Horror show - Lead Engineer Adobe Employee Review

1.0
Jan 26, 2024
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

Office in London is reasonably nice and they have some good company benefits.

Cons

If I could rate less than 1/5, I would. HR, or as they call it, ERC department is just plain awful/useless. You're the bad guy if you make a complaint. "We're going to offer you a generous amount of bereavement leave, but if you decide to use it we're going to treat you like some 💩 we just stepped in." Managers are basically allowed to do what they want, and are perfectly allowed to try and derail your career. They can put you in low standing with the company for no justifiable reason, and then even if you want to try and improve yourself, you are no longer allowed the resources to do that. They also misreport your salary to HMRC so that they think you've been paid vast amounts more than they've paid you (i.e. they duplicate monthly entries), and when you email ERC to tell them, they ignore you and ghost you. Meanwhile, the tax man is taking a 4 figure number out your paycheque each month because they don't know any better. And when you finally get hard evidence that you've been subject to constructive dismissal and open up a grievance with the company, they will ignore you and ghost you seemingly in the hope that you will go past the 3 month mark of you leaving, meaning you would be unable to go through an employment tribunal process.

Explore other reviews about Adobe

5.0
Jun 10, 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business Outlook

Pros

all good things considered to work here

Cons

often times, it can feel pretty boring

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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