Kayaking in New Zealand

Arjun S. & Sakshi S.
New Zealand
Anybody who has ever seen The Lord of the Rings movies can’t resist being taken in by the scenery of New Zealand. Rolling green hills, lakes nestled amid white-capped mountains—it was enough to pique the interest of Arjun S. and Sakshi S., a married couple in Adobe’s Noida, India, office.

“The moment we started researching it, we realized this is something we have to do,” says Arjun, a senior computer scientist at Adobe.

They knew they couldn’t take a small vacation and expect to come back refreshed. It was go big or go home. “Normally you’d have a vacation where you’re just unwinding and then you suddenly have to go back. You never get to put your feet up,” says Sakshi, an engineering manager. “With a sabbatical, you can.” So they packed their trip with every adventure they could: scuba diving, skydiving, sea kayaking, caving, swimming with dolphins, and hiking on a volcano.

Ilene with her tour guide

Ilene M.
Colombia, Peru, Argentina, Vietnam, Hawaii
Ilene M. is a senior compensation analyst in Adobe’s San Francisco, California office. For her first sabbatical, she spent four weeks traveling throughout Colombia and then went to Cuzco, Peru, to hike the Inca Trail. Her route culminated in Machu Picchu. Seeing it while on sabbatical, she could lose herself in the experience. “This was literally the first time as an adult that I had just stopped and not done anything work- or school-related. I came back thinking, wow—that was incredible. And I was getting paid.”

Ilene combined her second sabbatical with vacation time for a total of eight weeks in Argentina, Vietnam, and Maui, Hawaii. Ilene says her travels have helped shift her perspective, which could be summed up this way: Less stuff, more experiences. “What’s become more important to me is saving money to travel and explore how other parts of the world live,” Ilene says. “My sabbatical experiences have changed my values.”

Fedja and family

Fedja P.
The kitchen table
When Fedja’s wife was pregnant with their second son, he decided it would be a good time to take his sabbatical. He combined it with Adobe’s paternity leave and spent more than six weeks at home when Dylan was born.

“Dylan didn’t give me a huge window of opportunity, but at night when everyone was asleep, I went through all of these resources from Adobe and educated myself on the creative aspects of the products we have,” Fedja says. Fedja is a product solutions developer. Spending time playing with Adobe’s creative products, like Photoshop and Adobe Premiere Pro, was a way to challenge his mind and do things he doesn’t get to do every day.

“All you need is a table and headphones and a quiet spot. Adobe provides the rest.” When he came back to work, he used his new skills to help drive the production of Inside Adobe TV. It’s something he wouldn’t have known how to do without the enrichment that his sabbatical afforded.

“On sabbatical, I was encouraged to disconnect totally,” he says. “We work in a fast-paced environment, and I was gone for so long that it allowed me to step back and pick up skills in drawing and painting and video and things I had never experienced.”

Life@Adobe: Tell us about your journey in to the corporate world:

Mark: After graduating from University of Leeds in 2010, I attended a specialist sales workshop which led to me join a small company called Efficient Frontier as their first Inside Sales Executive in Europe. Within this role, my focus was on generating qualified leads for the external sales team. The success of this position led to further Inside Sales Representatives being hired across Europe and we now have a team of seven working across the region. After 18 months in my role, Efficient Frontier was acquired by Adobe and we began the transition from a small company to a large corporation. As a result of this acquisition, my role has also evolved; I am now a Sales Account Manager responsible for end-to-end sales.

L@A: Tell us about your role:

Mark: What I really like about my role within Adobe, and something that I didn’t expect coming in as a graduate, is the exposure that I have in speaking with some of the biggest and most influential businesses in the world. Adobe’s client base across its different products and solutions is massive, which means the conversations that I have every day differ greatly depending on my client and their needs.

L@A: What is it that you really like about working at Adobe?

Mark: One of the misconceptions that we had when going through the acquisition was that we would lose the feel of working for a small business. Having transitioned across, it quickly became apparent that this not a true reflection of the life at Adobe.

I work in the London office which has approximately 100 people, the majority of whom have joined the organisation as graduates. At Efficient Frontier, we always had a very social working environment with lots of customer events, which is very reflective of our fast-paced industry. One of the main things that I have personally noticed is that these customer events are on a much bigger and better scale with the backing of Adobe. My area of the organisation still has the feel of a startup but with the backing, investment and support that you would expect from a big corporation.

L@A: What would you say to other graduates looking to start their career?

Mark: After leaving university, I was under the impression that working for a big corporate company as a graduate would mean that the impact I made to the overall business would be minimal; this is truly not the case at Adobe. Within my role, every conversation I have each day influences big decisions within enterprise-size organisations. So the decisions that I help influence really affect the overall business strategy for my customers, which is exciting at such an early stage in my career!

Within Adobe, there is fantastic scope and support to move around internally. I would advise all graduates who are looking to start their careers to base their decisions on the opportunities of the role and scope for progression, not the size of the company.

Manuela at Yosemite National Park

How often do Interns get the opportunity to work abroad during their internship period? Very few. Manuela B, an Adobe Intern from Germany, was one of the lucky ones. She spent three months at Adobe’s headquarters in San Jose with the North America Channel Marketing team.

Manuela is an intern from the Dual Studies program in Germany, a program that combines the theoretical aspects of University study with hands-on professional work opportunities over a period of three years. She began her internship with Adobe’s European Channel Sales organisation. During this period, Manuela was exposed to various departments in marketing and sales. In October last year, she was given the opportunity to spend some time in the United States (U.S.). She was given the task of initiating and executing Social Media strategy for the North America Channel Partner team, in cooperation with Adobe’s Worldwide Corporate Communications team.

Manuela still speaks with so much excitement about her experience. “It was eye-opening to see how Adobe deals with social media on a global scale,” she said. “I was lucky to have witnessed social media in action during one of the busiest times at Adobe as we were launching the Creative Cloud. I felt that my internship in the U.S. was so much more meaningful because I had already spent three months with the Channel team in Europe. That initial experience helped me to quickly understand all the nuances of the Channel Partner ecosystem and I was able to contribute effectively.”

Manuela also mentioned that one of the best perks of her internship in San Jose was to personally get to know colleagues who she only spoke with from afar, and to learn from those she admired. The highlight of her experience, though, was meeting Ann Lewnes, Adobe’s Chief Marketing Officer. “I had the chance to speak with her, which was really exciting for me,” Manuela said.

Besides her work experience, Manuela travelled around the U.S. as much as possible. Her adventures brought her to Hawaii, Yosemite National Park and San Francisco.

Manuela is now back at Adobe Germany and will be returning to University in June where she will complete her degree in International Business. She graduates at the end of September this year.

Prabhat M. joined Adobe in April 2012. A post-graduate in industrial design from the Industrial Design Center at IIT Bombay, Prabhat has been involved in the design of over 40 products for a variety of markets. He has designed a humble chili holder for Indian dining tables to a technically complex electric scooter for Indian youths.

His fundamental philosophy is that if he could turn work into play, then he would be playing all his life. A degree in product design helped Prabhat turn a hobby into a profession, and one that he enjoys beyond words. Along with this focus came the realization that he could use the insights of his observations to create anything – from products to interfaces and interactive installations.

Currently, Prabhat is a senior experience designer here at Adobe. When we spoke to him about his year-long experience with the company, he said that it felt wonderful to be peeking behind the curtains of the software he grew up with. “Having been a user of Adobe software, I hope that my previous experiences in the areas of products and graphics will allow me to empathize with our users and better connect to their problems.”

When he’s not sitting behind the monitor playing with pixels, Prabhat likes traveling and observing people. He loves sketching and photographing people as they go about their daily routine. He regularly goes for photo walks around Delhi and also runs a Facebook group called the Delhi Pencil Jammers that meets up at various locations in and around the city.

Creativity took center stage this week as more than 5,000 creative minds collided at our annual Adobe MAX Creativity Conference in Los Angeles, California.

If you’re looking for inspiration to get your creative juices flowing, tune in to our keynote and featured sessions. You’ll hear from a fantastic line up of speakers including:

• our President and CEO, Shantanu Narayen
• SVP and GM of our Digital Media business unit, David Wadhwani
• Oscar winning visual effects supervisor for movies such as Titanic & Hugo, Rob Legato
• iconic graphic designer and illustrator, Paula Scher
• up and coming photographer and retouch artist, Erik Johansson and
• constraint-based artist that believes limitations drive creativity, Phil Hansen.

Here’s a peek at our first keynote session featuring a collection of Adobe visionaries across digital photography, web design, video and more as we unveiled brand new creative capabilities that will set your sights on the endless possibilities in our creative future.

For more inspiring keynote and featured videos, visit http://tv.adobe.com/watch/max-2013/a-creative-evolution/

We also made several key announcements at MAX including a major milestone update to the Adobe Creative Cloud. Here are the highlights.

Hoping you’re as inspired as we are. Let’s renew our vows to creativity and create art that evokes emotions!

• Restoring Puttenhalli Lake in Bangalore, India – Employees painted dust bins that surrounded the lake and planted shrubs and flowers at the entrance.
• Baking to rescue rainforests in Maidenhead, United Kingdom – The Adobe U.K. team organized a bake-off to raise money for the World Wildlife Fund (WWF)’s Sky Rainforest Rescue Project.
• Caring for New York, U.S.A – Employees volunteered for “NY Cares Day” at the Fresh Creek Nature Preserve in Brooklyn, an area hard hit by Hurricane Sandy.
• Cleaning Guadalupe River in San Jose, U.S.A. – San Jose employees removed trash from the Guadalupe river, which supports local fish and birds.
• Reducing pollution in Seattle, U.S.A – Adobe Seattle’s on-site bicycling community hosted a bicycling expo event and encouraged employees to sign up for a “Bike to Work Challenge” during the month of May. On Earth Day, employees rolled up their sleeves to clean the streets around the office.
• Replanting for the future in Beijing, China – Every Spring, employees and their families gather to plant trees in Beijing.

At Adobe, we’re all committed to contributing towards a healthier environment and have activities year round to support our local communities. For more information about Adobe’s CSR initiatives, visit our CSR page.

Competition for the coveted Best Employers list and recognition as a company that embodies trust, respect and a positive work culture was even more intense this year as the number of participating companies rose from 400 last year to 500. Rankings are based on employee surveys measuring key factors such as trust in management, appreciation of employees’ work, personal development, and team spirit. According to the survey conducted at Adobe, 93 percent of all Adobe Germany employees stated they were proud to work for the company, and 92 percent agreed that Adobe is a great place to work.

Adobe’s Senior Director for Central Europe, Harald Esch, couldn’t be more pleased with the results. “We are honored to be recognised as one of Germany’s best employers,” he said. “I’m thrilled our employees feel that Adobe offers them the opportunity to make an impact. At the end of the day, happy employees are the key to a successful and innovative company. We take this recognition as an opportunity to make Adobe an event greater company to work for.”

Michael Jamrosy, Managing Director of Adobe’s German Research & Development Center, shared Harald’s sentiments. “At Adobe, you can have a global impact and sometimes even change how entire industries are working, and doing that in an inspiring and rewarding environment is even better,” Michael said.

“It’s hard to do anything but spend time around her.” – David

Two months until Baby Marion

The road to parenthood was a long one for Adobe employee David S. and his husband, Nick. They had been together for 13 years. Family had been in their plans for a while, but they were waiting for the right time and the right circumstances. In 2004, they relocated from San Francisco to Seattle to make a fresh start in a new city. They moved into a house with an extra bedroom waiting to be filled.

David and Nick were open to adopting an older child, so they began the arduous process of becoming a licensed foster family. The ink was barely dry on their home foster license when an expectant mother chose them from a stack of applications as adoptive parents.

A daughter would be coming into their lives in just two months.

On top of preparing the nursery, planning announcements, and creating an open adoption agreement, David and Nick had to look into any workplace benefits available to them. David had just qualified for his five-year sabbatical from Adobe, so he combined that time with the company’s paternity leave to spend the first six happy, sleepless weeks of baby Marion’s life at home, tending to her around-the-clock needs. He also filed for Adobe’s US$5,000 adoption expense reimbursement, which helped to offset the high costs.

“I’ve never worked at a place that has a benefits structure that is this good,” David says. “It struck me as a better deal than any I’d ever seen before.”

Many parents say they have a hard time pinpointing exactly why they want to have children. Adoptive parents, however, must approach parenthood with strong intentions. It’s the only way to get through the countless evaluations of their lives and home, mental states, and finances. Still, David says, he and Nick knew they wanted to do it, even though they sometimes weren’t quite sure of the reason.

“The most difficult question we wrestled with is ‘why?’ I figured that whatever it was, it was something I may not learn until after the baby was part of my -life,” David says. “And I will say that I never would have suspected that a love of this intensity existed prior to having a daughter.”
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Zero to Three in Two Years

Tracy and her beautiful family in Ottawa

Adobe employee Tracy M. and her husband were imagining what kind of parents they’d someday be. Today, they’re experiencing that reality—times three! After Tracy and her husband were approved for adoption in August 2009, she continued working while waiting for the phone call that would mean they had been matched.

“It’s kind of like being pregnant but not knowing when you’re due,” Tracy says.

In the spring of 2010, Tracy and her husband received the phone call: They had been matched with four-year-old Alex and seven-year-old Mackenzie. The couple immediately went into action, preparing to welcome the brother-and-sister pair into their home.

Tracy took advantage of Adobe’s parental adoption leave to cover some of the transition period when the children weren’t fully in the home but needed a lot of attention nevertheless.

“Having the additional time off gave us a lot more flexibility and made it so much easier on our kids and on us, and I could still meet my responsibility to the business,” she says. The couple received Adobe’s adoption reimbursement which helped to offset expenses.

Just 15 months after adopting Alex and Mackenzie, Tracy and her husband received another call: The children had a baby brother, and there was no better place for him than with his siblings. Three weeks later, 8-month-old Jackson began transitioning into their home.

“It was wonderful but unplanned, and we had very little time to prepare,” Tracy says. “The extra time from Adobe [before federal parental leave kicked in] let us focus entirely on bringing Jackson into our family and making sure that all three kids were okay with that transition.”

Today, Tracy is back to work full-time, telecommuting from home one or two days each week. She says the exceptional flexibility offered by Adobe isn’t just for parents; it’s based on the understanding that all employees have meaningful lives outside of work. The happier employees are at home, the happier they’ll be inside the office.

“The respect between Adobe and employees goes both ways, and I do think Adobe’s an exception in that way,” she says. “There’s a sense that we have a lot of freedom to make choices based on what’s right for us, while still delivering to our professional responsibilities.”

In the past, Tracy threw herself into her job almost to the detriment of work-life balance. But parenthood, she says, actually forces a healthier balance.

“Advancing and developing my career is still important to me, partly because of the example it sets for my kids,” she says. “But also the practicality of having kids-you can’t keep working all night, because they have to eat dinner and take baths. I’m getting more creative about how I manage all of my priorities.”

At Adobe, we strive to continually develop and invest in our employees by providing them opportunities to move internally within the company. We recently caught up with Shaun G. in Australia, who moved from our Information Technology (I.T.) organisation to take on a role in Adobe’s Sales team. Here’s his story.

Life@Adobe: Tell us about your career journey at Adobe and how you got the opportunity to move internally.

Shaun: I previously worked as a Senior Systems Specialist under the I.T. organisation and most recently moved into the Sales organisation as a Technical Account Manager. Working in I.T., I had opportunity to build good relationships at various levels across the business in Australia & New Zealand. People got to know me quite well and I felt that I had built a pretty good reputation for myself as someone with strong capabilities and a good work ethic. So when the role was advertised internally, I had immediate support from the Hiring Manager to apply for the role. I competed for the role with several strong candidates, but I was eventually shortlisted for the position.

L@A: Was this an easy transition?

Shaun: During this transition, I received a lot of help and support from my family as I was a little apprehensive about making such a big change in my career. They were always there to motivate me and give me the confidence and belief to make the shift. Within Adobe, the Education Sales team also made the transition easy for me as they warmly welcomed me into the Sales organisation.

When you move into a new role, you need to expect that it can get tough at times and things may not always be the way you thought it would be. Looking at these challenges as learning opportunities definitely helped me with the transition.

L@A: What are the top three things you love about being a Technical Account Manager?

Shaun: I enjoy getting out in the field rather than being tied up in an office. This role has also given me the opportunity to learn and use our creative products.

Most of all, the best part about the role is probably the job satisfaction I get out of working in the educational space. I now have the opportunity to help enable our country’s educators teach our young kids the important skills in life. For example, our online video conferencing and collaboration tool, Adobe Connect, helps teachers connect online and run early intervention programs with children in rural and remote areas who have reading and writing issues.

L@A: Do you have any advice you’d like to give to anyone who is looking to move internally within a company?

Shaun: First and foremost, it has to be something you would enjoy doing or else you won’t last long. Read the job description carefully, talk to the Recruiting team, speak to people you know who are in that particular space, and the Hiring Manager. Ask as many questions as possible to see if it would be something you would be interested in. If you get the opportunity, shadow someone who is working in that space for a day so you can get first-hand experience before you make the decision.

L@A: What do you love to do outside of work? And tell us something that we don’t know about you?

Shaun: I love the footy (rugby league) and am a massive Wests Tigers supporter (a rugby league team in Australia). People say I look young so they’re always surprised to know that I have two kids, the oldest is 9 and the youngest is just turning 5. I am very much a family man and spend my weekends around family and friends.

At Adobe, full-time, U.S.-based employees receive 100% tuition reimbursement up to US$10,000 per year for eligible business-related courses and certificate programs. Employees in many other locales also get full or partial tuition reimbursement. That means people can get the MBA they’ve always pined for, obtain career-boosting certifications, or study another field related to their careers. And in many cases, it doesn’t have to cost them a dime. 

Antoinette P.
Location: San Jose, California
Studied: Master’s in organizational development

When Antoinette P. was a teenager, she spent a summer working in the fields with her grandfather, a labor contractor, in the 100-degree California Central Valley heat. That experience helped to drive home
a point that her grandfather always impressed upon her: Education is important. Education is the way to choose what you want to do with your life.

Many years later, when Antoinette was years out of high school and hunting for her next job, she let that advice guide her. Working with a placement agency, she made a list of all the companies that offered tuition reimbursement. That led her to Adobe’s front door, literally.

In September 2002, Antoinette walked into the lobby of Adobe’s headquarters and requested to speak with the on-site agency representative. When they met, the representative said there were no openings available at the time. But two weeks later, Antoinette received a call for a one-week assignment. It turned into another assignment and then another. Nine months thereafter, she became a regular Adobe employee.

More than 10 years later, Antoinette received her subsidized master’s degree from the University of San Francisco, she
says she hopes her kids get the message.

“I want to set an example for my children. I want them to see that it’s important to go to college right after high school—which I didn’t do because of various life challenges—but also that it’s never too late,” Antoinette says. “No matter what you tell your kids, they focus on what you do more than on what you say.”

It hasn’t been easy. Antoinette estimates that her schooling took a minimum of 20 hours per week on top of full-time workweeks. But she says she feels school is important and that the sacrifices she has made are worth it. And the fact that Adobe makes it possible for her to pursue her goal of completing her education confirms her thoughts when she walked through the doors more than 10 years ago.

“That’s why people stay so long at Adobe—because it isn’t just about the business. Adobe cares about its employees and has integrity. I couldn’t work for a company that didn’t have those kinds of values.”
——————————————————————————————————————————————————-
Cassandra F.
Location: London, United Kingdom
Studied: Digital Marketing

In 2010, Cassandra F. signed up for a six-month digital marketing qualification course. It would provide a nice boost to her resume and help to develop her skills. But before she could even start, she received a job offer from Adobe. Cassandra asked whether Adobe would consider paying for her upcoming qualification, and Adobe said yes.

“It showed me that they really wanted me on board,” Cassandra says. For the next six months, she attended class once a month, completed assignments, and took several exams. Each class lasted a full weekday, but her managers were happy to accommodate her time away from the office.

Cassandra says studying for the digital marketing qualification gave her new insight into her job. “I was able to take a step back from my day-to-day routine and look at the bigger picture,” Cassandra relates. “This enabled me to take a more strategic approach to my work and better understand how my role fits into and impacts the wider marketing team.”

Cassandra says one of the things she most appreciates is that Adobe takes career development seriously. Even if it means an occasional day away, a well-trained, fulfilled employee is a happy employee. “It does make me feel quite valued that my employer is willing to help me progress professionally and develop my own career.”