Pros
Great technology and great technical contributors. Development technology and products used throughout the world revolutionizing communication in print and on the web. Virtually every commercially-printed piece and web site is the result of use of some Adobe technology and products. Work with some of the brightest and most hard working engineers in the world.
Cons
The current executive management doesn't have the technical or leadership skills of the founders, John Warnock and Chuck Getschke. The current executives almost take pride in not actually using our products or understanding their technical underpinnings. They do excel in feathering their own nests! Current management is big on INITIATIVE but not FINISHATIVE resulting in product with severe bugs that seem to never get fixed. Problems seem to always be "deferred" to future releases and then ignored as "existing behaviour." Management would rather spend more time arguing why a bug/anomaly should not be fixed than it would actually take to fully fix the problem and satisfy the customers. Of course, if management doesn't actually understand and use the product ... Corporate organization into "business units" results in tremendous conflicts that result in local optimization of products to increase the business unit's income at the expense of product interoperability, customer satisfaction, and long term corporate profitability. Career advancement is somewhat of a joke. It is easy to be a major contributor, effective worker, and recognized by the industry for your accomplishments, yet go twenty years or more without a single promotion or any significant recognition. Executive managment is fairly jingoistic about India and moving as much work there as possible regardless of the opportunity cost incurred by delays and quality problems that result from laying off all the USA-based engineers with domain knowledge of various technologies and hoping that over time, the offshored workers will somehow gain all that domain knowledge. The results are product delays and severe product quality problems. The last two years have seen significant "give backs" in terms of employee benefits, especially in the USA. The 10% corporate profit sharing plan was discontinued in order to better fund executive bonuses. Stock option benefits have been cut back dramatically. Shipping bonuses have become either non-existant or stingy. And USA employees no longer have any vacation as an entitlement. Beyond a forced week off during the winter holidays and at July 4 (although many of us are expected to work those weeks anyway), any extra time off is at the discretion of one's manager and is not an entitlement. Each year over the past ten years, regardless of corporate profitability, has seen significant layoffs, especially of USA-based employees with jobs moving primarily to India. Older employees take the brunt of these layoffs in an attempt to lower costs both in terms of direct salaries and medical costs (Adobe is self-insured). The only reason why Adobe has not been dragged into court over age discrimination is that in order to get any severance, laid off works must sign a waiver prohibiting any legal action against the company.
