Adobe to cut 9 percent of workforce

Adobe Systems expects to cut 680 full-time employees, or about 9 percent of its global workforce, as the company tries to align costs in the face of lagging sales.

The layoff, which was disclosed Tuesday in a regulatory filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, marks the second wave of job cuts in the past year. In December, the company said it would slash 600 jobs amid less-than-anticipated demand for its recently launched Creative Suite 4 series of products.

The cuts will affect only those workers who were Adobe employees before the $1.8 billion acquisition of Web analytics firm Omniture in September. They are separate from an earlier-announced 9 percent workforce reduction within the Omniture unit, which had about 1,200 employees at the time of the acquisition.

Adobe, which is best known for its Photoshop and Illustrator software titles, said it expects to record about $65 million to $71 million in pretax restructuring charges.

"Adobe is restructuring its business to align costs with its fiscal 2010 operating plan and budget, the company's three-year strategic priorities, and the realities of the business environment, as well as to ensure its ability to continue investing in long-term growth opportunities," Adobe said in a statement.

In September, Adobe reported that its fiscal third-quarter profit fell 29 percent amid declining sales.

[nicmart]

Bravo. Now let them cut their prices by 50 percent. Adobe's high prices and domination of its software categories make it very vulnerable to competition, and it will come soon enough. I used to upgrade Adobe products consistently, but since the company's prices have bloated, I've done my part in giving the company "declining sales." Consumer are voting against Adobe with their dollars.

[abcd9009]

I agree with you. I have been using Photoshop since version 8 and upgrading to almost every version. But it's just not worth it anymore and I am happy with CS2.

[fxf008]

I agree. I got tired of paying ever increasing prices for products that give only minor improvements from version to version. Adobe needs to wake up and realize the world is in a severe recession. We can do without the upgrades if we have to.

[Super2online]

There are plenty of competing products at less than 50% of Adobe's price that will give you 99% of what there software will do. You just have to do the research and occasionally compromise a bit.

[CreativeMalcolm]

Pixelmator for OS X is brilliant, aside from dodging and burning it does nearly everything I use Photoshop for, and it's snappy as hell! Within a few years I might not even bother using Photoshop. Most of the new things they add aren't even useful. They should spend more money cleaning up the interface.

[nicmart]

A photo editor without dodging and burning is like the Hallelujah Chorus sung only by castrati.

[gmoney3000]

Here's a crazy idea: instead of blowing $1.8B for Omniture -- which is really a heinous product that consists of 2 lines of javascript and browser cookie -- Adobe could have kept that money in the bank to ride out the recession and kept their staff working on new projects.

Businesses that lay-off employees like this do not deserve any loyalty from their workers.

[pjk0]

And it's not just the prices that are bloated: Adobe applications are bloated monstrosities these days.

It seems that the whole company has become rather fat and ponderous, not to mention arrogant - like a couple of other SW companies I can think of. Perhaps this is the harbinger of a more streamlined approach in general in the future. We can only hope.

[M C]

Adobe has a long history of laying off staff as a direct response to...everything.

They once even laid off workers the same day the stock split.

In all likelihood the vast majority of those laid off were in the customer service and documentation departments. Those have steadily become worse as time wears on, while prices have stayed the same. I use open-source products for most of my design tasks these days, because as a hobbyist who only infrequently designs for work, the ROI on the cost is horrible, especially when I have to solve my own problems.

In effect, I've laid off Adobe.

[JimPratt3]

What happened to Adobe? Cutting ridiculous pricing is one thing. Selling buggy programs like Premiere Elements 8 and the 'new' GPU rendering in Photoshop CS4 (and then not fixing them after users point out the shortcomings), which causes so many users brush lag and even more trouble, should be at the top of their list.

[DaveB1980]

Well, if they didn't charge over $1000 for their main product, maybe they wouldn't have *had* to cut jobs. I mean I can count the number of people I know with legitimate copies of Photoshop on one hand; and I know a lot of people who use it. A majority of these people own legit copies of all of their other software and OSes.

Just sayin'.

[mesonto]

I originally read this article and thought to myself why don't they infuse their brand with greater customer loyalty by creating less buggy products (or at least fixing them quickly and acknowledging problems... just check their forums) and by dropping prices. Their pricing structure is insane!!!

Funny thing was when I went to read all the comments, everyone else had the same things to say about Adobe. Now all that they have to do is 'acknowledge' their consumers but unfortunately they have never done this well.

[delder]

Adobe continues to have just awful tech support. They ignore problem reports. They recently sent out a Robohelp update which corrupted all Robohelp files. They have yet to respond to this problem after 2 weeks. They are in complete denial. And - it might help if they got serious about 64 bit support, especially for Flash.

[rocketjam--2008]

Adobe needs to take a step back, improve their customer relations (which have fallen off badly over the past few years) and clean up/stabilize their software portfolio rather than focus on the next upgrade round. They've burned a lot of customer goodwill in recent years.

[CaptThom]

I have to echo most of the other comments here. I've used Adobe products since the early 90s, and the quality of their software has declined in direct proportion to their absurd pricing structure. Customer service and tech support is dreadful. I identified a significant bug in one of their titles, and after two months they simply closed the bug report without resolving the issue. Astonishing.

I've purchased my last Adobe product.

[metomjr]

I agree with above. So lucky I was able to snag educational pricing ($300) from my brother (I had just graduated 2 months prior when CS4 Production Premium came out and Adobe refused to offer me an educational discount because of that).

CS4 crashes constantly when I'm editing videos/burning DVDs.

[Earl Benzar]

It's pricing that is the biggest issue. I have CS4 Web Premium, but for video I switched over to the Final Cut Studio suite. If there were real alternatives to Photoshop, Illustrator, and Flash, I'd dump Adobe because I'm certain CS5 will be just as expensive as CS4.

[genkuros]

I miss the leaner utility-like programs that did the job and nothing more. Adobe really seems to be drifting away from capable stand-alone programs to a meta program that combines all five. Yeah, that's right. Adobe is building Voltron.

DRM is a sore spot too. Who cares if some kid is scanning a Franklin? Meanwhile, Illustrator CS2 still crashes if I leave it running for more than 24 hours.