Abusive sales comp situation - keep looking - Sales Account Executive Adobe Employee Review

3.0
Nov 20, 2020
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Adobe as a company is 5 stars. It is creative and they have great people working there, ESPP is great, and the benefits are amazing

Cons

If you are looking for a job in tech sales, stay away from Adobe for a few years until they get big-boy sales ops in place, and until they start treating QBSRs as more than whipping posts for a cost of sales metric. For this review, please know I left under good circumstances. I was not hit as hard with what follows as some, but I got out while the gettin' was good. Adobe sales comp is totally [insert your worst curse word here] messed up. They have a negative dollar to dollar hit to quota for any customer who cancels. This means you inherit a customer who is cancelling a $500K - $1M license and you are immediately that much in the hole. For a relationship you didn't start, and had no influence on. They have tried to "fix" it, but their fix was retroactive and I have friends who ended up owing Adobe $20K - $30K in COMPENSATION after the "fix". Some people I know haven't seen a commission this year and now owe Adobe more money than their entire variable compensation. It's a horror story.

Explore other reviews about Adobe

5.0
Jun 8, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

- Awesome culture. I love going to work every day. People are really nice - exciting to be in the industry where a lot of innovation is happening - good work life balance - flexible RTO - two one-week shutdowns per year, unlimited PTO, global wellness days, great benefits

Cons

- Leadership lost its way. Missed huge opportunities in markets served by Canva and GenAI. Took the wrong bet on commercially safe models, missing out on huge opportunities that were captured by competing GenAI models. No clear strategy or vision from management about how to get back in track. Our products are losing market share every day and management seems to be lime deer in headlights, unsure what to do - Watching stock price deflating nearly every day is disheartening - Decision making is very slow. Takes ages to get things approved. - C-suite is mostly over 50 and often seem out of touch with latest AI and tech trends. Uphill battle sometimes to get them to see urgent opportunities that need to be acted on immediately - Adobe failed to organically develop major products in the last 20 years. Major recent ones; Firefly and Express; have not been successful.

3.0
Jun 8, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Great opportunity to learn from incredibly smart people, many opportunities to continue education, great for independent workers, not so for entry

Cons

Upper management forgets that first line managers need training. You need a thick skin to survive them

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