Friday is My Last Day at Autodesk

I have collected a few shirts during my time at Autodesk.

Friday will be my last day at Autodesk. As I have turned 65, I am retiring. I have fond memories of my decades as an Autodesk employee. Some of these memories include:

• On August 5, 1993, when Ithaca Software was acquired by Autodesk, the company was known for two things. We had a female CEO (a rarity at the time), Carol Bartz, and we could bring our dogs to work. Today, under Andrew Anagnost's leadership as CEO, we are known as the stewards of Design and Make.

• My employee number is 137, even though I was not the 137^th employee hired. When I joined Autodesk, the company did not have employee numbers. When HR decided to issue them, they cycled through the various offices in alphabetical order: Alameda, Neuchatel, San Rafael, Sausalito, etc., starting at 100. So my number was 137 because Alameda starts with an "A," and there were 37 employees whose last names started with a letter before "S" (e.g., Carl Bass, Jeff Kowalski, Brian Mathews). A more accurate employee number for me would be in the 2,000 range. Today, employee numbers are 5-digit numbers. As the last-standing Alameda employee, I have held the lowest active employee number since my Alameda colleagues have moved on to other opportunities. I am not sure who has that honor now.

• When the company had about 2800 employees in total, we used to put on tuxedos and fancy dresses to attend an annual holiday party. It was fantastic. I hung out with Clarence Clemons (Bruce Springsteen's saxophone player) who provided the entertainment at my first one.

• In 1995, when we launched the DWF format, I had to bluff an IT manager into adding a MIME type straight to production servers (without testing on staging servers beforehand) by threatening to have Carol Bartz call her. See Birth of DWF: "I can have Carol call you." for details.

• In 1996, when programmer Bob Covey told me that AutoCAD wanted to use our HOOPS Immediate Drawing Interface, I immediately said, "We've got to get an E in there somehow." and the HOOPS Extensible Immediate Drawing Interface (HEIDI) name took off. When Autodesk Technical Evangelist Heidi Hewett came to Alameda to teach an AutoCAD course, she remarked that other employees thought the graphics system was named in her honor and that she must know Carol or something.

• When Ithaca Software founder Carl Bass became Autodesk CEO, I jokingly said that the acquisition of Autodesk by Ithaca Software was complete. When I started blogging (DWF and Labs), my posts only contained technical content, nothing personal. I thought, "Why would anyone care to read about Scott Sheppard?" Carl changed my mind by telling me that “readers want to feel like they’re hanging out with you, so try to be an interesting person.” That opened the floodgates, and now my family considers me an over-sharer.

• When I was the Autodesk Labs Program Manager, our team under Jon Pittman created a fake technology preview for Autodesk Love Maker 2011 where customers could "design their love" rather than leave such an important aspect of their lives to chance. In addition to my April Fool's Day blog post post, we had a full press release and everything.

• In 2017, I manned an Autodesk University booth where customers selected two large-sized LEGO bricks. On one, they wrote down what they wanted to do more of. On the other, they wrote down what they wanted to do less of. We assembled the bricks into a wall of "do less of" and a fancy castle-like structure for "do more of." See #AU2017 Sought To Unearth What Customers Love/Hate About Their Jobs for details. My favorite thing that one customer wanted to do less of was "toilet detailing."

• I once conducted an Autodesk Gallery tour that included gallery visitors wearing headphones with my narration translated to Mandarin Chinese in real-time. I was surprised when the audience laughed at my jokes seconds later. My humor transcended language. Who knew? I often joked that Autodesk chose the name Gallery Ambassador instead of Docent because the correct way to address an ambassador is "Your Excellency."

• In 2021, my boss, Erin Bradner, brought the Strategic Foresight team (part of Autodesk Research) to a graffiti class. Though our team has not broken any laws by putting what we learned into practice, it was a great team-building event. Our last annual in-person gathering was all business at the Autodesk Portland office.

• Last year, I worked on a Multiple Scenario Generator that allowed employees to "be CEO for a day," make decisions about Autodesk's development of AI, and see how those decisions might play out. The project made me remember just how much fun programming is and how I got my start at Autodesk.

They say that if you enjoy your job, you'll never work a day in your life. I have never worked.

Thanks to all of the readers of this blog over the years. I hope I have been an "interesting person." Thanks to those I have worked with for helping me along my journey as a software developer, software development manager, technical evangelist, project manager, program manager, and strategic foresight practitioner. Autodesk is a good, great, and important company. The stock is a good investment. Autodesk is a great place to work. What Autodesk customers do with the platform is important for the world.

My days ahead will be filled with cooking, yard work, family history, fishing, travel, and grandchildren. In work or play, I am 100% in until I am 100% out.

I'm not afraid to bend my back
I'm not afraid of dirt
[And] I [don't] fear the things I'll do
For lack of honest work
— Todd Rundgren

Tidings of farewell are alive in the lab.