Great people, great processes, stale vision - Computer Scientist Adobe Employee Review

4.0
Jun 20, 2012
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- Engineering practices were very professional, disciplined. - Teams were good at executing ideas. - Really talented and experienced people - Great work life balance

Cons

- Not enough risk taking, same focus on existing products (add features but not solve fundamental usability and learning curve flaws, although Photoshop CS6 begins to address some of it). - Not many new ideas gaining traction. - Each product was too independent, and had it's own sort of brand and reputation. Some would bolster the Adobe brand, some would tarnish it. - Designers that didn't work under a specific product but were under the main Experience Design group had a pie in the sky approach to problems, and were very unreliable. - Felt like there was very little room for career advancement, positions were very stale.

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5.0
Jun 25, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Awesome manager, work life balance, great pay, good food

Cons

No head count would have loved to stay

4.0
Jun 16, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

* Refreshing focus on employee wellness * Brilliant colleagues * Compelling problems on interesting tools * Good work/life balance culture... generally (see cons) I've been at a few big tech companies and Adobe is one of my favorites. I feel empowered to make impactful changes here, I'm constantly stretching myself in fun ways, and the products we make are incredible. Product and engineering have big dreams, and all the resources we need to realize them.

Cons

* Big time crunch culture around arbitrary goals By far my biggest disappointment has been just how hard product pushes on big projects with arbitrary deadlines and difficult scope. It turns into cutting corners and delivering sub-par experiences even though we absolutely have the talent and capability to make some exceptional things if we just let the dang thing bake a few more months. I'd be more impressed with the tight clip if the goals were reasonable for good business reasons, but as far as I can tell the reason usually boils down to "some high-level manager wanted X and thought Y sounded like a good target date". * Comp growth leaves something to be desired. Raises feel pretty flat, though it's not the worst thing since stock rewards can be pretty good as appropriate for performance. Career progression is pretty good here too - I just find it odd how stale the base pay increases are year to year.

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