Adobe Reviews

Current Employee – been working at Adobe

Pros – Great products with room for growth in revenue so I believe there is likely room for stock growth. It is a strong boat that will float well in a rising tide as well as weather a good bit of market turbulence. The senior mgmt is very dedicated and smart. The company culture is very collegial and supportive but will challenge you.

Cons – I think the career development has been a shortcoming until more recently-last 1-2 years. THe compant is focusing much more on growing the talent from within for senior management positions as well new college hires. It takes time to get the development programs working so I'll wait to see results. The collegial culture is a positive as well as negative. It can take too long to reach consensus and strong personalities and differeing opinions can sometimes be considered negative.

Advice to Senior Management – Keep driving to the numbers-data and facts to support the hypotheses. I think they do a good job and need to keep the focus as we get bigger. Develop more engineering and senior managemnet talent from within by allowing them to tkae on new positions and giving them the tools and room to work.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Adobe

Pros – Life Balance, professional growth, flexibility, great people, an opportunity to work on a product that I love, and be involved in making it better.

Cons – Bad reputation in many circles, poor focus on core competencies. Adobe is making many (seemingly) segmented attempts at entering many markets, but seems to lack an overall vision of where it's all going. Apple has the digital lifestyle, Adobe has a conglomeration of many different kinds of customers it has earned or bought over the years. Bundling software isn't enough, they need to create a world for it to live in.

Advice to Senior Management – Do what you do well better. Stop trying to be all things to everyone. Show how it all ties together with some unifying idea rather than dipping many toes into many pools.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Adobe

Pros – There is a lot of pride in what we do at Adobe; we help people create great stuff and do their work with less hassle, and that is very satisfying. The company cares about employees a lot, and does a pretty good job with work-life balance; the typical Adobean is a 'nice' person. The business is also very strong; growing and highly profitable. There is a definite sense of mission at Adobe, and if you are capable and motivated, there is a real chance for you to be able to 'put a dent in the universe' and change the way the world looks, works and plays (look at Photoshop, PDF, Flash and Flash Video for examples).

Cons – There is a strong concensus culture, which can occasionally get in the way of effective decision making. Coupled with that is that sometimes people can be a little 'too nice'...not that there isn't lively debate or room for dissent, but depending on your style you may occasionally feel the need to bang or knock heads a little harder (or maybe you'd be glad that you don't have to bang/knock heads as much as where you work today ;-).

Advice to Senior Management – Keep doing what we are doing: respecting our people, investing for the future and having patience with new innovations, and operating a well run profit making machine.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Adobe

Pros – Great place to work, highly skilled people, bleeding edge technology. The benefits package is very good, the facilities very nice. I would really like to retire from here in 25 years or so.

Cons – After Adobe, I'm not quite sure if you'll find something else that will match the conditions you'll find here.

Advice to Senior Management – Work more on the people's development plan.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Adobe

Pros – Great products, smart people, casual atmosphere. Flex time and remote working, lots of lateral movement opportunities, brand recognition is a plus for friends and families. Great community involvement, generous benefits (profit sharing!).

Cons – can be a pressure cooker at times, work-life balance, they'll do layoffs to protect quarterly numbers despite huge amounts of cash cusion and hiring back many workers months after layoffs (happened to me 3 times). It isn't even a meritocratous decision, just the bottom-line numbers.

Advice to Senior Management – Be prepared to ride the ups and downs and if your employees are your most valuable intellectual property, don't be so quick to abandon them when the road ahead looks murky.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Adobe

Pros – Lots of opportunity to focus on difficult, interesting, and real world computer science problems whose solutions enable new and better products. The company provides all of the needed resources for both individual and team success. The senior management demonstrates a high degree of integrity.

Cons – Not enough fresh fruit in kitchen areas.

Advice to Senior Management – Be prepared to make the necessary investments to build out the consulting and support organizations so that our enterprise business can succeed.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Adobe

Pros – vacation benefits, employee product discount, ESPP program

Cons – politics are rampant, carrots are dangled to get people to take on work outside their job scope but promises are never fulfilled after work is done, inconsistent management, middle management make decisions based on what benefits their own careers instead of what benefits the business

Advice to Senior Management – fire half of your middle management. Put policies in place to make reviews less subjective so that it's easier to see who is really making positive contributions to the company and who are hanging on because they kiss butt well.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Adobe

Pros – Adobe is an amazing company to work for...the best infact. Fantastic products, great employee spirit and energy and good compensation. I was always proud to tell people i worked at adobe. When i started Adobe was a company much like apple....without certain individuals egos...

The exposure to different cultures, travel opportunities and management were all inspirational. during the 2001 - 2005 period the stock price and employee stock purchase plan along with option were phenominal... i bought my first townhouse with them!

Cons – post macromedia merger things changed dramatically...it was for all intensive purposes reverse take over, which was a very bad thing. for all intensive purposes we were beating macromedia, we were more profitable and we had much better people, but for some reason, macromedia management was placed in key roles and put their own people in charge...this was a slap in face for long time adobe staff. in many ways, we lost some of that culture and took on macromedias,which was not as friendly...

Advice to Senior Management – keep adobe fun...always

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Former Employee – worked at Adobe

Pros – Adobe has best people and teams. Its a fun environment and you can work on cutting edge products and technologies. Its located in the heart of San francisco and the caltrain station is very close by. Adobe also has shuttle if you take Bart to other areas of bay area. Adobe also provides commuter checks to share some of your commuting costs.

Cons – Since its a large company its difficult to be noticible by higher management. There are less chances of getting promoted. Salary is much less than any other company of similar size. Actually salary is less than the company of smaller size than Adobe.

Advice to Senior Management – Identify the winner in your teams. Give them good compensation. Let them move to different teams if they want to.

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend

Current Employee – been working at Adobe

Pros – Really great products, and great people

Cons – none, none, none, none, none

Advice to Senior Management – Check in 1:1 with the people 2+ levels below you once and a while

Yes, I would recommend this company to a friend