Corporate Culture
May. 24th, 2008 11:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jakebe
I've been thinking about my job a lot, and why it's so...vaguely unsatisfying. Honestly, if I take an objective look at it it's not so bad. I'm making more money than I've ever made before. The people that I work with are, on the whole, nice, competent, interesting and diverse. The work that I do actually benefits the employees directly, and it does feel pretty good to make someone's life easier. On a good day, people are relieved, pleased and thankful. It's also really varied, so I don't have to do the same thing over and over.
The thing that trips me up, though, is wondering what it's all for. Adobe is a monstrous company, and it does an awful lot of stuff. I think it's fair, however, to classify it as a multi-media company. The machine is ultimately geared towards making multimedia products that can be displayed by businesses in internal applications, on the Internet, so forth and so on. It's been built for this purpose, and I can see the use of it, but it's not something I really think is necessary.
That's the ultimate problem; not that I'm a cog in a machine, but that the machine's ultimate purpose is one that I don't find particularly enriching for people. Even when I was working at a crappy mall job, I went home feeling more satisfied; I gravitated towards stores like Natural Wonders, The Discovery Channel Store and the Imaginarium, where all of the toys and gadgets and videos and t-shirts were geared towards learning more about the world around you, maintaining some sense of wonder. The types of people we would get in that store were very specific, and I enjoyed interacting with them; they were there because they liked the idea of something being fun and illuminating, and we were designed for that. I *loved* selling telescopes, and minerals; I could throw myself into learning everything about them because they were awesome. I was excited, and I could get other people excited. I was part-sales, part-teacher.
There's nothing like that for me at Adobe, and I miss it. I think moving to a library or university position works well for me because I can fill that role a bit more easily. I can get excited about what we're all doing there, because the ultimate goal there is one of enrichment. That's something I can get behind. Making fonts look great? It's neat, and more power to those folks who are passionate about it, but me not so much.
Of course, my opinion on all of this might change. I'm flighty that way. =:)
The thing that trips me up, though, is wondering what it's all for. Adobe is a monstrous company, and it does an awful lot of stuff. I think it's fair, however, to classify it as a multi-media company. The machine is ultimately geared towards making multimedia products that can be displayed by businesses in internal applications, on the Internet, so forth and so on. It's been built for this purpose, and I can see the use of it, but it's not something I really think is necessary.
That's the ultimate problem; not that I'm a cog in a machine, but that the machine's ultimate purpose is one that I don't find particularly enriching for people. Even when I was working at a crappy mall job, I went home feeling more satisfied; I gravitated towards stores like Natural Wonders, The Discovery Channel Store and the Imaginarium, where all of the toys and gadgets and videos and t-shirts were geared towards learning more about the world around you, maintaining some sense of wonder. The types of people we would get in that store were very specific, and I enjoyed interacting with them; they were there because they liked the idea of something being fun and illuminating, and we were designed for that. I *loved* selling telescopes, and minerals; I could throw myself into learning everything about them because they were awesome. I was excited, and I could get other people excited. I was part-sales, part-teacher.
There's nothing like that for me at Adobe, and I miss it. I think moving to a library or university position works well for me because I can fill that role a bit more easily. I can get excited about what we're all doing there, because the ultimate goal there is one of enrichment. That's something I can get behind. Making fonts look great? It's neat, and more power to those folks who are passionate about it, but me not so much.
Of course, my opinion on all of this might change. I'm flighty that way. =:)
