Adobe commits suicide

[pauland]

I suspect that your reference to "hysteria" may be in response to my comments about overseas outsourcing.

Absolutely not. It didn't enter my head.

I suggest you reach out to a few of the IT veterans who've lived through having a once superb career become a daily struggle to stay employed.

Why would I need to reach for anyone else's experience? I am a long-term software developer.

The world is changing fast and we have to change with it.

[Know1]

[pauland]

Well, with mobile operations, the cloud makes perfect sense.. ;-)

Nice picture!

[jon404]

@Paul -- maybe not so much hysteria, as resentment at change? Some of us, older rather than younger, trying to fight delaying-actions to stave off the inevitable? And younger people thinking "What? What are they upset about? What on earth is wrong with a distributed international 24/7 workforce?"

Technological change always affects a lot of people. Lots of jobs vanish; new jobs are created. When I got my first (very) low-level art job at DD&B in New York in the '60s, I rode the offset-printing change wave all the way in. Most of the letterpress guys never adapted and lost out. Thing was, though -- all those jobs -- the lost ones and the new ones -- were all in the USA. So if you could hop from an old wave to the new one, it worked out. Like going from artboard to computer... with the overwhelming benefits that came from standalone programs like Photoshop and Xara.

I'm going on about this because I want to keep art jobs in the USA. In California; in San Diego. Because I know that 5% of every generation coming up likes art enough to do it in some way or another for a life's work, a real career that pays well. Maybe 10%, if you add in people who paint custom cars, like that. And there's nothing I can do -- nothing -- to stop the offshoring of art jobs. The cost differential is too great for any business to resist. So you're picking up a lot of resentment at internet-caused change, sorry about that.

@Jon -- Fifty years ago, an artist and a copywriter would go into a room and come up with an ad. This worked well. Today you can do the same thing with Cisco Telepresence. Minus lunch, of course, and minus a few drinks after lunch. And minus having to argue for your concept face-to-face with Bill Bernbach or Helmut Krone, if you hadn't exactly come up with a winner. Again, though, you can do that via Cisco. In the distributed workplace, once everyone's made their changes, all will agree that the art's just fine.

But versus the cost-savings from much lower salaries, comes the increased friction and delays caused by design-by-committee. More meetings, more missed deadlines. Or mumbled agreements to 'put the changes in the next version', just to get something out the door on time. Sand in the gears.

But don't get your hopes up. The Creative Cloud is here to stay, in one form or another. And, the internet being what it is, probably for free or next to nothing. Adobe'll make a few bucks off it before they tank. But the real problem remains -- how to get those art jobs back home -- and keep them here!

[handrawn]

interesting - I wonder if you USA guys ever stop to think about how you sound to those of us who live elsewhere?

[covoxer]

how you sound to those of us who live elsewhere?

Sounds quite reasonable to me. And I do live elsewhere.

[haakoo]

how you sound to those of us who live elsewhere?

My sentiments exactly.

Hans

[handrawn]

EDIT: @covoxer: I was talking about the jobs outsourcing - one of us at the very least benefits from that

as far as adobe CC is concerned I've said what I think earlier

be interesting to see how it pans out

[covoxer]

one of us at the very least

So, perhaps you shouldn't really talk for all of us, do you?

[pauland]

I think the title Moderator is a bit of a misnomer in some cases.