Adobe's New Corporate Strategies

[Steve Johnson]

Isn't this the story of every place you've worked for the last 10
years almost? Since the salad days of spend-all-the-money-you-can? I
feel almost like Pinocchio being duped into going to Donkey Island ...
hi diddly dee, the high tech life for me...

And now all the "leaders" of our companies can think of is new ways to
balance their books across our backs. Next Friday my job ends so the
company can ship all our jobs to India and it doesn't make me angry,
it kind of makes me sad. Sad and actively indifferent because I know
that no matter what I think it won't matter; what's going to happen
will happen. And often does.

Sad that the demoralization spoken of in this article is now the norm;
sad our "leaders" believe we're all interchangeable and sad, finally,
there is no commitment to anything like quality or integrity.

Personally I don't wish for the good old days whenever they were or
wish for the Doc Warnocks to come back from wherever they went. I'd
like it if companies like mine and Adobe got whipped in the market for
what they're becoming and for new people to come along, missing the
old fads of quality and excellence, and bring them back like they were
new.

Or something. Or wait until the music swells and the end credits roll
and walk out with the taste of stale popcorn in my mouth knowing it
was all only a sad fantasy.

On Fri, Apr 23, 2010 at 5:52 PM, Jeremy H. Griffith <jeremy at omsys.com> wrote:
>
> Interesting article today in the Silicon Valley Insider:
> http://www.businessinsider.com/the-underlying-story-behind-adobes-failed-mobile-strategy-2010-4
>
> It's nominally about Adobe's mobile strategy, but applies
> to the entire corporate culture and how it has changed.
> I really miss Doc Warnock... whose personal love of Frame
> was why Adobe bought it.  I wish he'd come back, like Toyoda
> did, to save his company from The Next Generation.
>
> I've been hearing some of the same things via the grapevine
> that the columnist has.  This is a key paragraph:
>
>  But within the past few years, Adobe's focus shifted from
>  being at the top of its class solely to growing its bottom
>  line. Cost-cutting became the company's priority as each
>  year brought no less than 10% in staff cuts. Naturally, the
>  engineering teams became demoralized as they knew every Q4,
>  after they shipped the product they were working on and
>  after putting in long hours, their jobs could be shipped out
>  as well. The executive team's quality-killing concentration
>  on profits started adversely affecting not only the products
>  that made Adobe what it is today, but also its design strategy
>  and adaptability to the changing industry.
>
> I'm not Adobe-bashing here.  But if they don't wake up
> to the consequences of their current policies real soon,
> the downward slide may be irreversible.
>
> Paging Doctor Warnock...
>
> -- Jeremy H. Griffith, at Omni Systems Inc.
>  <jeremy at omsys.com>  http://www.omsys.com/
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-- 
============
Steve Johnson, dr_gonzo at pobox.com