THE HATE FOR ADOBE: Adobe, at first glance, they seem completely
harmless.
They simply make software for professionals including everything from PhotoShop and Premiere
Pro to After Effects and Illustrator.
They’re also the ones behind the most popular document format in the world: PDFs.
As many as 2.5 trillion PDFs are created around the world allowing for universally consistent
formatting and strong security.
And who could forget about Adobe Flash Player.
Adobe Flash made some of the most classic online games possible like the World’s Hardest
Game and Run.
But despite Adobe’s popularity and usesfulness, there’s actually a massive community that
strongly despises Adobe.
They hate everything from their products and pricing to their customer service and position
in the market.
In fact, people hate them so much that Adobe’s TrustPilot average is a digusting 1.2 stars
with 89% of reviews being 1 stars.
For perspective, even Paypal has a 1.3 star rating with only 87% of reviews being 1 stars.
This is quite surprising given that Adobe isn’t involved in any of the classic evil
company activities.
For example, they’re not collecting people’s data or violating people’s privacy.
Nor are they controlling government officials or have access to ludicrous amounts power.
They just make creative software and naturally try to make as much money as possible doing
that.
What makes this dichotomy even more interesting is that Adobe’s corporate sentiment is the
polar opposite.
Adobe isn’t just a good or great employer, they’re an exceptional employer.
In fact, according to Glassdoor Employee’s Choice, Adobe’s CEO ranks as the second
most approved CEO only beaten out by Boston Consulting Group.
Adobe also earns dozens of awards every single year for having one of the most progressive
company cultures.
Employees like Adobe so much that they’ve been able to maintain an A+ 4.9 star rating
across 24,775 employee reviews.
Clearly, Adobe knows how to handle employees and keep them happy, so how did Adobe go so
wrong with their customers?
MILKING CUSTOMERS: To really understand this dichotomy between
employees and customers, we first have to understand why customers hate Adobe so much
in the first place.
And all of this can be traced back to 2012 when Adobe introduced Creative Cloud.
Creative Cloud completely uprooted Adobe’s revenue model.
Instead of having customers pay large one time licensing fees of $500 to $700 for a
specific version of a software, they forced people to jump onto an expensive subscription
plan which currently costs $55 per month or $660 per year.
For professionals who already had licenses to several Adobe apps and were constantly
upgrading, this was actually a great deal.
For example, if you had licenses to 5 Adobe apps that each cost $700 and you upgraded
them once every five years, you were spending $3,500 every 5 years and only getting access
to 5 apps at a fixed version.
With the subscription on the other hand, you would not only be paying less at $3,300 for
every 5 years, but you would have access to all of Adobe’s apps and always have the
latest version as well.
The problem though was that the vast majority of Adobe’s users didn’t fall within this
category.
The average user only needed 1 maybe 2 apps.
If we assume that they upgraded at the same frequency of once every 5 years, we’re talking
about a 5 years cost of $700 or $1400.
Also, that’s only if you bought the whole software again.
Usually, there were upgrade options that cost $200 or $300.
With the subscription model, however, they now had to pay $3,300 for every 5 years for
little in return.
Now, you might be thinking, why not just get the individual plans.
Well, the individuals plans are ripoffs, and honestly, I think they exist simply to make
the main plan seem more attractive.
For example, you can either get 20+ apps for $55 per month or you can get just Photoshop
or just Premiere Pro for $21 per month.
At those prices, many of you are probably thinking that it would just be better to pirate
the software, and for hobbyists and freelancers, that might’ve made sense.
But, for real professionals and companies, that simply wasn’t an option.
These people were in a weird middle ground where they felt that the software was overpriced,
but at the same time, their businesses were making too much money for them to be dealing
with glitchy pirated software.
Also, if they had any significant scale, they couldn’t risk getting sued by Adobe.
So, they had no choice but to reluctantly pay the price, and judging by Adobe’s financials,
this is what most professionals ended up doing.
In the last 8 years, Adobe’s annual earnings have skyrocketed from $200 to $300 million
to roughly $5 billion, mostly thanks to the new subscription model.
But, while this move worked out great financially, this move put off many of Adobe’s customers
for the first time.
Many of them started looking for alternatives, but the reality is that there are no alternatives
for most Adobe apps.
Sure, you’ve got options like Da Vinci Resolve, Sony Vegas, Final Cut Pro, and Blender for
video editing.
But, if you’re looking for things like Lighroom, Illustrator, Animate, or Photoshop, you have
no choice but to go with Adobe.
I mean, there’s a reason they control 90% of this market.
And now, Adobe had turned on the milking switch.
UNETHICAL PRACTICES: Now that Adobe is making all this extra money
serving the same market, you would think that they would amp up the customer experience.
This means less bugs, fewer crashes, better customer support, and greater compatibility.
But, the company has actually been trending in the exact opposite direction ever since
they launched the subscription model mostly because they just don’t have to care.
Before the subscription model, it was essential that Adobe made each iteration as significant
and impactful as possible.
This was the only way that they were gonna convince new users to get a license or existing
users to upgrade their license.
With the subscription model, however, Adobe has 30 million users locked in paying every
single month or every single year regardless of whether the software improves or not.
At the very least, you would hope that they would maintain a certain bar, but even that’s
not the case.
With every new iteration of Windows, MacOS, and GPUs, it seems like Adobe’s software
simply gets buggier and glitchier because they’re not keeping up with the changes.
And if you try to contact them about these issues, you’re probably going to be ignored
just like all of these people.
Aside from letting their software standards slip, it seems like Adobe has also let their
ethical standards slip as well.
For years, Adobe was able to just sit back and watch their income figures go up as more
and more people reluctantly switched over.
But, this upward trend came to a harsh end during the pandemic.
Basically, everyone who was on the fence about Adobe capitulated and subscribed during the
pandemic.
In other words, Adobe reached market saturation with their subscriptions and their net income
has actually been flat for 2 years now.
This isn’t exactly a bad thing given that they’re making over a billion dollars every
single quarter, but as you might’ve guessed, they’re looking for more growth.
The easiest way to accomplish this is to just inch up subscription prices, and you can bet
that they’ve been doing that, but they’ve also turned to more unethical means in recent
times.
For example, judging based on reviews, there seems to be a trend of Adobe locking in free
trial users into annual subscriptions.
And when you try to cancel, you’re hit with a 100 to $150 termination fee.
Something else that’s put off many users is Adobe’s device limitations.
Even if you have a license, you’re only allowed to authenticate two devices at any
given time.
But if you’re a creative professional, you often use more than two devices on a regular
basis.
For example, you might have a main PC, a macbook, a windows laptop, and maybe an iPad.
But, if you want to use all of these devices, you’ll be regularly signing in and out and
authenticating and deauthenticating various devices.
This might sound like a first world problem, but let’s not forget that people are paying
$600 every single year for this software, and they can’t even use it on all their
devices.
The only reason that Adobe doesn’t offer a more generous device limit like 5 is to
get more people to sign up for their commercial licenses which costs $85 per month for each
license.
So, not only does Adobe milk their customers, but they often do it in unethical ways.
EMPLOYEE CHAMPION: In stark contrast to all of this, Adobe is
a champion amongst employees.
And the secret behind this is pretty simple: they treat employees how they want to be treated
starting with offering extraordinary flexibility.
Even before the pandemic, Adobe had strong remote work and hybrid work programs.
They also didn’t micromanage any of their employees.
In fact, they don’t even check if employees are at work during traditional working hours.
Of course, you might have to be present at certain meetings at certain times, but other
than than, you’re free to create your own working schedule, and you’ll be judged solely
on results.
If you’re able to work 10 hours a week and produce results that they’re happy with,
good for you.
Aside from giving employees freedom, Adobe also makes employees feel valued by giving
them significant responsibility.
For example, they offer unlimited paid time off because they trust that employees have
the best gauge of when and how much time they need to take off.
They also give employees significant freedom regarding what they work on.
But, likely the best example of Adobe’s responsibility driven culture is their award
winning Kickbox program.
This program gives any staff member who requests it a $1,000 prepaid credit card to explore
their ideas, no questions asked.
1,000 employees have used this program and 23 of these ideas ended up receiving further
investment.
Adobe only has a total of 25,000 employees meaning that 1 in 25 took this initiative
and tried to create larger impact.
All of this leads us to Adobe’s core company culture value which is integrating a people-centric
approach.
Oftentimes, one of the top complaints at many companies is that they don’t recognize or
appreciate their employees.
But, Adobe has a robust awards program that seeks to recognize the best employees every
single year.
The most prestigious of these awards is the Founders’ award which is given to 12 people
every single year.
Adobe also takes great care when it comes to encouraging diversity, ensuring pay parity,
creating transparency.
With all of these perks, it’s no wonder why Adobe is so cherished by their employees.
THE STATE OF ADOBE: As we can see, creating a great work place
culture isn’t rocket science.
It just comes to down to offering flexibility, freedom, responsibility, and recognition.
But ironically, these are the exact sectors in which Adobe is lacking when it comes to
their business.
They don’t offer customers any flexibility or freedom.
Basically everyone is forced to get the Creative Cloud subscription.
Similarly, Adobe is taking no responsibility when it comes to maintaining, refining, and
upgrading the user experience.
And finally, they’re not really recognizing or acknowledging their customers.
They offer crappy customer support and several legitimate concerns are just outright ignored.
Most companies would not be able to getaway with such behavior, but given Adobe’s monopoly
within creative software, they’re able to do just about anything.
And while there is a vocal minority that tries to spread awareness and is ditching Adobe
for things like Affinity Photo, the vast majority unfortunately just don’t care enough and
this includes myself as well.
Do I think Adobe’s software is overpriced, yes.
Am I paying for 20 apps just to use Premiere Pro and Photoshop, yes.
But, am I gonna change, no.
I’m simply used to Adobe, it gets the job done, and the price is not high enough for
me to not get it.
And unfortunately, this is the mindset of most people in the space and this is what
gave rise to the modern adobe that no one exactly loves, but everyone uses anyway.
Do you have an app or service like this in your life?
Comment that down below.
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