Autodesk loves its dogs. You might say it's in the company's DNA.
One of my favourite internal Slack channels is #fun-dogs-of-autodesk (the "fun" prefix just indicates it's not business-related). Susan Taylor posted a link to a CBS flashback video there yesterday, which speaks to our long history of welcoming furry friends into the workplace.
There are lots of familiar faces in this video: Lynn Levy, Linda Saldana and Patti Harris (who very sadly passed away some years ago). I worked with them all in the 90s/00s in some capacity, so this was a real "blast from the past".
By the way, we used to call those "huge, honking laptops on the desks" desktops, from what I recall. 😉
Back in the day we used to have several dogs in the Neuchatel office, too, which definitely brought an interesting dimension to the workplace. One Rottweiler, in particular, used to create the occasional problem by marking its territory in various ways. Fun times.
Anyway, the world has since changed, of course: most of us dog owners are now working from home, so find it easier to balance the needs of our puppies with our own. I don't know whether people regularly take their dogs into offices, but Daisy was certainly welcomed when we visited the London office together during the summer.
I'm walking our cocker spaniel for an hour or more each day, and it's very much my chance to re-centre.
Another quick shout-out to our #fun-dogs-of-autodesk Slack channel: thanks to all of you who lighten my day with puppy pics. As we're a few short days from Halloween, here's a pic that I found on the interwebs that captures the spirit of the channel (without sharing photos of anyone's actual dog).
Happy Hallowe'en, fellow dog-lovers!
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