So Long, Autodesk Shotgun
Note: I’m writing this as a former employee (as of June 2021) of Autodesk. My views are entirely my own, based on my recollections and personal experiences during my time with the company.
I’ve been working with the Shotgun team in various capacities for th e past 7 years, shortly after it was acquired by Autodesk. The first few months I worked with the team, people would ask me what it was like, and I’d always answer “absolutely everyone is super-smart, it’s really weird”. Practically everyone who was there back then has now moved onto other things outside of Autodesk, but I stay in touch with many of them and miss working with them all greatly.
Today I read this post (warning: the language used in the post is quite strong). It’s the kind of thing no Product Manager wants to read, as it signifies us having failed our users. It made me reflect on how things have changed both in the company and how those changes have manifested in the formerly beloved product itself over the past few years.
When I started, the feeling within the Shotgun team was one of a startup embedded within a larger corporation. We had a great deal of autonomy, and I spent the first few months blissfully unaware of what most of the rest of Autodesk was doing. We were focused on one thing, and that singular purpose, combined with the fact that most of the team (myself included) had been plucked out of the industry we were now serving, meant that all of us cared deeply about the work we were doing. Customer pain wasn’t a cliche, it was our pain too. I spent months embedded with people trying to use Shotgun to get their film and episodic shows produced, I was there when things went wrong for them and they lost time or got frustrated. Our company mission was to “get people home in time for dinner” and we all knew how important that was. We had seen people work long hours, sacrificing everything for the sake of a single shot in a piece of media (or had been one of those people). We desperately wanted to succeed.
