Paul Chirice has been working in the Adobe Romania team for 15 years. Has 10 software patents, published about 50 scientific articles and 2 books on programming. While he could be on any other team, he feels that Adobe is where he belongs. He now leads a team of nearly 200 engineers, but knows that a new opportunity will only open up in a matter of time. What made him join the Adobe Romania team and what qualities he looks for in his colleagues, you can find out in this interview about the experience of working for one of the most desirable employers in the world.

For many developers, working at Adobe is that an empty career. Did you have the same? How did you end up in the Adobe Romania team?

I really wanted to have as diverse an international experience as possible, so I decided to go to France in my third year of college and then do a PhD in search engines in Germany. Later, in 2007, I decided to return to Bucharest. It was not an end in itself to get to Adobe, but I wanted to work for a prestigious firm, and the offer from Adobe was very exciting. Unlike most companies that have either outsourced or localized and integrated US-made software, at Adobe we’ve had it from day one property almost entirely on the products we create. It was and still is very important to me the fact that I was always creating products and having peer-to-peer discussions with colleagues in the US.

What first drew you to Adobe?

Adobe is one of the few companies with really sonorous names, “iconic”, as they say in the USA. Today, I’m still proud that some of my teams have added key features to products like Photoshop, such as Neural Filters, which I suggest you look up on YouTube. It really has always been a an empty career for me to do something impactful to millions of people in a product that everyone knows about.

Enthusiasm and desire to develop, preferably for work at Adobe

You currently manage about 200 people developing some of the most complex products. Was this something you always wanted to do or did you get to this point?

I am in a better state now settings of my career, and I wanted to get here since I was a student. I came to Adobe as a team manager, but I always liked the idea of ​​abstracting information, growing horizontally, knowing and coordinating as many projects as possible. Obviously, this growth came over time, as new and increasingly important projects appeared in Adobe Romania.

What is the most difficult project you have worked on/are working on?

Business catalyst. It was a product that trained many people from Adobe Romania, because we had absolutely the whole business in Bucharest, not only R&D, but also marketing, sales, etc. For Adobe, it was an experiment aimed at the small and medium business market, which brought us additional challenges, for example, the budgets were relatively small. But it was an extraordinary journey for us: we learned how to run a business end to endwe learned how to manage large-scale services in the public cloud (AWS, which was still in its infancy at the time), manage product launches or very high-profile key customers, etc.

What technologies are your teams using? Which ones do you think they are most excited about?

People at Adobe are very passionate about their work and about technology in general, which is one of the traits we look for when interviewing. We prefer multi-talented engineers who are passionate about solving complex problems, rather than engineers who are super-specialized in one technology or another. With this in mind, the projects in my group, Digital Media Romania, mainly use C++ and TypeScript, more and more for creative applications on the web (the C++ part is transpiled to work in the browser). The only exception to this rule for multi-purpose engineers is in the field of machine learning, which we have been developing rapidly for several years, and where we sometimes also look for engineers with extensive experience in the field or even Ph.D.s.

How was the transition for you from the technical side, your initial passion, to the leadership role you’ve held at Adobe over the past few years?

I wanted to be a leader since childhood. At the time, when I was an engineer and then a researcher, I perceived it only as a basis for a career as a manager – I believe that it is important to at least partially master the technical field in which you work as a leader. Even so, the transition still felt a bit like professional retraining, especially when I had to make the first tough decisions for my team.

What 3 qualities of your work make you sit down at your desk every morning with a smile on your face?

Impact, impact and impact. The impact on the lives of the millions of customers who use Adobe Creative Cloud is largely made in Bucharest. Impact on the lives of Adobe Romania employees, which is rapidly evolving in our work environment. A community impact that also benefits significantly in cities where Adobe has a strong presence.

What is the next step for you in terms of projects?

We have just significantly increased Bucharest’s investment in Adobe Express, a creative product for everyday users that is very important to the future of the company. As we strengthen our position in this project, I expect that we will add new investments in machine learning to existing projects and perhaps expand into more specialized creative areas such as video or 3D.

If you want to learn, you’ll find people at Adobe who can

If you were to recommend a college graduate/student to join your team, what would be the top 3 arguments you think you would convince them to make?

The most important argument is the level of colleagues – it is exceptional at Adobe. If you want to learn, there are people at Adobe who can. Many of us graduated from the best high school and/or college, or won awards in various competitions, or simply excelled in one way or another in the past. In addition, I would like to note the very open culture of our organization, like a family, where people collaborate, share information, etc. Last but not least, Adobe’s extraordinary benefits package is definitely one of the best in the Romanian market.

How do you think the pandemic has changed your work? And in terms of team dynamics and approach to projects?

Adobe is probably the “good” company in the software industry. Our founders have repeated this obsessive goal for years. During the pandemic, this approach was perceived as normal in caring for the team. For example, when it became clear that many people were working from home more and that there was a risk of burnout, Adobe introduced “Global Days Off” – days off given to all employees in addition to regular vacation days. This practice has remained and will continue next year, even if the pandemic passes.

Now we work in a hybrid format, half time from home and half time from the office, with great flexibility in organizing personal time – each team chooses which days to come to the office, each employee can start the program earlier or later, can take a lunch break, to pick up children from school, etc. I believe this is the best working model. We meet in the office for meetings, planning, retrospectives, and also work from home for individual work.

On a scale of 1 to 10, how much do you enjoy what you do and why?

I am in the perfect job: many complex, interesting and impactful projects, juggling a lot of different information, working with large groups of people, in a company that is very attentive to the well-being of its employees. The only problem I would mention is the long distance from HQ, but even there the fact that we have full ownership of the R&D of what we do makes things easier.

The development of the Romanian team opens up opportunities

If you could do anything else on the Adobe team, what would you like to do?

Generally speaking, I like the role of Chief Product Officer the most, which is where you lead all engineers, product managers, and designers on a product or portfolio of products. This is what we have created at Digital Media Romania, an environment where we have all these 3 features for everything we do. If I were to change anything, I would take this operating model to the next level: have propertyfully on a key product for Adobe. I mean, for example, Adobe Express, an initiative in which the company invests a lot and which already has a significant segment in Bucharest.

How many juniors have you had on teams over time and how quickly have they progressed?

I must have had over 100 juniors. Adobe hires more slowly than other companies because we hire people who are very good at what they do. Once they come to us, we invest heavily in them and do everything we can to help them develop their skills and careers as quickly as possible, both directly on the job and through coaching, training, assessment and ongoing management, etc. Most of these teenagers developed very quickly, and some of them today have reached the top scientists, global technical leaders at Adobe – either right here in Romania, or after they moved at some point to Adobe US, in California.

If you were to recommend an applicant for a job at Adobe, what should not be on their resume?

The most important thing is that something special has been done by the time of the application. I’ve given a few examples before (best high school/college, pageants, working abroad, owning a startup), but none of them are critical. Adobe invests a lot in employees, so it’s important that the resume has a spark that says that our collaboration will be successful, that the employee will integrate into our team, and will make a constant effort to become better.

Article sponsored by Adobe