Stuck in the past: Total lack of creativity, operational efficiency, and inspiring leaders - Anonymous employee Adobe Employee Review

2.0
Aug 31, 2022
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- Great benefits: unlimited PTO, healthcare, maternity leave, etc. - Good environment: new offices, relatively flexible workplace, remote work possible - Opportunities to work with Creators and interesting Customers - Good talent in Design and Engineering and some other teams

Cons

- Complete lack of creativity (ironically) and innovation: orders come from dinosaurs from the top with very hierarchical processes, most ideas are disconnected from the way digital media works today. The company has missed the boat on so many business opportunities, it's concerning. - Absence of Operational efficiency: bottlenecks everywhere, very heavy unnecessary exhausting bureaucratic processes; this company could not be moving more slowly. Current leadership has struggled for years to try and solve this. The most simple tasks still requires dozens of gate-keepers, making it impossible for any change maker to have any impact. Things go in circle so much cross-functionally, it looks like a complete circus lead by clowns. - Culture of 'doing as little as possible' with no rewards for those trying to get anything done. Talent is very mediocre and people have no incentive to do more or better. - Zero accountability for leaders and manager who fail to deliver on their goals, which is highly uninspiring. Some display really poor toxic behavior (some meetings don't give space for people to talk, some cannot take responsibility for anything or stand up for their team). - No HR support, check-in or processes, which allows very poor behaviors to keep going with no consequences (bullying, lack of diversity and inclusions in certain teams), there was not even an exit interview process for those who leave. Some team don't perform 360 feedback, while others do, which makes things highly unfair. -All of this leads people to be jaded and demoralized, with no trust that things will improve and talent has been massively leaving the company in the last year.

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5.0
Jun 25, 2026
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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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