Pros
Adobe is a fantastic brand well regarded within its customer base and offers well-known market-leading products (at least on the creative side of the business). The Sydney office is gorgeous, on the top floors of a large business complex overlooking Darling Harbour with handy facilities and great food options nearby. The company provides competitive compensation with great benefits such as paid private health insurance, gym subsidies, an attractive employee share purchase program, donation matching for charity and generous education subsidies. The company is fast growing and a great employer to have on your CV.
Cons
Behind the facade of a well-regarded brand and the “best places to work” awards lurks a dysfunctional Asia-Pacific marketing organisation whose incapacity to look beyond short-term results and some unfortunate hiring decisions has resulted in the erosion of its culture and a sharp increase in employee attrition. New leadership, coming from other large players in the IT industry with a reputation for cut-throat and backstabbing behaviour, has brought their fellow managers with them, along with the culture that goes with it. Roles and responsibilities for team members have been curtailed to very specific and measurable KPIs, turning the art and science of marketing within a company famed for its creativity into an exercise of bean counting. This siloing of responsibilities has also greatly reduced communication and collaboration within team members, further hitting morale within the organisation. In this environment, ruthless and politically-astute players gifted at “managing up” have been able to thrive, at the expense of managers fostering well-functioning and high-performing teams. Marketing leadership for the flagship creative business is located in far Singapore and seems only interested in furthering its own career advancement at the expense of anything (and anyone) else. The powers that be and HR seem to be blind (or indifferent) to the trail of destruction and serial resignations induced by these people.