Adobe’s employees are typically of the same opinion of the company as its users, having internally already expressed concern that AI could kill the jobs of their customers. That continued this week in internal discussions, where exasperated employees implored leadership to not let it be the “evil” company customers think it is.
This past week, Adobe became the subject of a public relations firestorm after it pushed an update to its terms of service that many users saw at best as overly aggressive and at worst as a rights grab. Adobe quickly clarified it isn’t spying on users and even promised to go back and adjust its terms of service in response.
For many though, this was not enough, and online discourse surrounding Adobe continues to be mostly negative. According to internal Slack discussions seen by Business Insider, as before, Adobe’s employees seem to be siding with users and are actively complaining about Adobe’s poor communications and inability to learn from past mistakes.
Cool, then strike.
I was working at a company at one point that got a contract to build something I viewed equivalent to malware. Immediately I bought it up to several higher-ups that this was not something I was willing to do. One of them brought up the argument “If we don’t do it someone else will.”
This mentality scares the shit out of me, but it explains a lot of horrible things in the industry.
Believing in that mentality is worse than the reality of the situation. At least if you say no there’s a chance it doesn’t happen or it gets passed to someone worse than you. If you say yes then not only are you complicit, you are actively enforcing that gloomy mentality for other engineers. Just say no.
It‘s exactly this dangerous mindset that‘s riding us in some AI service hellhole. Too many super talented developers have told themselves exactly that instead of standing up for their principles or even allowing themselves to have principles in the first place.
Only recently have they started leaving companies like OpenAI and taking a stance because they‘re actually seeing what their creation is used for and with how little care for human life it‘s been handled.
Of course many critics knew this was headed towards military contracts and complete Enshittification. It was plain to see OpenAI founders aren‘t the good guys but „someone else would do it anyway“ kept the underlings happy. This deterministic fallacy is also why anyone still works for Meta or Google. It‘s a really lazy excuse.
Only recently have they started leaving companies like OpenAI and taking a stance because they‘re actually seeing what their creation is used for and with how little care for human life it‘s been handled.
Is this true though? From my understanding, Altman was able to overrule the board largely because the employees (especially the one who had been with the company for more than 1-2 years) were worried about their stock options.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the vast majority of the OpenAI team are ghouls just like Altman, that fundamentally lack humanity (incapable of honesty, inability to tell right from wrong, incapable of empathy).
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean this in the Hollywood sense, like the evil antagonists in say star wars, I am sure they come off as “normal” during a casual conversation. I am referring to going deeper and asking subtle questions referring to matters of ethics and self-enrichment in an off the record environment. They will always come up with some excuse to justify their greed as being “for the betterment of humanity” or some other comical word salad.
You know I‘m worried you might be exactly on point with this assumption. I still give some of them the benefit of doubt because humans can „reason“ themselves into pretty dangerous things by appealing to authority and the like. Doesn‘t make all of them evil but sure as hell way too gullible for the field they‘re working in.
One thing I like to tell people with that attitude is: whatever someone does, there’s always someone else who will see it as an example and challenge to do it “better”. Do you want to be the company that started that chain? Are you prepared to compete in that race?
For something borderline malware, someone will take your lead and make it “better malware”. If you are not prepared to respond in kind, then why did you even go there? If you’re not ready to be known as the top of the line malware creator, why start the product line?
It is unfortunately one of the darker aspects of the hyper-growth-focused tech and engineering is the often highly mercenary/transactional nature of many people in the field. Like, there’s a reason Facebook pays engineers 250-400k or more. Sure, the work can be difficult, but most of the time it’s not that difficult. They’re paying people that much so that they ignore their morals, shut the fuck up, and just take the paycheck and do the work that is helping to destroy society.
It’s immensely distressing to me as a software engineer. I am fully aware that my morality is limiting my earning potential, and that makes me kinda furious - not so much at myself, but that our economic system is set up in such a way that that’s not only possible, but optimal (in terms of earning a nice paycheck and being able to retire somewhat early).
I doubt they’re unionized. A strike without a union is just refusing to do your job.
That’s what it is with a union too, it’s just more organized. You can strike without a union, it’s just a lot harder to organize and the stakes are way higher.
Good time to drop a reminder that Affinity’s tools are 50% off right now and are buy-once software.
Unfortunately, they were also recently acquired by Canva. It may be all right for the time being, but I wouldn’t throw my full weight behind them anymore.
Yeah same. I used to recommend them whole heartedly but now Im afraid they will go downhill
I guess I’m out of the loop, what’s wrong with Canva?
And they are a really great alternative!
Adobe is an evil company that will do whatever it takes to F its users,” one employee wrote, echoing sentiments
Microsoft : first time?
Adobe has been exploiuting users for years. they are invasive, they already do wayy more snooping in your data than they ever should. I stopppeed using them years ago and always recommend for others to do so. they don’t deserve your money and especially don’t deserve even one MB of your data.
Which products do you use instead?
Saw this in one of the Linux forums. I hope its useful.
I want to point out, because I see this chart or something like it a lot. Adobe has an absolute monopoly in the professional design space. None of these programs can remotely come close to the creative suite if you’re doing more than tinkering. If you’re making memes or doing some personal image manipulation, you can get by with GIMP or something. If you’re creating professional art or creating files for print or publication, you need Adobe. It’s scary that one corporation holds so much sway over an entire industry but they definitely do.
Affinity is the closest but still a ways off being a viable replacement for ID or PS. Source: worked in a design studio, every few years we would try Affinity in an attempt to de-Adobe our workflows but it’s just not comparable.
Why? Convenient features, contracts?
Conway’s Law in action.
Organisations which design systems (in the broad sense used here) are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organisations.
You know how fucked up your company is when even your employees are mad at you.
It’s always like that. When the only goal is more growth, the C-Suite will fuck everyone and anything over.
But people gotta eat and be homed, so that won’t change soon.
Remember: in most cases the c-suite consider you merely as resources(human) a source of labour.
To them employees are things.
Customers are just a revenue source, they are also just things.
CEO’s are just chasing their next quarterly performance bonus.
No wonder why everyone hates corporate things.
Imagine what projects like GIMP, Krita, Inkscape, Scribus etc could do with a fraction of monthly revenue of Adobe.
You mean Blender?
I don’t think there any proprietary 3d software, where you can just call dev and he will make it 10 times faster.