Autodesk CEO and President Carl Bass steps down

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Bullit
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Autodesk CEO and President Carl Bass steps down

Post by Bullit » 08 Feb 2017, 08:32

(Update) From his Twitter account, it appears that 3DS Max Product Manager Eddie Perlberg is also leaving Autodesk.
Carl Bass, CEO and President of Autodesk, is stepping down and leaving the company. Bass has been with Autodesk for the past 24 years serving in various roles, but announced in a blog post that he will be leaving, and will continue to serve on the Autodesk board as they the transition. You can read the full blog post on the Autodesk website.

http://cgpress.org/archives/autodesk-ce ... -down.html

Comment: It is clear the ship is a bit rudderless - Bass was also long time there - and at least in M&E the personnel turnover is so fast that is clear not many want to stay there. Eddie Perlberg out will also just increase the background noise about Max.



Edit - More juice here: http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases ... 03142.html

brudney
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Re: Autodesk CEO and President Carl Bass steps down

Post by brudney » 08 Feb 2017, 11:21

Yeah, funny that happened after H16 was announced :D

I wonder what/if it means anything for Max (or Maya)...

Bullit
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Re: Autodesk CEO and President Carl Bass steps down

Post by Bullit » 08 Feb 2017, 12:36

I would not be surprised if they spin off M&E

luceric
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Re: Autodesk CEO and President Carl Bass steps down

Post by luceric » 08 Feb 2017, 20:06

Bullit wrote:I would not be surprised if they spin off M&E
It would make no sense to spin it off. The reason why you spin off a business when they have no real link and you can create more value by breaking it apart. Wallstreet doesn't like a company that sells cars parts and food, for example, it's hard to analyze compared to two companies that do only the one thing.

M&E is important to Autodesk web service subscription business, with shotgun and render-as-a-service, VR and game tech used in visualization, and other products. It's a $160M business onto itself when you don't consider the shared revenue that is actually accounted in the other units.
Comment: It is clear the ship is a bit rudderless - Bass was also long time there - and at least in M&E the personnel turnover is so fast that is clear not many want to stay there. Eddie Perlberg out will also just increase the background noise about Max.
Sorry he left after 10 years at Autodesk, just like Ken Pimentel. That doesn't suggest high turnover. And both Frank Delise and Tom Hudson actually came back to Autodesk after years of absence. Lots of people leave places in the new year. There are 9000 employees at Autodesk, so there are always going to be people coming and going.

Btw, side note, the two XSI devs that left to go SideFX who were going to change everything - they quietly left, they no longer work there. Brad Peebler also left Luxology with other people. Didn't hear anything about that here.

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Re: Autodesk CEO and President Carl Bass steps down

Post by nodeway » 09 Feb 2017, 07:34

luceric wrote: Btw, side note, the two XSI devs that left to go SideFX who were going to change everything - they quietly left, they no longer work there. Brad Peebler also left Luxology with other people. Didn't hear anything about that here.
Autodesk situation reminds more Microsoft one, where Ballmer decided to step down. Each and every attempt to turn this ship in good direction become an execution failure, even if it was a good idea. So I got a feelling that some other people decided that it's time for new blood to fix things, just like in Ballmer case.

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Re: Autodesk CEO and President Carl Bass steps down

Post by Bullit » 09 Feb 2017, 08:46

luceric wrote:
Bullit wrote:I would not be surprised if they spin off M&E
It would make no sense to spin it off. The reason why you spin off a business when they have no real link and you can create more value by breaking it apart. Wallstreet doesn't like a company that sells cars parts and food, for example, it's hard to analyze compared to two companies that do only the one thing.

M&E is important to Autodesk web service subscription business, with shotgun and render-as-a-service, VR and game tech used in visualization, and other products. It's a $160M business onto itself when you don't consider the shared revenue that is actually accounted in the other units.
Comment: It is clear the ship is a bit rudderless - Bass was also long time there - and at least in M&E the personnel turnover is so fast that is clear not many want to stay there. Eddie Perlberg out will also just increase the background noise about Max.
Sorry he left after 10 years at Autodesk, just like Ken Pimentel. That doesn't suggest high turnover. And both Frank Delise and Tom Hudson actually came back to Autodesk after years of absence. Lots of people leave places in the new year. There are 9000 employees at Autodesk, so there are always going to be people coming and going.

Btw, side note, the two XSI devs that left to go SideFX who were going to change everything - they quietly left, they no longer work there. Brad Peebler also left Luxology with other people. Didn't hear anything about that here.

1- Opportunity costs. If the new team thinks they can get more with money they will sell it. For example for 3D printing manufacturing. While M&E it is certainly not cars vs food it still not core.

2 -Eddie Perlberg arrived as a Max savior and short time after is out.

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Re: Autodesk CEO and President Carl Bass steps down

Post by Hirazi Blue » 09 Feb 2017, 09:27

A day after calling Trump ‘somewhere between a dictator and a small business owner,’ the CEO of an $18 billion company steps down
https://www.businessinsider.nl/autodesk ... =true&r=US
Probably not the reason for Carl Bass to step down, but interesting nonetheless...
It’s possible that Bass felt more free to express his opinion knowing that he was about to step down from the CEO job.
However...
Shares in Autodesk were up 2% at the time of market close.
Stay safe, sane & healthy!

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Re: Autodesk CEO and President Carl Bass steps down

Post by Bellsey » 09 Feb 2017, 15:21

Certainly some interesting developments. But it sounds like some form of plan has been in place for a while, so I would hardly say the company is rudderless. Corporations are never really into spur of the moment things anyway.

Carl has been there for some time now, and overseen a massive change in Autodesk's business model and direction. In many ways, doing that is a task in itself and so there isn't anything more he could do, so perhaps the time was right to move aside for someone else to take things forward. The timing is probably more to do with Autodesk wrapping up their fiscal year that ended at the end of Jan, so now we're in a new one.

As for Eddie, I know him well but personally his departure from his Max role is a surprise. I don't know what's been going on there, but I will say that when he came into that role, I wouldn't say he was saviour. Max hardly needed saving, imo. It just needed a new head to take over after others left.

My own personal speculation, maybe Autodesk are finally getting around to sorting out their M&E portfolio and deciding where their products actually fit. Many won't like this, but their flagship M&E product is Maya and probably always should be. Max although still ok, is just too widely used in multiple industries to ever really fully concentrate it's focus on one area. There's no way it can be all things to all people.

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Re: Autodesk CEO and President Carl Bass steps down

Post by wesserbro » 09 Feb 2017, 16:27

luceric wrote: Brad Peebler also left Luxology with other people. Didn't hear anything about that here.
Wow... He seamed so passionate about the product///

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Re: Autodesk CEO and President Carl Bass steps down

Post by luceric » 09 Feb 2017, 17:35

it's difficult there to figure out the news. In cgtalk forums, M&E users that hate subscription post headlines that seem to prove that autodesk or subscription is failing (it's not). You saw the posts about Autodesk missing earning estimates, but nobody posted that it beat them the following two quarters. And now, there there are news blogs that hate Bass because he dared criticized Trump and they want to see "liberals" perish.

Tthe subscription model is exactly what investors and Wall Street want. They missed their earning estimate last year when they stopped selling permanent licenses, but the "earning estimate" are numbers from independent analysts based the previous numbers, and that doesn't anticipate well in a a business model change.

Since mid-2016, wall street has switched to evaluating Autodesk on subscription number growth instead of EPS. They want to track a number that grow.

Some people on the web that think that autodesk will bring back permanent licenses with Bass gone but that's not what wall street wants. Autodesk is now a subscription-based company, like Adobe but also like a cable company. Wallstreet is not looking at going back to old the old metrics or punishing the CEO for the change. The business model change is something some investors had asked for in the first place, knowing that Autodesk had largely saturated its market in the old model. Because they only care about growth. The only other alternative is raising the prices of the products.

you can read more about last year here:
https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/01/ ... -2016.aspx
but also look up a 5 year stock chart if you're not sure of things.
Last edited by luceric on 10 Feb 2017, 18:30, edited 2 times in total.

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Re: Autodesk CEO and President Carl Bass steps down

Post by Bullit » 09 Feb 2017, 21:16

As for Eddie, I know him well but personally his departure from his Max role is a surprise. I don't know what's been going on there, but I will say that when he came into that role, I wouldn't say he was saviour. Max hardly needed saving, imo.
Really, so the user base calls and then shouting that forced Perlberg coming was out of nothing?
Have you have been using Max? i have and Ken Pimentel last years were a disaster.


Stock have been going up because of manipulation by Central Banks. So i would say that since couple years ago stock exchange stopped being a reliable measure of economy or company health. It is still a valuable indicator.

ADSK 5 years : 37 to 84
NASDAQ 5 years : 2580 to 5220

So ADSK have been out performing the market but not by a great amount.

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Re: Autodesk CEO and President Carl Bass steps down

Post by Bellsey » 09 Feb 2017, 23:26

Bullit wrote:
As for Eddie, I know him well but personally his departure from his Max role is a surprise. I don't know what's been going on there, but I will say that when he came into that role, I wouldn't say he was saviour. Max hardly needed saving, imo.
Really, so the user base calls and then shouting that forced Perlberg coming was out of nothing?
Have you have been using Max? i have and Ken Pimentel last years were a disaster.
Well after Ken, there was Shane, and then when he left, Eddie came in. But it was hardly the user base calling for Eddie to come and save the product. Max was still doing well and was hardly failing. For many though the XBR saga left many burned though.

I'm not being detrimental to Eddie or selling him short, he's a great guy. And personally I think he has done a good job. He came in very late into a release cycle but during his tenure, I think Max development has been more focused.
Of course there will always be people who believe there's never enough features or development, it that's the nature of the beast.

and that's nothing against Eddie

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Re: Autodesk CEO and President Carl Bass steps down

Post by Mathaeus » 10 Feb 2017, 01:55

wesserbro wrote:
luceric wrote: Brad Peebler also left Luxology with other people. Didn't hear anything about that here.
Wow... He seamed so passionate about the product///
People on Modo forum know, there are posts about. Here... yeah I think nobody mentioned, while there is no that much of words about Modo at all. Personally never ever been a fan of those 'presenters' or whatever they are, including 'ours' in past.

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Re: Autodesk CEO and President Carl Bass steps down

Post by luceric » 10 Feb 2017, 03:03

For your entertainment:
Jim Cramer on Autodesk, 6 days ago


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Re: Autodesk CEO and President Carl Bass steps down

Post by owei » 10 Feb 2017, 09:56

Wow, that´s so funny. AD is great, yes, we got that, luceric. The problem is though, stock market´s and bankster´s crap does not make software any better. As we are a bunch of ignorant, truth denying idiots, I wonder why you don´t lean back with a smile and just let us starve in our dumb stupidity. Thanks ;)

cheers,
oliver

Bullit
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Re: Autodesk CEO and President Carl Bass steps down

Post by Bullit » 10 Feb 2017, 12:13

Bellsey wrote:
Bullit wrote:
As for Eddie, I know him well but personally his departure from his Max role is a surprise. I don't know what's been going on there, but I will say that when he came into that role, I wouldn't say he was saviour. Max hardly needed saving, imo.
Really, so the user base calls and then shouting that forced Perlberg coming was out of nothing?
Have you have been using Max? i have and Ken Pimentel last years were a disaster.
Well after Ken, there was Shane, and then when he left, Eddie came in. But it was hardly the user base calling for Eddie to come and save the product. Max was still doing well and was hardly failing. For many though the XBR saga left many burned though.

I'm not being detrimental to Eddie or selling him short, he's a great guy. And personally I think he has done a good job. He came in very late into a release cycle but during his tenure, I think Max development has been more focused.
Of course there will always be people who believe there's never enough features or development, it that's the nature of the beast.

and that's nothing against Eddie
Maybe you should read this about 3Ds Max state in 2013: http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=1118357

The problem isn't Eddie he at least tried to right the boat and stopped it from sinking that fast. It was before him.

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