Autodesk's Pier 9 workshop

Autodesk has one of the greatest employee perks that I’ve ever seen.

Not the unlimited vacation policy.

Not the cool, comfy, decked-out offices.

Not even the annual worldwide soccer tournament (which, honestly, is a super rad perk too).

In my opinion, the greatest employee benefit Autodesk offers is free employee access to their Technology Centers worldwide.

The Autdesk Technology Centers are world-class industrial shops/labs located in a handful of cities around the globe. They were created mostly to support Autodesk’s residency program for startups or individuals, but can be used by any Autodesk employee after taking some training courses (also free).

First, the obvious disclaimer: yes, they are only located in 4 cities (Boston, San Francisco, Birmingham UK, and Toronto CN) while Autodesk itself has offices in over sixty countries. However, since Autodesk is headquartered in San Rafael (right outside SF) and has another main office in SF proper, a large number of employees are within easy distance of the SF Center. If you’re an employee that doesn’t live near one of these cities, however, it will be more difficult for you to reap their benefits (but not impossible!).

Also, I’m sure many people couldn’t care less about free workshop space, machinery, and tools, which is totally okay! Everyone has their own interests, and that’s why I prefaced my claim with “In my opinion…”.

I made frequent use of the Technology Center at Pier 9 when working for Autodesk, and I still wish I used it more. Each location has a specialty or area of focus, but most have the same general capabilities. As an overview, there are six main sections to Pier 9:

• Machine shop - this is the most heavily utilized room at Pier 9, housing multiple massive CNC machines from a 3-axis HAAS lathe to a huge Omax waterjet
• Woodshop - a fully outfitted woodshop including the large power tools you would expect (full-size table saw, mounted miter saw, etc.) along with a selection of belt sanders and various woodworking hand tools, mounts, and clamps, plus a paint spray booth
• Metal shop - contains many of the same larger blade tools that the woodshop does but for metalworking, and also a full setup for MIG/TIG hand welding
• Woodshop extension - this houses a full-size ShopBot router, lathe, and a few other machines that didn’t fit in the main woodshop
• Digital fabrication - holds everything from full Eplilog & Metabeam laser cutters to at least 3 different types of 3D printers
• Electronics lab - double-workbench room with two soldering irons, ventilation, and a huge parts library from resistors to microcontrollers, all for FREE use

There’s also a Test Kitchen with an industrial stove and ventilation system stocked with some crazy cooking tools (think mini deep-fryer) but last I heard they were removing it and converting it to a regular employee kitchen

Now go back and read all of those again. The $-value of machinery in the CNC shop alone is north of half a million dollars, if not hitting a million. And as an employee you get it use it for FREE.

There are three-ish requirements for machine use: the general safety class (basically a ~2-hour tour of the full shop), fire extinguisher training (45-minute class on how to use one), and whatever training is involved for using that particular machine/area of the shop. The third requirement ranges from an hour safety intro for things like the electronics lab and laser cutters to multiple hours of classes, studying, and hands-on testing for things like the Haas CNC machine.

For me, that was way too good to pass up. By the time I left Autodesk, I had been authorized to use any tool in the woodshop, the laser cutters, a 3D printer, the electronics lab, the ShopBot router, and had one more assessment to go before being able to use the big Haas mill. Unfortunately, COVID-19 shut down the lab in March and I never got to return before leaving the company. Regardless, I got a ton of use out of the laser cutters and the electronics lab + its available parts.

The only other way someone like me would have access to machinery and space like this would be to join a makerspace for at least $200 per month and pay the multiple $100-200 fees for training on every machine I wanted to use (and no makerspace would even have anything close to the full catalog of the shop), or rent time / pay someone to take my designs and machine/print/assemble the fabrication for me.

I encourage anyone in one of the cities local to a Center to seriously consider Autodesk as an employer, if only for the enormous amount of otherwise-inaccessible technology you can experiment with (and I don’t even work there anymore!).