Adobe Reviews

Former Employee – worked at Adobe full-time for less than a year

Pros – Benefits, good pay, excellent facilities, sabbatical. This is probably what kept a lot of bad employees around for so long.

Cons – Micro management, lack of team environment, negative work environment. Maybe I was an isolated case but I felt I was setup to fail at Adobe. I had the worst manager I have ever worked for in my career. Her and all her direct reports were more concerned about saving face rather than helping a new hire. I've taken criticism but this was to the point that it made the work environment toxic. Just my opinion but I saw this from other managers as well. They have no sense of what it means to be a leader. They think repeating scripting lines by HR makes them a good "manager".

Advice to Senior Management – The culture there is in serious trouble. I hear a lot of bs about genuineness and innovation but that doesn't mean anything when everyone is just trying to cover their own asses. There are a lot of crappy managers there that have long tenures that are ruining the culture with their crappy personalities and bad attitudes.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Adobe full-time for more than 7 years

Pros – Enjoyed my team and the people.

Cons – Manager was weak and untrusting

Advice to Senior Management – Be more open.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Adobe

Pros – You really learn a lot and since it is consulting, you get to work with some really smart and great people from other companies. You know what is going on in many different industries.

Cons – Although you learn a lot and meet great people at other companies, the management within Omniture is really bad. Promotions are given out based on friendship and politics to people that don't deserve them and aren't capable of leading or managing others.

At least at Adobe Digital, employees are treated very unfairly, talked down to, reprimanded both in front of others and privately and you are only as good as you next mistake. You are given way too much work for one person to handle and then chastised when you make one mistake. And this is not just my opinion, the proof is in the pudding. In San Francisco, the Adobe Digital team has hired over a dozen people in the last 2 years with all but one quitting prior to reaching their year mark (and Adobe pays out nice money for reaching a year). Yet they still tell interviewees what a wonderful place to work it is.

Meanwhile, the managers of these disgruntled employees keep getting promoted and praised because the consulting group is still very profitable based on the premium they get for carrying the Adobe name. They are profitable and that seems to be all the VPs care about. The incredible part is that upper management is aware of these issues because of countless HR complaints, surveys and the out-of-control turnover, but they'd rather turn over the entire work force than fire the people responsible for the mess.

Do yourself a favor and away from Adobe Digital and possibly even Omniture altogether. Check out the Adobe software business itself. I hear they are much happier.

Advice to Senior Management – Listen to your employees.
Thing long term success based on investing on your human assets rather than short term profits and losing your best people.
Treat everyone with respect, even those you aren't trying to impress.
Get rid of the people that are quickly ruining what used to be a great part of your company.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Adobe

Pros – Good pay, benefits, looks good on resume

Cons – Management, innovation or lack there of

Advice to Senior Management – Leave

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Adobe

Pros – Great benefits such as health care, caltrain pass, vacation time, ESPP, and so on.
Big org so very slow paced if that is what you like.

Cons – No way to move up the latter.
Performance reviews completely useless since any promotion is controlled by VPs and they don't look at that: They want you to be a brown-nose.

Advice to Senior Management – Get some balls and do something instead of promoting a platform that no one uses nor cares and which has not generated any relevant revenue at all.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Adobe

Pros – Other than benefits there are no good reasons to work at Adobe

Cons – No communications from leadership.
No concern for their employees (contrary to popular belief they sorta force people into saying that it is a great place to work).
No concern for what an employee does/has done.

Advice to Senior Management – Hmmmm quit?

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Adobe

Pros – At one time Adobe was a great innovative company. There are still some technically challenging and interesting projects to work on if you are in one of the right groups. A lot of smart people to work with and in some areas leaders in the field.

Cons – Management is perpetually confused and running back and forth with yet a new direction every other year and in the years between complete new directions they change the way that they are implementing the direction they chose last year. Employees have to be very careful of what projects they are working on when the direction changes or you'll be out the door in the (almost) annual Christmas layoff.

Benefits continue to be cut to the point that there is no longer any guaranteed paid time off but only a possibility of a couple of weeks at the discretion of your manager (no accrual, no guarantees, no liability if you leave or are laid off).

There is no consistency in promotions and a number of managers run their own little fief-doms where they implement their own promotion policies (i.e. promoting women only).

Advice to Senior Management – Choose a direction for the company and really commit to it.

Decide whether employees are a valuable asset to the company or a nuisance rather than saying they are the former and treating them like the latter.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Adobe

Pros – Great benefits - no other reason.

Cons – Horrible politics, no leadership, no decision making, lack of management integrity. Stronger employees are routinely beaten down for political reasons. As another reviewer commented, the environment is best suited to people that are waiting to retire - if you actually have value to add it's going to be hard to watch all the co-workers who have given up.

Advice to Senior Management – Try to decide on a strategy, and then communicate it. Focus less on job titles and pay some attention to people who are creating value in the company.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Adobe

Pros – The products and the people who work there. And the customers who are so passionate about what they can create with the tools. It was always rewarding to see what they could create.

Cons – The quarterly layoffs. The forced bottom 10% pruning that typically happens, but with political fun thrown in to add to the count. I was told that I had to get more aggressive and focus on taking my peers out in order for me to get ahead. I couldn't do this as I had worked with some of these peers for many years.

Advice to Senior Management – It used to be that you could be an ethical, polite team player and succeed at Adobe. That is no longer true.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Adobe

Pros – Lots of smart people working on lots of interesting projects. Good health plan. Employees get Adobe Creative Suite for free, and can buy for a few friends at a discount.

Cons – Little coordination of effort across groups. No apparent review of organization health. Key decision criteria are cost control and annual financial objectives, as opposed to building long term value for customers.

No, I would not recommend this company to a friend