Pros

The work is good and challenging and one is at the forefront of technological changes. For a technical writer in India, Adobe is one of the employers that offers challenging, fulfilling work.

Cons

Two layoffs in a single year (8% + 9%) within a single year can only be justified for a PROFITABLE company by an incompetent and insensitive management. The focus here is on protecting the margins much more than protecting employees. Adobe has disappointed employees big time in this downturn.

Advice to Senior Management

Focus on retaining employees; margins will follow. If you really have to cut workforce, cut once and cut deep! Do not resort to repeated layoffs. They demotivate employees no end!

Pros

The pay is average but the work life balance is really good. People are nice but not are technically inclined. Some are here just to do the job. Nothing more than that. Very good stock program.

Cons

Not very great type of work. Not sure what the company's vision is for its products. Not many benefits apart from the compensation.

Advice to Senior Management

Care more for your employees than the stock price. You can't maintain your standing in the market if your people are not happy.

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.

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.

Pros

Adobe respects people and provides flexibility and reasonable compensation and opportunities for career growth. The products are generally successful and people recognize and value them. Adobe is good at operations management including managing acquisitions.

Cons

Adobe is not fast-moving, as other reviewers have noted. GM level responsibility is not delegated in the organization as it is in many other larger companies, but sr. managers, sometimes even the CEO, are inclined to make even small decisions. Adobe is aggressively moving R&D jobs to employees based in India, China, and Romania - making it hard if you are US-based especially on the lower end of the skill level. The annual layoffs mentioned by others are really more about shifting jobs offshore - net employment is still rising. Adobe has not for many years been able to generate meaningful revenue growth organically from new products, so has had to acquire it, first Macromedia and more recently Omniture..

Advice to Senior Management

Delegate more, don't get too excited about the next bright & shiny new object, get serious about the fundamental transformation that's going on in the SW industry, and most of all don't keep pushing a separate "Flash Platform" (destined to stay a niche) but instead ensure that Flash and PDF become first-class in the Web Platform. Implement "Google Time" to get more innovation going organically. You can't cost-cut your way to revenue growth.

Pros

Competitive pay and being shut-down for the week of the 4th of July and the week between Christmas and New Year's. Free beverages, fresh fruit snacks, and a discounted cafeteria.

Cons

The change in the time-off policy really hit me hard and in my world, having a safety net of additional salary for a few weeks is valuable but now that's gone. The original system was kind of a rodeo in that not everyone reported their time-off accurately. Now, depending on how well you get along with your manager, you might get anywhere from 1 to 4 weeks of 'additional time off'.

Adobe used to be a much more 'exciting' company to work for. There were holiday parties, summer family picnics, employee gifts after blow-out product launches, and a generally fun atmosphere. However, today it's very different as none of those things remain and people just keep their heads down and focused on their work... hoping they don't get caught in the holiday gift-giving tradition of pink slips.

Advice to Senior Management

Take a good look at the recent employee surveys and ask yourself, would workers respond differently if their responses were truly anonymous? Feedback is broken down and provided to managers in such a way that they can easily figure out who said what.

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?

Pros

Salary & benefits
Mentality
Global, well-known corporation

Cons

No clear strategy
Frequent shifts in direction or re-orgs
It's getting a lot more political, as the company is growing

Advice to Senior Management

Focus on the things from your job description.

Pros

Talented Professional People. Great benefits and Timeoff.

Cons

The company has become extremely conservative with the economic downturn which means, less interesting projects, less follow through on existing projects, pull back in investments in multiple key areas.

Advice to Senior Management

Be less of a follower and go after real innovation. Commit to new products and markets and win them. Don't just go after products after the competitors have already won the market.

Pros

- Great coworkers
- Access to great software
- Despite changes, still good benefits
- Sabbatical program
- Company stable

Cons

- Work becoming stagnant
- Growing disconnect between upper management and workers
- Decrease in benefits as company grows
- Workers often worry about potential for annual layoffs

Advice to Senior Management

- Listen to your workers when you make decisions
- Commit to decisions and follow through
- Don't be so quick to discard new ideas.