Really bad morning for employees who work at Adobe (headquarters in San Jose). Over 600 people lost their jobs today, many of those people were either friends of mine or people I knew. I worked there for a few years and survived a few lay offs, but none have been this bad...

There has been a lot of discussion over Adobe's role in outsourcing jobs to India... Lots of companies do this but Adobe is especially bad which is really unfortunate for a lot of bay area families who have been directly affected by this, and this mornings lay offs were no different.

Anyone else work at Adobe or know anyone affected by this?


One of my best friends, who has worked at Adobe for almost 15 years (his whole career) and given his soul to the company was let go just like that... I don't know what he's going to do because it's damn near impossible to find a job of the same sort at the moment and his mortgage is $$$...

Damn outsourcing...

 

Doesn't surprise me, and it shouldn't surprise you. You KNOW how Adobe is, man.

 

This is a huge problem and will be a leading factor in America's fall as the sole super power.

Also, this should be a wake up call to anyone that has anything to do with computers. If you aren't physically required to be there your job is in jeopardy.

This is the main reason I have abandoned my career in graphic design.

 

Wow..that must about 20% of the SJ office. Sucks. Better shoot out some mail...

 

I didn't know you worked at the SJ one, off almaden right?

If so, i'm pretty much around the corner from that building.

 

adobe is shooting themselves in the foot.


the price of their software is so high that a LOT of people steal it and a lot of companies only upgrade every couple years. And now they're releasing software that does a lot of the same things as their core programs for less so aps. like photoshop aren't being bought up by the same people that were buying them before... take am/pro photographers for example.

Hell I'm a designer and I can't figure out how I'm going to upgrade my software and I literally can't work right now without it. I need CS4 hell even CS3 so bad right now. I can't finish my website which means I can't find jobs. grrrrr.

 

dang! I was just talking to a guy today who helped his friend who works at Adobe to buy a house.
If we keep outsourcing who's gonna have the money to buy the products? We outsourced production of all sorts of goods and now software as well, which is even more ubiquitous.

the greediness of these huge corporations will have a boomerang effect.

 

right on Park Ave. - used to work there for 6 years, left in 2005 to start my own design biz. t-rodesign.com...feel bad for the folks there!!! Good people and bad decisions

 

I found a pic I have you at Adobe, I'll post it up later tonight. Might have one of your friends in it.

 

My buddy works at the SF Adobe location (formerly Macromedia), hope he still has a job. I used to work right next to SJ Adobe too (@ PG&E).

 

I know it is easy to think that, but I believe it is incorrect. I hear this argument all the time and I'd like to waste a bunch of time to address it.

As American industries progress and innovate, we outsource 'simpler' work to countries whose labor force can do it cheaper than we can. That allows us to focus on more complicated and, presumably, more profitable work. America is better off for it and so are the countries we outsource to.

An analogy would be you working a part-time job while finishing your software degree. You are paid $10 per hour. Once a week you mow your own lawn. It takes you 2 hours plus the gas to run the lawn mower and edger. Then one day you finish your degree and get hired writing software somewhere. You get paid $100 per hour and can work as many hours as you'd like. You could still mow your own lawn but you choose not to. Instead, you pay a landscaping company $50 to do it for you.

You just outsourced! Why did you do it? Because your time is now worth more to you working or relaxing than $50 does. You could make $200 in the time it takes you to mow the lawn yourself, so you are way ahead financially by outsourcing that work plus your quality of life goes up (arguably - I'm assuming you hate mowing the lawn as much as I hate mowing the lawn).

This is just one of hundreds of examples of outsourcing that you and I do every single day. Do you grow your own wheat to bake your own fresh bread? No. Do you make your own shoes? No. Do you maintain your own jet to take you on long-distance trips? No. Do you write all your own computer software? No. You outsource all of these things to people who specialize in it for a living. They can offer it to you for far cheaper than you ever could make it yourself. Really what I'm talking about here is specialization of labor and it is a very good thing. Why? Because whatever amount of money you do make, SOL makes it possible for you to buy a great variety of things AND buy them for far less than if you made them yourself. You get more of the things you need to live and probably things that you want, so your quality of life goes up.

Now you may agree with everything I've said so far, but still believe that outsourcing jobs to foreign countries is different. I think that notion is incorrect as well and here's why. Let's say you live in San Jose. Do you ever eat at restaurants in Palo Alto? If so, you've outsourced that work that could have been done in your home city of San Jose to workers in a 'foreign' city. Do you ever buy cars that were not made here in California at the NUMMI plant (assume for a minute that it is still in existence!), but were instead made in Michigan? You just outsourced work that could have been done here in your home state to another state. Neither of these examples sound like very bad things. Why? Because even though you didn't pay the employees working at the San Jose restaurant, sooner or later, people from Palo Alto will eat in San Jose, balancing out the equation. Or more indirectly, the money you sent to Michigan will be used by workers there to purchase food. Some of that will no doubt have come from California. Or the money is used to buy software, again from California. Everyone that is offering a worthwhile product or service profits in the end, regardless of where they live.

In fact, if outsourcing is as bad as many people say it is, then ANY form of outsourcing should be eliminated, to the point that you should not even outsource work to people outside your immediate family. Heck, don't even let your wife do any work. If she just did the laundy, she took yer job! You can't afford to lose that work! Do EVERYTHING youself! Why does outsourcing make sense between family members, between cities, and between states, but suddenly NOT work when it goes beyond our national borders. So long as there is free trade both ways between two countries, outsourcing benefits both.

None of that helps the guy who just lost his job because it was outsourced to India. Except it does, just indirectly. As 3rd world countries start taking on our old jobs and industries, their standard of living starts to rise. With that comes new demand for products and services, many of which their own economy cannot provide. They have to go outside of their own economy to satisfy that demand and this means more sales for US companies. Now that Indians have some cash to throw around, where are they going to get a world-class sports car? Tata doesn't make one (yet), so they import a 911 from Germany or (ack!) a Vette from the US. Outsourcing is one part of a mechanism to CREATE an entire new market for products that did not exist before. Indians are living better and, because Americans are now doing more profitable, less labor-intensive work AND selling more products than ever before, we're better off too.

The lesson for those who have just lost their job is to move up the ladder another rung. Learn new skills to work in industries that are more cutting-edge than the one we just abandoned to those able and willing to do it for less money. Or move into industries where you or your state or the USA has a competitive advantage over others. Yesterday's high-tech job is tomorrow's menial, cookie-cutter job whether we like it not. Quit mowing yards and start working on that software degree.

Joe

 

What american mow's someone elses lawn?

Problem we have Joe is that we are still in the phase of entitlement. Many immigrants and have left and gone back to where they came from.

I think once this country tanks big time people will get desperate, and off their high horses and get back to doing the work they ****ted immigrants for doing.

Difference will be that many Immigrants are now business owners, and they are bosses in many ways.

I'm sure some Indian pizza place owner smiles when he's got his white neighbors kid coming in for a delivery job. I would

 

Is there any information on the types of jobs and income levels that were eliminated? There is also a possibility that many of those people were overpaid compared to their productivity and contribution to the company's bottom line.

I have seen numerous situation in my line of work...where people that are at a company for 15 years never move up vertically, take on more responsibility or are stuck in some middle management role that they cannot advance out of due to their social priorities. However, they are still continue getting higher salaries via merit, annual review and other non-promotional increases while doing the same type of job they originally started with.

So, when it comes a tougher time for the company, do you think a an employee getting $100,000/year doing a $50,000 job REALLY going to be worth it? And how many people do you think would take that cut if that was truly the case? I think there is always a certain distorted precedent in terms of what people expect to get paid; rarely do they see the true $$$ value of their job or contribution to the company.

I do not have the compensation and payroll statistics of Adobe to say that for certain, but from the companies I helped turnaround or close down, that was always a big sore trend that had to be fixed. Not all terminations and outsourcing are evil and unjustified.

Very nice post. Your last point would require people to view their work not just as 'jobs' but as 'careers'. There is a huge distinctions and very few people I have encountered actually bother to make it or put effort into staying on top of the game and not getting complacent or too comfortable.

 

Sounds like the Peter Principle to me: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Principle

 

Just playing the devil's advocate here, but here's my 0.02$:
At the end, it's us, the paying customer, who are at fault. We want more for less...Capitalism kicks in, and we are left with companies having to do anything they could to satisfy the customer and to make a buck. While we look at layoffs as evil and unfair, the big picture question is, imho, would you rather have a company layoff a few employees and keep going or keep its employees and file for bankruptcy (All the employees in that case would lose their job )?
I was laid off last year right before thanksgiving. I was very bitter, but eventually I found another job, that pays a lot more and doing something more exciting.
It's funny when people only want to buy American (in America), i.e. american cars, yet it's the American world presence in several market/industries that has made this country what it is.