Category Archives: Polls

Discarded Autodesk employees – how old were you when you were let go?

Some things have been mentioned to me privately that have made me curious. Curiosity is like an itch for me, I just have to scratch it. So here goes.

If you have been let go, fired, made redundant, discarded, dumped, sacked, had your office closed, encouraged to take a termination offer, sidelined into an untenable position, failed to have your contract renewed or otherwise ceased your employment at Autodesk in a not-entirely-voluntary manner in the last ten years, I’d like to know how old you were at the time. There’s a poll in this post and in the left sidebar.

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The overall results will be public, but the individual responses will of course remain private. Feel free to add your observations in the comments, with or without your real name.

Are your drawings SHOUTING?

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This post was inspired by a question raised by Jamie Myers in the CAD Managers Unite! Facebook group.

Long ago, before CAD was in common use, I was taught technical drawing at school. One of the things I was taught was to follow drafting standards, BS308 at the time. Later, I was expected to follow AS1100. One of the things I was taught was to always use capital letters in text on drawings, using the approved ISO font. Without a machine, without a template. This stuck to me to such an extent that even today I use all caps when handwriting notes. Note to wife? Caps. Shopping list? Caps. I can’t help it, it’s hardwired.

Let’s do that paragraph again, this time using the case as it would be seen on most drawings in my experience, and as I would automatically tend to enter it on a drawing:

LONG AGO, BEFORE CAD WAS IN COMMON USE, I WAS TAUGHT TECHNICAL DRAWING AT SCHOOL. ONE OF THE THINGS I WAS TAUGHT WAS TO FOLLOW DRAFTING STANDARDS – BS308 AT THE TIME. LATER, I WAS EXPECTED TO FOLLOW AS1100. ONE OF THE THINGS I WAS TAUGHT WAS TO ALWAYS USE CAPITAL LETTERS IN TEXT ON DRAWINGS, USING THE APPROVED ISO FONT. WITHOUT A MACHINE, WITHOUT A TEMPLATE. THIS STUCK TO ME TO SUCH AN EXTENT THAT EVEN TODAY I USE ALL CAPS WHEN HANDWRITING NOTES. NOTE TO WIFE? CAPS. SHOPPING LIST? CAPS. I CAN’T HELP IT, IT’S HARDWIRED.

Show those paragraphs to 100 people in the street and ask them which is the most legible, and I’m pretty sure the mixed-case one will be chosen by the vast majority. It also uses up less space, which can be an issue on a crowded drawing.

You wouldn’t use all caps on the Internet unless you were SHOUTING because otherwise you would be mistaken for one of those unhinged conspiracy theorists. Just as I’m hardwired to write in upper case, I’m also hardwired to skip blocks of upper case text on the Internet (e.g. Terms of Use) without even attempting to read it.

Why, then, do so many of us still use ALL CAPS in drawings? Inertia? Standards?

There are some legitimate arguments that can be made to support the continued use of upper case on drawings. I was taught that capitals were used to ensure that when a drawing was reproduced, taken out on site and subjected to folds, dirty fingers and oil stains, the chances of something being rendered illegible was smaller in the case of a capital letter. It has been pointed out that ‘up’ and ‘dn’ are identical when inverted. Quick, is ‘l’ an upper case I or a lower case L?

I understand all caps usage varies substantially from country to country and the language used will also make a difference.

Let’s have your viewpoint on this subject. Please comment and/or pick a poll option. It’s a deliberately binary poll so you can’t fudge and have to pick one, and it’s about which one you think is better (most suited for purpose), not which one you use.

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This and usually a few other polls live at the top of the left sidebar (on a PC browser). Here is the polls archive.

Autodesk resellers also appear dissatisfied with Autodesk

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I have closed the three satisfaction rating polls I started a couple of months ago and have reported the results individually. This is the final post on this set of polls.

The usual caveats about online polls apply. Please note that for most of the poll respondents, I have no way of knowing if they really are/were resellers. Whoever they are, it would appear that the sentiment is global; over ten countries are represented in the voting logs.

Although this poll appears to indicate that Autodesk is even less popular with its resellers than it is with its customers, the difference is not statistically significant. Also bear in mind that the number of respondents is smaller here than in the related polls. That should be expected, but accuracy is suspect with numbers this small.

With that in mind, here’s how the averages look. The mean rating is 2.55, the median is 1 and the mode is 0. Very dissatisfied respondents outnumber very satisfied ones by nearly eleven to one.

If this result has any validity, it’s an indictment on Autodesk’s relationship with its most important business partners.

Why would resellers be unhappy? Well, Autodesk is gradually eating up their market share by selling direct in bigger and bigger numbers. Resellers have had to act as the meat in the sandwich as Autodesk’s policies get more and more aggressively anti-customer. Trying to sell expensive rental software to smart people with calculators can’t be easy, especially if your heart’s not in it. If you’re a reseller that has worked hard over decades to build up a great relationship with your customers and Autodesk has damaged that relationship (in some cases beyond repair), you’re probably not pleased about that, either. And if you’re a reseller that has lost half its income over the last few years and has had to lay people off, you’re unlikely to rate Autodesk highly for satisfaction.

Is that what’s happening?

Feel free to comment here if you wish to discuss any aspect of this. Resellers in particular are welcome to expand on the reasons for their dissatisfaction, or to offer a counterpoint. Are you a happy Autodesk reseller? Or a customer that has had a candid discussion with your reseller on the state of play? Let’s hear from you. You don’t have to identify yourself accurately unless you want to and I will of course respect your privacy.

I have closed the three satisfaction rating polls I started a couple of months ago and will be reporting the results individually. The usual caveats about online polls apply.

This poll indicates that Autodesk customer satisfaction levels are perhaps not quite as elevated as they could be. The mean rating is 2.75, the median is 2 and the mode is 0. Yes, zero. Very dissatisfied customers outnumber very satisfied ones by nearly ten to one. That’s pretty emphatic.

If Autodesk had left its policies alone and tried to run a huge PR campaign to deliberately make itself as unpopular with its customers as possible, I doubt that it could have achieved anything like this poor a result. Congratulations, I guess.

Although this is an appalling result for Autodesk, it should come as no surprise to anyone. This reflects the sentiment I see pretty much everywhere, in a wide variety of online forums and when talking to all sorts of people in person.

Lesson for the day: there’s no point in spending a billion dollars a year on marketing if you’re going to do things that make you about as popular as a fart in an elevator.

I have closed the three satisfaction rating polls I started a couple of months ago and will be reporting the results individually.

Let’s start on a positive note. The poll indicates that in general, you’re reasonably happy with your Autodesk resellers. The mean rating is 6.04, the median is 7 and the mode is 8. Given the unpopular message they’ve had to pass on lately, I think this is a pretty positive result.

Feel free to comment here if you wish to discuss any aspect of this. Are you happy with your reseller?

What’s changed at blog nauseam and why

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Last week, blog nauseam died. This post explains the background to that. You’re probably not that interested, so feel free to skip to the dot points that list the changes that have resulted.

The problem was a faulty WordPress installation was using excessive resources. This caused severe performance issues and resulted in the server software stepping in to throttle the site to prevent more widespread problems. The trigger for the WordPress fault has not been determined and may never be. This is somewhat akin to an old AutoCAD drawing suddenly going bad for unknown reasons. The problem may date back years but only recently became critical.

In discussions with my completely blameless web host, Saratoga Hosting, we determined the best course of action was to create a new, clean WordPress site and transfer over as much as possible from the mortally wounded old installation. This is similar to copying and pasting or inserting valid entities from a bad drawing to a clean one, and this is what we did.

I say ‘we’ because Dave from the most excellent Saratoga did a huge amount of work for me to ensure things went as smoothly as possible and with the best result. This is not the first time I have received quite outstanding above-and-beyond customer service from Saratoga in return for the few measly bucks a month I pay for hosting. Thank you, Dave!

Doing things this way provided opportunities for several improvements to both blog nauseam and its parent site, cadnauseam.com. These include:

Improving performance. A clean install that’s not generating many errors per second will load much faster than one that isn’t, just like a small clean program like BricsCAD will perform much better than an old bloated mess like AutoCAD that’s attempting to do hundreds of things a second even when sitting there doing nothing.
Upgrading site security. In addition to various unseen improvements including upgraded protection against hackers and better backups, the site now uses https SSL security, which is the way things are going to have to be in coming years. You may have noticed that the URL now starts with https:// and displays a little closed padlock, indicating this is a secure site.
Integrating cad nauseam with blog nauseam. My old cad nauseam site was a bunch of hand-coded HTML pages that were real cool in the 90s but which have been neglected for years. It’s now part of the same WordPress installation as the blog, which avoids duplication of various things and is much easier to maintain. It also makes sense for me from a business point of view to have my business site more closely associated with a successful blog.
Modern full-screen interface. The integration of cad nauseam and blog nauseam didn’t work well with the old Tempera site template, so I took the opportunity to switch to a cleaner, more modern looking template, Fluida. In addition to being very configurable, this template does all sorts of fancy hover-over stuff that some of you will undoubtedly hate, but in my tests it performed well and didn’t get in my way. The best thing about it is that it’s now full-width: Tempera was not. Some of you won’t like that change either, but I always dislike using a web site that confines itself to a narrow stripe in the middle of a high resolution CAD screen. Now I don’t have to dislike my own site.
I’ve redesigned the favicon to reflect the dual cad nauseam / blog nauseam nature of the site.

I have now restored the polls and image galleries. The automated redirection of old URLs to the new location should now be working. The downloads page is still a work in progress and will remain hidden for a while, but that’s mostly of historical interest anyway.

Again, my apologies for the breakdown and the inconvenience of change, but I’m glad that there have been quite a few positives arising from a bad situation.

If there are things about the site you don’t like now, feel free to let me know.

Today I was asked to complete an Autodesk Reseller Satisfaction survey, which I was happy to do. My reseller does a good job. There was also a question about satisfaction with Autodesk.

I’ve shamelessly stolen Autodesk’s question and used it in a poll here. Please only respond if you are or were an Autodesk customer.

Customers - how would you rate your overall satisfaction with Autodesk?

0 - Very dissatisfied (39%, 69 Votes)
1 (6%, 11 Votes)
2 (12%, 22 Votes)
3 (11%, 19 Votes)
4 (5%, 9 Votes)
5 (4%, 8 Votes)
6 (6%, 11 Votes)
7 (7%, 13 Votes)
8 (3%, 6 Votes)
9 (2%, 3 Votes)
10 - Very satisfied (4%, 7 Votes)

Total Voters: 178

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I’ve added a similar poll about Autodesk resellers. Please only respond if you are or were a customer of Autodesk resellers.

Customers - how would you rate your overall satisfaction with your Autodesk reseller?

0 - Very dissatisfied (10%, 12 Votes)
1 (2%, 3 Votes)
2 (6%, 7 Votes)
3 (5%, 6 Votes)
4 (2%, 2 Votes)
5 (17%, 21 Votes)
6 (5%, 6 Votes)
7 (13%, 17 Votes)
8 (21%, 26 Votes)
9 (8%, 10 Votes)
10 - Very satisfied (13%, 16 Votes)

Total Voters: 126

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Here’s one just for Autodesk resellers. Please only respond if you are or were an Autodesk reseller.

Resellers - how would you rate your overall satisfaction with Autodesk?

0 - Very dissatisfied (40%, 22 Votes)
1 (11%, 6 Votes)
2 (9%, 5 Votes)
3 (15%, 8 Votes)
4 (5%, 3 Votes)
5 (4%, 2 Votes)
6 (0%, 0 Votes)
7 (0%, 0 Votes)
8 (9%, 5 Votes)
9 (4%, 2 Votes)
10 - Very satisfied (4%, 2 Votes)

Total Voters: 55

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Feel free to comment here if you wish to discuss the ratings you provided.

Maybe I should complete the set and do polls for Autodesk and its resellers to rate their customers?

Schrodinger’s CEO – Autodesk top job speculation

Minority interest in keep-your-perpetual Autodesk subscription idea

1 Reply

It’s undeniable that the vast majority of Autodesk’s customers don’t want to give up their perpetual licenses to sign up with Autodesk’s subscription (rental) model. I’ve gone through the evidence for this in an earlier post.

To bring that up to date a little, here are the final results from the poll “Autodesk is ending the sale of perpetual licenses. This is: (Good/Bad)”:

People are clearly attached to their perpetual licenses, regardless of what Autodesk does to manipulate prices.

A while ago I floated the idea that Autodesk might possibly come up with a better offer; one that lets you keep your existing non-upgraded perpetual license when signing up for subscription. I wanted to know if there was any more interest in that, so I wrote a post around that and created another poll, “Would you be interested in switching to Autodesk subscription if you could keep your old (non-upgraded) perpetual license? (Yes/Maybe/No)”. Here’s how the results ended up:

While the level of interest in this idea appears higher than in Autodesk’s current unappealing offer, it’s still not great. It seems most people don’t just want perpetual licenses for the sake of it, they want an escape route: the option to stop paying and keep playing, regardless of file format and OS compatibility issues. That means they want those perpetual licences to remain current.

The upshot is that Autodesk is going to find it very difficult to push most of its existing customers onto subscription, no matter what the offer.

New Autodesk subscription idea – any interest?

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Let’s say Autodesk came up with a new offer for customers currently under maintenance. Let’s say you could switch to subscription (rental) with the same price as maintenance, locked in with no increases for three years. In addition, you get to retain, but not upgrade, your perpetual license.

Let’s say you’re on maintenance which is up for renewal later this year. You currently have a perpetual license of AutoCAD 2018. If you accept this offer, you will always retain that AutoCAD 2018 license. You switch to subscription and pay the maintenance amount for one to three years. Your subscription fee is guaranteed to rise by no more than 20% total by year five.

As long as you continue to pay subscription, you get access to new releases (2019, 2020, etc). If you decide to no longer renew your subscription at any point, you can no longer use the new releases, but you can still fall back on using your perpetual license, which remains as AutoCAD 2018. The use of the software would be subject to the usual fair use restrictions, e.g. during the subscription period you can’t use AutoCAD 2018 on one PC while using AutoCAD 2019 on a different one.

Would you be interested in such an offer?

I’ve added a poll, so please vote and feel free to comment on why you would or would not be prepared to switch under those circumstances.

Would you be interested in switching to Autodesk subscription if you could keep your old (non-upgraded) perpetual license?

Yes (24%, 32 Votes)
Maybe (25%, 33 Votes)
No (51%, 67 Votes)

Total Voters: 132

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Please note that this offer is entirely hypothetical. It arose from a recent telephone conversation with a non-Autodesk person. I have no inside information that suggests Autodesk is considering such an offer.

Here, have some fun by voting in these polls. Idea shamelessly stolen from Paul Munford on Twitter.

Who do you want to be the next Autodesk CEO?

Amar Hanspal (18%, 32 Votes)
Andrew Anagnost (12%, 21 Votes)
Jeff Kowalski (7%, 13 Votes)
Amy Bunzel (2%, 4 Votes)
Other Autodesk person (5%, 8 Votes)
Elon Musk (28%, 50 Votes)
Other outsider (27%, 48 Votes)

Total Voters: 176

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Who do you think will be the next Autodesk CEO?

Amar Hanspal (41%, 53 Votes)
Andrew Anagnost (8%, 11 Votes)
Jeff Kowalski (11%, 14 Votes)
Amy Bunzel (2%, 2 Votes)
Other Autodesk person (5%, 7 Votes)
Elon Musk (11%, 14 Votes)
Other outsider (22%, 29 Votes)

Total Voters: 130

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Autodesk’s big Cloud failure

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Back in 2011, Autodesk, some other vendors and many industry pundits were utterly convinced of the inevitable and near-imminent victory of Cloud-based CAD over standalone software. I wasn’t. I wanted to get a feel for how isolated my viewpoint was, so I started a poll and let it run for a while. Here’s how that turned out:

As you can see, this blog’s readers were less than convinced about the inevitability of that Cloudy future. Not so Carl Bass, who had this to say in an April 2012 TechCrunch interview:

I’d say two to three years from now, every one of our products will be used online. The only way to use them will be online.

Here’s what I had to say about that:

So let’s say you’re an AutoCAD user. A successful Cloud push by Autodesk will mean that you and very large numbers of people just like you be using AutoCAD or an equivalent Autodesk product on the Cloud by 2014 or 2015. If that doesn’t happen for you and all the other users of Autodesk products, then that’s failure by definition. Autodesk will have failed to meet its own publicly stated goal, and that’s exactly what I’m expecting to happen …. I am convinced there is a dichotomy between the expectations of Autodesk and those of its customers, and that spells trouble. Autodesk is either going to succeed in pushing its customers into a future they are not expecting, or it is going to fail and be forced to revise its expectations. I predict that the latter will happen…

It’s now way past Carl’s predicted online-only timeframe. A successful strategy by Autodesk would mean we Autodesk customers would have all have been exclusively CloudyCADing for a couple of years by now. Is that what happened?

Knock me down with a feather, it turns out that Autodesk’s big Cloud-only push has worked out just as predicted, not by Carl but by the readers of this blog. Take a bow, Nostradamuses!

Yes, there are now Cloud-saving options in a lot of Autodesk’s software, as there are in most competitive products. Yes, Autodesk is still attempting (often astonishingly badly) to online-tie-in desktop CAD users. Yes, Autodesk has a lot of Cloud-only software products, even if many of them don’t generate revenue and some of them are headed for the chopping block. Yes, some of Autodesk’s online offerings now have utility. Yes, there are many students and hobbyists out there, often isolated from commercial and production realities, having fun tinkering with Autodesk’s largely free online software and in some cases producing some seriously cool stuff that looks great in Autodesk publicity material.

Real paying customers, using Autodesk Cloud-based products as their primary mission-critical CAD software in a production environment? Not so much. People are still using that terribly old-fashioned desktop software for that. Autodesk has failed to make reality conform with Carl’s prediction.

Why should I care? I care because Autodesk has taken vast sums of money from AutoCAD customers, and is trying hard to extract even larger sums via its compulsory rental scheme. Instead of spending that cash on genuinely useful improvements to the product that is the source of that income and the basis for many of its vertical products generating further income, Autodesk has left AutoCAD to wither on the vine. It has been some years since an AutoCAD upgrade was anywhere near good enough to be worth the amount Autodesk currently charges for maintenance, let alone the trebled(?) amount it likes to think it can get away with charging in a couple of years.

It’s not because there’s no potential for improvement, either. Autodesk gets a lot of feedback about what could be improved in AutoCAD, but ignores most of it, sometimes choosing to do dumb things instead that make things worse. In contrast, Bricsys has proven that it’s possible to make huge strides in improving a straightforward 2D/3D DWG-based desktop CAD application in a single year; Autodesk’s efforts are woefully inadequate in comparison. Meanwhile, by chasing an elusive exclusive Cloudy cornucopia, Autodesk has frittered away a fair fortune on a plethora of production-pointless products.

How do I know most Autodesk customers don’t want rental?

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In a recent comment, I was asked how I know Autodesk’s move to all-rental is the opposite of what customers want. Have I conducted research? This is an excellent question and deserves a proper answer.

So how do I know this? Why am I so convinced? There are several independent sources of evidence, one bit of critical thinking and one undeniable proof. They all point in the same direction. First, a bit of evidence.

There are many public places on the Internet where this issue has been discussed, including Autodesk’s own discussion groups. The viewpoints expressed everywhere are overwhelmingly against Autodesk’s all-rental plans.
There are private places Autodesk customers hang out where I have access, and I receive private emails. Again, the overwhelmingly majority of the viewpoints I see expressed are very strongly against Autodesk’s strategy.
There’s a poll right here. How’s it going?
Autodesk is ending the sale of perpetual licenses. This is:
- Good (10%, 75 Votes)
- Bad (90%, 644 Votes)
Total Voters: 719
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None of that is very scientific, but Autodesk has conducted proper research. Among other things, it gathered customer focus groups at AU to determine the mood regarding going all-rental. I know somebody who went to one of those. The customers present at that particular gathering were 100% against.

OK, so you don’t want to accept any of that? Can’t trust the sources? It’s all a bit anecdotal? Fine. How about a bit of critical thinking?

Most customers of major Autodesk products are long-term users who would undeniably pay more via rental than perpetual and then have nothing to show for it when they stop paying. What are the chances of most of them wanting that outcome?

Still not convinced? OK. The most concrete way in which it could be determined whether customers prefer rental would be an experiment in which both options were made available and the market were allowed to decide. An expensive experiment, sure, but impossible to argue with the result.

Autodesk conducted that experiment. Twice. Once quite a few years ago, and again in 2013. Rental was offered alongside perpetual licensing. Rental lost. Twice. It was abandoned as a choice. Twice. The market has spoken. Twice.

Rental for Autodesk products is a handy option for a minority of customers but a non-starter for the majority, given the choice. Autodesk knows the only chance of making rental work in its marketplace is to remove that choice.

Polls and comments

MDT users and other Autodesk orphans, let’s have your good news stories!

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I was going to ignore this subject, but I’ve changed my mind because it allows me to post something positive about Autodesk. After all, I do try to post positive things; it’s hardly my fault that Autodesk has a habit of making it difficult.

In upFront eZine #756, Autodesk’s Andrew Anagnost (or was it Clay Helm?) had the following to say, and must say I agree totally with the first sentence:

The best evidence is how we have behaved historically. When we included Mechanical Desktop with Inventor, the media complained that we were killing Mechanical Desktop; you were probably one of them. But we didn’t; we came out with six, seven more releases of it, completely free.

So, MDT users, you’re the poster child for how Autodesk looks after its customers. You’re also evidence for how wrong those nasty media naysayers can be. So here’s your opportunity to offer your gratitude to Autodesk for looking after you so well and giving you all that completely free software. Or perhaps you’re the user of another Autodesk product that fell out of fashion or was deemed a technological dead end (like desktop software, apparently). Let’s hear your good news stories about how well Autodesk treated you and your investment.

If you don’t want to add a comment, there’s a poll over on the right. I look forward to seeing the “Brilliantly” option show a near-100% rating!

Why Autodesk’s Cloud push will fail, part 1 – failure defined

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It’s probably unwise to make predictions about what is going to happen in technology. If so, I’m about to be unwise. So be it; if I’m wrong you can taunt me about this post in a few years. Here’s my prediction:

Autodesk’s attempt to move CAD users onto the Cloud is doomed to failure.

This is the first of a series of posts that will examine what I mean by that and the reasons behind it. The first thing that’s important to lay out is what I mean by failure. What I mean is that reality will not match Autodesk’s expectation of what will happen with its products moving to the Cloud. What expectation is that?

I’d say two to three years from now, every one of our products will be used online. The only way to use them will be online.

Carl Bass, April 2012, TechCrunch interview

So let’s say you’re an AutoCAD user. A successful Cloud push by Autodesk will mean that you and very large numbers of people just like you be using AutoCAD or an equivalent Autodesk product on the Cloud by 2014 or 2015. If that doesn’t happen for you and all the other users of Autodesk products, then that’s failure by definition. Autodesk will have failed to meet its own publicly stated goal, and that’s exactly what I’m expecting to happen. While it might look to a Cloudophile that I’m swimming against the tide of inevitability, I’m not alone here. Let’s examine what this blog’s poll respondents think about the chances of them using CAD in the Cloud:

Cloud chances poll results

(Snapshot taken a couple of weeks ago; more votes but no percentage change since then).

The poll has been running for nearly a year and attracted a sizeable number of votes. More than half of the respondents are convinced that there is absolutely no chance – zero – that they will be using a public Cloud-based application as their primary CAD software in the next five years (by 2016 or 2017, two years beyond Carl Bass’s stated target of universal Autodesk online operation). There is a group of respondents equally convinced that they definitely will be using such an application. However, with only 10% of votes, this group is outnumbered 5:1 among those who feel certain about what is going to happen. If we split all the votes into those who think there’s a better than even chance of a Cloudy future (21%) and those who think there’s a less than even chance of that happening (79%), you can see that the doubters again have a very clear majority, nearly 4:1.

While the usual caveats about polls apply, it would be a very foolish Autodesk executive who believed this poll to be some kind of an aberration that does not reflect the broad views of the CAD community. I am convinced there is a dichotomy between the expectations of Autodesk and those of its customers, and that spells trouble. Autodesk is either going to succeed in pushing its customers into a future they are not expecting, or it is going to fail and be forced to revise its expectations. I predict that the latter will happen, and I will explain my reasoning in future posts.

How good is Autodesk’s customer focus?

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Autodesk has grown and prospered by always, as much as possible, placing the customer’s needs foremost.

John Walker, 1990, The Autodesk File

That was the dominant philosophy back in Autodesk’s ancient history, to the benefit of all. However, is that still the case today? I’m not going to offer an view one way or the other in this post. Instead, I will leave it open to the floor. Good or bad, please comment below using specific examples if you can. If you’re short of time, you can still use the poll on the right to express your opinion.

Should Autodesk provide a CHM version of its AutoCAD 2013 Help?

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I’ve added a poll asking this question over on the right. I would like to see this done as soon as possible as a courtesy for those customers who find the current AutoCAD 2013 Help system inadequate. If you agree, vote Yes. If you disagree (for example, you think Autodesk should instead concentrate on improving the current system), vote No. If you wish to make a comment on this specific issue, feel free.

Trusting Autodesk – poll results

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I have closed the polls asking if you trusted various companies to do the right thing by their customers. Here is a summary of the results, showing the percentage of “Yes” votes for each company. The most trusted company is at the top, the least trusted is at the bottom.

Honda 69%
Amazon 65%
Target 52%
Bricsys 43%
Apple 36%
Autodesk 23%

Remember, this is not a scientific poll and as with all polls and surveys there will be some self-selection bias. Does anyone find anything about the above results surprising?

Why don’t you trust Autodesk?

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As I mentioned earlier, any company that wants to move its customers to the Cloud is going to need the trust of those customers. Three months ago, I started a poll to try to get some measure of how trustworthy you consider Autodesk to be, in terms of doing the right thing by its customers. The results of that poll look pretty awful for Autodesk. Right from the start, the distrusters have outnumbered the trusters by three to one, with the current results showing an overwhelming majority of respondents (77%) not trusting Autodesk.

Why? What has Autodesk done in the past, or is doing now, that leads people to this level of distrust? If you have voted in this poll, I’d like to know your reasons, so please add your comments whichever way you voted. If you think there’s an issue with the question wording and/or its simple Yes/No choice, feel free to say so.

There will be a number of people who have an inherent distrust of corporations, so as a control I’ve added a number of polls to try to see how much that influences the results. There are near-identical polls for a wide range of different corporations. There’s a poll for an on-line retailer and Cloud service provider (Amazon), one for a computer and gadget maker (Apple), one for another CAD company (Bricsys, makers of Bricscad), one for a maker of cars, motorbikes etc. (Honda), and one for a traditional retailer (Target). I’ll be interested to see how trustworthy you consider those corporations to be, and how they compare to Autodesk.