We asked some of our colleagues to share their experience on blending growing a career and building a family. Here are some of the benefits they most appreciate while working in Adobe Romania.

Growing a career while navigating teams and projects

Mihaela Dobre: “In my 15 years at Adobe, I’ve been part of many teams. I’ve started with Flex Builder and continued with SaaS products: I’ve been part of the team that delivered the first version of Creative Cloud, contributed to multiple infrastructure projects, to enterprise products like Analytics and Primetime. For most of my career at Adobe, I had the role of Program Manager. Currently, I am Sr Business Operations Manager for Digital Experience (DX). From this role, some of my main responsibilities are to drive cross-groups initiatives and help to disseminate knowledge and best practices across the organization.”

Tudor Muscalu: “13 years in Adobe Romania: I started as an experience designer supporting the AIR and Platform teams, back in the Flash days, I’ve worked with so many teams, Business Catalyst, Lightroom to name a few. I’m currently a design manager inside the Adobe Design Prototyping team where I manage a team of experience developers and we partner with experience designers and researchers to build prototypes for many teams across all business units.”

Craita Ene-Goaga: “I joined as a Junior Quality Engineer in a team that was building from scratch a web-based application for Adobe call center agents to use in customer support calls. That first project shaped my career and got me traveling the world in various Adobe call centers from the US to Europe to India to Japan. 

Gradually I shifted to QA team lead, Scrum Master, and then Program Manager, which I currently am in the API Platform group in Cloud Tech, a team responsible for delivering, managing, tracking and securing Adobe APIs.”

Work-life balance and supportive management

Mihaela: “As an Adobe employee you have the flexibility to integrate your life into your work schedule: run errands, pick up the kids from school, attend PTA meetings, go to the gym, and so on, knowing that nobody will frown.”

Tudor: “My manager offers all of us complete flexibility and, in return, we over-deliver on every single occasion. I do the same with my own team and I keep reminding them to act responsibly about work-life balance and their health.”

Craita: “The support, encouragement, appreciation, and career path vision I always felt my manager had for me, instilled a constant motivation and drive in my work.”

Relying on teammates 

Tudor: “Anyone in Adobe Romania can take up to 2 years of parental leave. Returning to the exact place that you left and having the same career options is not as simple. However, in my case, it was my team and my manager that found a way to make everything run smoothly during my one-year absence. So smooth that in just a few days after returning it felt like I had never left. For me, the culture and people are the supreme benefits.”

Being promoted while on maternity/paternity leave

Tudor: “My manager reached out to me while I was away on parental leave to tell me I was going to be promoted when returning to work.”

Craita: “The last meeting before my maternity leave was a surprise baby shower and a 1-1 meeting with my manager to let me know I had been promoted.“

Covid-19 employee support

Mihaela: “Everybody at Adobe appreciated the genuine care and concern that the global leadership showed during this period. We’ve received a budget to upgrade our home office and the wellness budget was increased and extended to our family as well. One of my favorite perks was the Global Days Off initiative where we get a Friday off every 3 weeks so we can have a long weekend and rest.”

Tudor: “We have a really great team in Bucharest who is working hard to create special events and bring us seminars and events on wellbeing, mental health, and fitness. They even organized events for our kids.”

Craita: “We have flexible hours and a budget at our disposal to set a home office if needed. I’ve had support and care from all team members, so coming back to work has been very smooth for me.”

Parents’ benefits

Mihaela: “First, as a new mom, I didn’t feel any pressure to come back to work while on Maternity Leave. Also, the medical assurance Adobe provides covers birth fees in a private hospital.”

Tudor: “Moving forward in the post COVID world, I’m seeing a commonsense approach for the future of work and a lot of emphasis on flexibility which are going to be key for me as well.“

Craita: “Both my old and new manager have been very supportive, repeatedly telling me: “Family comes first, enjoy this time as it’s short and unique. Your job can wait, your baby won’t”.

Things got even more challenging when my second baby soon arrived, and I ended up staying 4 years in a row on maternity. Adobe as a whole was fully reliable; besides a generous bonus for each birth, extra paid time off, and keeping my full health insurance for my family during these 4 years, I could stay connected and receive assistance whenever needed, just like my other colleagues.”

Do you have any advice for people considering starting a family while developing their careers?

Mihaela: “Recently, I started an employee network called Adobe Moms, and I hope it will grow into a small community. We meet regularly and discuss different topics; we ask for advice, share best practices, and address concerns regarding starting a family while managing a career.

In my long tenure at Adobe, I’ve witnessed a lot of people getting promoted shortly after being back from parental leave. The management team is regularly conducting salary calibrations to maintain internal equity, therefore, since we pay per performance, an employee should not have financial concerns because they were on Parental leave. All in all, my advice is that Adobe is a great place to start a family.”

Craita: “Advancing in your career will yield even more fulfillment when there are little ones who can look up and learn from your ambition and passions in life. Plus, they motivate you even more. 

However, DO look for a company that values people and family as it should.”

Explore career opportunities at Adobe Romania.

(P) -This article is an advertorial.