We Don’t Care If You Like Our Stuff

Today I am reminded again just how remarkably tone deaf leaders of companies can be. This morning I get a “hurry it’s your last chance” email regarding PLM Connection and the Solid Edge University which resides in it this year. Now I don’t know if you can attend this marvelous event just for the SE agenda but I suspect not.

How Could You Refuse This Deal?

I like the limited seats comment too since I have experience that says it will literally be one room out of the dozens set up for the UGS side. So yes severely limited is the literal truth.

Now before you get all over excited and are frantically scrambling for your credit card in a frenzied burst of SE enthusiasm calm down and see what you will get for your dough.

The Whole Chillona

I completely resent the cavalier way Siemens has decided to treat it’s SE users and to clearly indicate once again that the red headed step child is someone they hide from themselves and the public. At PLM Connection they will sit in the isolation chamber down the hall in a room where it is grudgingly admitted that yes the DNA says Siemens but darned if we are happy about it. You UGS people disgust me with the way you scheme and maneuver to hide a product you are afraid of competing against. Unable to compete based purely on capabilities and pricing they sabotage the SE ecosystem and starve it into submission.

Can you believe they have the unmitigated gall to charge you full three day event price for one day of stuff that is pretty well useless to most SE users? I sure can and remember with extreme disgust dealing with these idiots and the PLM World mindset. They are God and you are the distasteful stuff on their shoe sole to be wiped off when hopefully no one is looking to observe this.

I do have to say though that in fairness to myopic management they have some justification for sending their Grindstaff smother SE henchman John Miller over there to do a job on SE and the University. As users the SE people were given a real chance under Karsten Newbury and Don Cooper to show the world and UGS/Siemens that there was interest in the SE University. For some years running users as a percentage that showed up was pitifully small and to be honest if I were over deciding to do these things and not dedicated to the idea of building a community I would kill it off to. Either the SE user base is FAR smaller than I think or for some reason the ones willing to show up percentage wise are far smaller than say SW or Autodesk.

In any case you reap what you sew and I blame primarily the UGS Cabal but users that don’t support anything should not expect to get anything either and by repeated years of no shows the excuse needed by Siemens UGS Cabal (Have you noticed I love saying this? These contemptible people deserve to get raked over the coals at every opportunity and since this is my blog I do so.) I suppose SE users are back to the 36 people total attendance at the premier Siemens software event. A towering monument to Siemens/UGS corporate stupidity that excels in back room skullduggery. I have to wonder how things could be if armies of corporate drones were not solely devoted to CYA and turf protection and useless make work meetings to plan the next meeting spent this same time and energy improving the product and growing market share to where it could and should be.

I notice with interest that Dassault has finally admitted that even though they would love for you to buy into their overpriced over complicated Catia ecosystem there are many millions of CAD users that have A, no interest in the cloud and B, no interest in spending tons of money for un-needed complexity that does nothing but make their lives more expensive, less productive and operates levels of complexity way beyond what they need CAD for. So this year they have reversed years of we don’t like you and want you to leave SolidWorks by agreeing to spend four times the money and buy what we like and not what you like. They have committed to the idea that SW users are a force to be reckoned with and respected and desired. Now time will tell the real tale but today they say this.

Siemens/UGS (you know what they are ;D) has never to my knowledge given more than passing notice of the cloud only as an ecosystem you would have to work in nor have they seriously thought about ending perpetual seats as far as I know. Unlike the complete fool Andrew Anagnost at Autodesk. Who in combination with hostile board members deciding that users are not customers but rather they are chattel to be extorted in ever greater ways and the concern is purely for how to forcibly raise more money from existing customers. The idea of mutual benefit as a business model has ended with these people but I can honestly say that is not true with SE since it is powerful design software that is improving and is still rent or buy and a darned good tool in the tool box in spite of the, well you know who.

But anyway the last five years have been interesting and from this software customers viewpoint a real exercise in corporate disconnect from the people who happen to pay their bills and salaries. It is not your corporate investors nor is it the stock market and mutual funds. It is people like me and companies large and small that hired you to make THEM more productive and they do not believe they exist just to make YOU fat and happy. Autodesk is learning right now what happens when you jettison this basic business principle going into their 13th straight down income quarter in a row.

May I recommend to you the best software you have never heard of? You won’t hear this from Siemens but I can tell you after years of use it is the best mid range MCAD deal out there. If you are silly enough to still be agonizing over what to do with Inventor and don’t want to be forced into Fusion360 I can say SE is a fine place to go. Being a Red Headed step child is not so bad when I think of productivity and this SE excels at.

As a snarky aside here I do have to admire Andrew Anagnosts ability to pare things down. He has eliminated 23% of Autodesks staff. He has eliminated profit margins and he is eliminating gobs of customers. One of his current fascinations is replacing people with artificial intelligence. I ponder the idea of considering his job and if Artifice could be replaced with Artificial. I mean could a robot do any more harm than he is? Plus they could hire an H1-B dude to program the new boss and what a wonderful world this could be.