05-07-2013, 05:14 PM
An interesting (I hope!) aside:
In late 2003 I interviewed for a Product Marketing position at Adobe's headquarters in San Jose. In Round One I was interviewed by a large group (maybe 10 people) in the Marketing department, was asked a lot of questions as to how I would handle theoretical issues relating to marketing (e.g, "Should new products/updates contain the year of the release in the name, such as CS 2004, or should they be numbered sequentially, as in CS 2?").
I felt confident answering the questions and it seemed to go well, enough that I made it to the next round of interviews.
In Round Two I interviewed one-on-one with a vice president of Marketing. She asked me several questions about long-term marketing trends, and I explained why I thought Software as a Service (SaaS) was the coming thing and how it made a lot of sense for Adobe. It guarantees a much steadier revenue stream than boxed software, which gives customers too much discretion as to when they will spend money on an upgrade. I went on about this topic for a few more minutes.
And then I realized she was looking at me like I was crazy. After I left the interview I knew I had blown it and sure enough, I never heard from Adobe again.
P.S.
The Adobe employees that grilled me in the group interview were some of the unhappiest people I had seen in quite a while. So maybe I dodged a bullet there...
In late 2003 I interviewed for a Product Marketing position at Adobe's headquarters in San Jose. In Round One I was interviewed by a large group (maybe 10 people) in the Marketing department, was asked a lot of questions as to how I would handle theoretical issues relating to marketing (e.g, "Should new products/updates contain the year of the release in the name, such as CS 2004, or should they be numbered sequentially, as in CS 2?").
I felt confident answering the questions and it seemed to go well, enough that I made it to the next round of interviews.
In Round Two I interviewed one-on-one with a vice president of Marketing. She asked me several questions about long-term marketing trends, and I explained why I thought Software as a Service (SaaS) was the coming thing and how it made a lot of sense for Adobe. It guarantees a much steadier revenue stream than boxed software, which gives customers too much discretion as to when they will spend money on an upgrade. I went on about this topic for a few more minutes.
And then I realized she was looking at me like I was crazy. After I left the interview I knew I had blown it and sure enough, I never heard from Adobe again.
P.S.
The Adobe employees that grilled me in the group interview were some of the unhappiest people I had seen in quite a while. So maybe I dodged a bullet there...