10 Years at Adobe

22 May 2022 » Opinion

It has been a long journey, but here I am: in less than 1 week I will celebrate my 10th anniversary at Adobe. It has been an amazing journey, much better than what I thought 10 years ago. Without a doubt, it has been my best job ever. Not everything has been rosy, though. Let me summarize the positives and the negatives of these 10 years.

On the bright side

I do not think I have to prove that I am happy at Adobe. Otherwise, I would have not lasted that long. It has been my best job ever and I am proud to work for such a special company. Since I do not want to bore you with my story, here is a summary of what I have achieved in these 10 years:

  • Selection. Against all odds, I was given the job when I applied to it. I was not even living in London and I know I was a risky bet. Besides, during the onboarding process, we were told that only 1 in 60 CVs made it.
  • Promotions. I started as a simple consultant, then progressed to senior consultant and now I am a principal consultant.
  • Being known. I am not a celebrity (and do not want to be one), but I have met many people and even more know about me. In fact, I have learnt that I am a people person, which has helped me a lot.
  • Adobe tools. My first tool was Adobe SiteCatalyst Analytics. Now I can confidently talk about most of the Adobe Experience Cloud and Platform.
  • Training. I have received a lot of training at Adobe, from PRINCE2 to soft skills. I even took a training where the trainer wanted to meet me (I wonder what he had heard about me…)
  • Digital Marketing Academy. My best experience ever at Adobe was my participation in the Digital Marketing Academy (DMA). This is an internal training, which started in 2016, where we get prepared for the architect role. That year I was a learner, but in the years after, I became a facilitator and part of the organization team.
  • Facilitator. Besides the DMA, I have delivered other internal pieces of training in various matters. I guess I like to disseminate my knowledge.
  • Mentor. I have mentored a few people, starting with the first Analytics consultants in the India team, to a colleague who asked me to be her mentor a few years ago.
  • Feedback. Many customers have given me positive or very positive feedback; the last occasion, this week. Some customers have even complained and pushed back really hard when I had to be moved to other accounts.
  • Summit. I delivered a lab at the Adobe Summit 2019 in London.
  • Blogging. I started this blog in 2015 and, since then, I have written 100+ posts. Some people I have met knew about me before meeting me, thanks to this blog. I also want to take the opportunity to send a special “Thank you” to all of you who read my blog.
  • Travel. Thanks to internal meetings and my customers, I have visited the following countries: Denmark, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Italy, the Nederlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the USA.
  • Relocation to the USA. Not only I have visited the USA a few times with Adobe; I have relocated to this country, where I started a few months ago.

And all that while I still worked for my clients. I cannot deny that I am very happy about my achievements.

Downsides

I rarely talk about what has not gone well. I guess it is a cultural trait: we do not want to show our failures. However, as I said, there have been a few times when things have not gone well.

  • Stuck. Very few people know it, but a couple of times I was seriously considering leaving Adobe. I had reached a point where I did not see any future for me in the company. Fortunately for me, both times I received the training I needed to do something new, which kept me happy.
  • Reorganization. There was an important reorganization within the EMEA consulting team more than 1 year ago. I had some expectations of where I would land, but I did not get the job I wanted.
  • COVID-19. I know that this is not only my case, all of us have been hit to some degree by COVID-19. In my case, the last 2.5 years have not been as much fun as the previous 7.5 years.

The future

I wish I was a real fortune teller and I could read my future. I do not know what I will get, although I have a few paths I want to explore.

In case you were wondering, I do not want to leave Adobe. It has been my home for the last 10 years and, as I mentioned earlier, I have had so much fun most of the time. Besides, now that I am working in the USA, I expect more opportunities to arise. Although it is truly international, at the end of the day, Adobe is a US-based company.

Looking back in time, I have noticed that there is one skill that I have gained and I want to keep on expanding: leadership. Something tells me that my future will be linked more and more to this trait. If I get to the 15-year mark, I will tell you whether my hunch was right.

Let me ask you a question: where do you see me in the next few years?

 

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