experience or ideas you may have brought in from elsewhere as valid, let alone sometimes better.
This matters because Autodesk has an incredibly effective "tissue rejection" culture. You can be there for years, be very successful, and still end up crossing paths with an untouchable lifer and find yourself on the fast track out.
