Autodesk – “This place is a joke”

Pros

The Chinese development office in Shanghai is rapidly expanding and this offers potential for career growth.

Cons

The opportunities for career growth are not balanced with compensation nor with realistic expectations from their overseas employees. For example: As a global company, meetings are scheduled across time zones. This is normal; however, meetings are frequently scheduled at absurd times, such as 4am or 1am on Saturday night.

Software development life cycles are too aggressive because Chinese managers can't say no (and lose face) to their American or European boss.

The human resources department is nearly useless. The HR Director is literally never available. She was given the job because she's friends with the Chinese operation manager, not because she's competent. The result is that standard HR requests, such as reimbursement for health care, go unanswered. Why does senior management allow this to happen? Because they're clueless (or don't care) about the operations in Shanghai.

Advice to Senior Management

Stop treating employees in China as 2nd class. While Chinese people will smile and say they are happy, the truth is that they're already looking for new jobs and feel exploited and ignored by senior management. More and more foreign software companies are expanding into China and they are looking for experienced, English speaking developers. With 40% of Autodesk's software development managed in China, the loss of these employees will certainly impact the productivity of the company.

There should be direct oversight by by senior management. That means that the VP that manages the China development office (ACRD) should actually live in China. Not just fly in, stay in a 5 star hotel, have "meetings" in Beijing (although there is no Autodesk office in Beijing) and then scold the Chinese employees about "fiscal responsibility". Like I wrote, Chinese people will smile to you, but that doesn't mean they're happy.