What Figma plans to do inside Adobe

https://www.theverge.com/23376442/figma-ceo-interview-adobe-acquisition-ai-antitrust-design-field

by jerryjerryjerry • 4 years ago

74 57 4 years ago

theverge.com

samsin• 4 years ago

Isn’t it “what Adobe plans to do inside Figma”?

ndfjguvyYfjf• 4 years ago

No?

notRobot• 4 years ago

That would be "what Adobe plans to do with Figma", as opposed to what figma plans to do as a part of the Adobe org, which is what the headline means.

jraph• 4 years ago

In this title, Figma probably refers to the company, not the software product.

samwillis• 4 years ago

There doesn’t seem to be much new in here, but it’s good to hear Dylan’s perspective. I really hope Figma find a way of transforming Adobe from the inside.

I’m still pained by the Adobe/Macromedia acquisition. Fireworks was the best UI, and arguably “screen” focused, graphic design tool of the time. So much better in every way than Photoshop (because thats not what it was trying to be!), but Adobe couldn’t see that, thought they were competing products, and killed it.

If Adobe had kept Fireworks, invested in it, and eventually added the UI focus and collaboration feature of newer products they would continue to own this market.

Fireworks is the true predecessor to products like Figma and Sketch.

I fear Adobe are not particularly good at seeing how a new product tailored to a new design pragmam doesn’t compete with the older products. Reinvention is good! Maybe this is the start of them approaching that differently.

lbriner• 4 years ago

I hate to be the pessimist but I suspect it has never happened and why would it? To allow Figma to bring their culture into Adobe will mean massive changes to a lot of people who have been doing a terrible job for years, it will mean power shifting, it will mean older people accepting that the world has changed and they aren't worth their inflated salaries any more.

Even if they wanted to, I doubt they could change, these things just don't scale. 26K employees, most will just carry on doing what they do.

I think the best way to run any of these things is to keep Figma at arms length. Own it, yes, but let them carry on doing what they are already doing well. Don't force them to make their product more enterprise friendly otherwise they will start doing loads of one-offs, complicating it, basically turning it into Creative Suite.

null_object• 4 years ago

it will mean older people accepting that the world has changed and they aren't worth their inflated salaries any more.

Kind of a sideline - but very worried to see this combination of ageism and the "we're hiring" in your profile.

whywhywhywhy4• 4 years ago

For those that don’t know Fireworks was essentially Sketch 10 years earlier. Adobe had a tool with vector based bitmap graphics creation and non destructive styling. That could how multiple pages, states and a basic form of component all in 1 file with one click export to flats.

Adobe didn’t understand their own software or users so killed it to try and force us to use a painting/photography tool for UI layouts.

Makes this all a cruel joke for those of us who used it daily then moved to Sketch then moved to Figma.

prox3• 4 years ago

How often have seen that speech of “we are going to stay autonomous!” , probably way too many times. As soon as hard time hits, or the current leadership changes, that goes right out the window.

I understand the lure of a big pile of money, surely. It probably creates a lot of opportunities for Figma in the short run, but long term I feel it will be Macromedia all over again.

noneeeed• 4 years ago

Currently going through this.

"We'll have lots of autonomy", "they want to learn for us as much as we learn from them", etc. A year down the line and our founders have left and we've been gutted of anything that made us a special place to work and it's all going to hell in a handcart. My perfect job at the best place I've ever worked has turned incredibly sour post-aquisition. We had so much potential and it's been utterly screwed.

I'd love to know if there has ever been an acquisition like this that has turned out how they claim it will.

doctor_eval2• 4 years ago

I’m so sorry to hear. I went through something similar, as a founder. All the promises were forgotten, even the ones we wrote into contracts. Especially the ones about supporting development of our complementary product. It was absolutely crushing.

prox3• 4 years ago

Ouch, that sucks! It’s hard to find a good company/fit. Only about 1/4 of companies is a pleasant environment in my experience. It takes a while to find a new good one. Hope you do find it, could you contact the old founders perhaps and see what they are up to?

1B05H1N• 4 years ago

The fate of all acquisitions.

ENGNR• 4 years ago

More content… so we can extract more money from existing customers… yay

Meanwhile the race is still on to merge real actual code components back into the design tools, and out again as workable screens. The first one to properly crack that nut is going to snatch so much market share. I thought it would be figma since they did auto layout but they don’t seem that interested in the code side

Dave3of5• 4 years ago

Do you mean HTML/CSS/JS ?

If so that's a very very difficult task to do.

arkitaip• 4 years ago

You would essentially have to offer the entire tech stack for that to work. Like all of them. Like every lang, framework and library there is.

prox3• 4 years ago

Funnily enough it was Dreamweaver that sort of had a functioning system for that. Until it became a bloated mess post acquisition.

https://pinegrow.com/ is also interesting in that regard.

Sakos• 4 years ago

Long-term we're expecting to have to move away from Figma because, you know, Adobe. Whatever they say now isn't worth the paper it's printed on.

whywhywhywhy4• 4 years ago

What a non-interview.

I’m not expecting Adobe to kill Figma or raise the price overnight. I’m not angry about any of that, I’m angry that I’ve now built team workflows around a product that means I have to pay money to a company that doesn’t spend it on making products better and relies on vendor lock-in to propagate.

Could have asked if they think selling to Adobe has limited the potential of what Figma could accomplish. Could have asked about how users who supported them as a solution against Adobe might feel betrayed.

But you didn’t. Great journalism guys.

skrebbel• 4 years ago

Both those questions could, and would, be answered with the usual “trust us, it’ll be great!!” message that every acquisition announcement contains.

Kolja• 4 years ago

I've repeatedly heard the sentiment from interviewers that it's not worth the time asking questions you know you won't get an answer to. As a sibling noted, both of your questions can reasonably fall into that category.

Not disagreeing, just lamenting the sad state of journalism nowadays, at least as I perceive it.

whywhywhywhy4• 4 years ago

I’d have to ask why even do the interview at all then. Like I can save everyone involved a lot of time and just imagine the interview if you’re not gonna ask a difficult question.

city17• 4 years ago

Sometimes the lack of an answer can be just as telling, making it still worth asking even if they won't answer the question directly.

AmalgatedAmoeba• 4 years ago

A good interviewer would then ask follow up questions to either get a straight answer or highlight the absence thereof. Unfortunately, much of the mainstream tech "journalism" is just repackaged press releases written by people hoping to get hired by the very same companies that they "report" on. Thence the softball questions and toothless interviews all in an effort to not upset any potential future employers.

scyzoryk_xyz4• 4 years ago

I believe Matt Stoller, who studies and writes about monopolies is collecting feedback about the effects of this merger on professionals in the industry [0].

From the sound of it you could be a valuable voice in there. The merger will probably have to go through approval in DC. Perhaps if sufficient evidence is collected it could be blocked in accordance with anti-trust law. He wrote about how there is a heap of evidence about Adobe’s history of mergers and acquisitions which only lead to reduction of consumer choice.

[0] https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/should-the-government-blo...

vwoolf• 4 years ago

I can't understand why the Figma purchase isn't being blocked for antitrust. Have we learned nothing??

krn3• 4 years ago

Could have asked if they think selling to Adobe has limited the potential of what Figma could accomplish. Could have asked about how users who supported them as a solution against Adobe might feel betrayed.

Well, it's a business, not a non-profit.

In business everything is for sale at any moment in time, if the price is high enough. Especially, when there are multiple shareholders with different goals.

As an entrepreneur he simply did his job: he built an extremely valuable company and took the best deal he could probably get for it.

Maybe a few years later he won't even be with Adobe anymore. Just like the founders of Instagram and Whatsapp are no longer with Meta.

whywhywhywhy4• 4 years ago

Building tools to dethrone Photoshop, Illustrator and After Effects IS a good business though. You’ve essentially swapped just over 1 year of Adobe revenue for a quick exit instead of building the system that delivers $15B+ yearly by dethroning them.

Claiming this is a good move is the same as claiming selling the iPhone or Android to Nokia for short term profit would have been a good business move.

Lots of people shared the same sentiment you just did about Instagram selling to FB. Look at them now, if IG had continued alone the idea to sell to FB would be a joke at this point.

biztos2• 4 years ago

As an entrepreneur he simply did his job: he built an extremely valuable company and took the best deal he could probably get for it.

Sorry, but: no.

There are many ways to work in the world, and certainly one way is to be an amoral mercenary in search of profit.

But if you think "the job" of the entrepreneur is simply to have a good exit, well the world would be gravely impoverished if entrepreneurs in general shared your view.

The fact that many of the acquiring companies in these stores are still largely controlled by their founders is telling.

kypro2• 4 years ago

I see a lot of negative comments here, but is Adobe really that bad? Photoshop isn't a perfect application and the creative cloud bulk it comes with can be a bit irritating, but it's still an incredibly powerful market-leading application. The AI editing features they've added in recent years have been great and I've also found their iPad version of the application to be surprisingly good.

I guess what I'm saying is that while Figma might get some additional bulk I don't think it's fair to assume the product will stagnate under Adobe? They're paying a lot for Figma in an attempt to secure their market position, given that I doubt they plan to push people away from the product. I understand the apprehension, but it seems a little premature to me?

atonse• 4 years ago

My guess is that people are fearing that they’ll just roll it into creative cloud and try to shove all the other crap down their throats.

We are just starting to use Figma now. We might consider penpot but the community content around Figma wins. Can figma files/assets/components be imported into penpot?

TuringTest• 4 years ago

This feature for Penpot is now their #1 priority, they said that they'll be available soon.

gherkinnn• 4 years ago

Installing CC immediately cripples your machine and it can’t ever be uninstalled. The only course of action is throwing it on a good old plague pyre.

You can’t cancel your Adobe subscription without sacrificing your first born.

Fireworks was dead the moment they bought it. PS always was shite for UIs. AI was good, but Sketch crushed it. XD is a bad joke. Adobe is utterly hopeless at this. I can’t see Figma carrying its momentum for more than 5 years.

So of course there’s a lot of negativity in here.

kypro2• 4 years ago

Installing CC immediately cripples your machine and it can’t ever be uninstalled.

Yeah, it sucks, I get why people don't like it, but I've also never had a machine "crippled" by CC.

You can’t cancel your Adobe subscription without sacrificing your first born.

It's a nightmare to cancel a lot of subscriptions. The Amazon Prime cancelation process is hilariously obstructive.

Fireworks was dead the moment they bought it.

Yeah, that was a shame. I used to like Fireworks. It also felt like a product without a good market fit to me though.

PS always was shite for UIs.

It's called "photo"shop for a reason. I don't think they optimise Photoshop for UI design. It's absolutely great for photo editing.

AI was good, but Sketch crushed it.

I guess there is where I don't have enough experience to comment. I still use AI, but my graphic design friends do seem to prefer Sketch these days.

XD is a bad joke. Adobe is utterly hopeless at this. I can’t see Figma carrying its momentum for more than 5 years.

Fair enough. I guess I just don't see all Adobe software as terrible and I'd argue lot of it is pretty good or at least competitive with competitor products on the market. My main issue with them is the bloat. Unless you need several CC applications you're often better going with something else because of all the crap they'll install in addition to the one application you need.

I guess as an example here, 5 years ago I used to use Notepad++ to write JS, then I used Atom, now I use VSCode. Things change quickly in the tech. The fact that Adobe products fail really isn't all that surprising. Is there any software you used 15+ years ago that you still use today? I think the difference with Adobe is that people attach their brand to those product failures and say, well if `x` failed why won't `y`? But I don't think it's entirely Adobe's fault, it's more a result of them operating in a very competitive space where things are changing quickly.

rewgs• 4 years ago

Installing CC immediately cripples your machine and it can’t ever be uninstalled.

My multiple computers from which I uninstalled CC would beg to differ.

pixelrevision• 4 years ago

Photoshop is Adobe’s flagship application so it’s probably not what you’d want to look at as a comparison. I’d look at the current status of all the products they bought from Macromedia (which were all wildly popular at the time) to get an idea of where people’s concerns lie.

matwood2• 4 years ago

Did the Macromedia products die because of Adobe or because the market shifted? The iPhone, somewhat famously, never ran Flash for example. Things like Dreamweaver and ColdFusion were cool at the time, but fell out of favor with accelerating web standards.

matwood2• 4 years ago

I think the move to subscription really rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. Many people didn't want or need the features that added the subscription value, so they felt cheated.

Personally, I'm ok with the subscription because I already upgraded LR every year. I use LR on all my devices, syncing photos and edits. It's great when I'm shooting on a trip, and can import photos on my iPad and start proofing, then they are already available on the computer when I get home. And you're right, the AI editing features are getting very good.

But, for the person who was using LR to edit their family vacation photos once or twice year, the move to subscription was not a good value.

scyzoryk_xyz4• 4 years ago

My spouse is a designer and Adobe has her locked in. To be active in the market she must personally pay a monthly fee and the software she needs most is Adobe Indesign (for print publishing). This software has drastically gone downhill in quality, but there are no viable alternatives. The situation is bizarre, because older veteran print designers keep old laptops alive with old versions of Indesign. Meanwhile she isn’t even sure whether her project will blow up or render/print the way it’s supposed to. It boggles my mind how something so big and so simple doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to in 2022.

You’re probably not upset because it’s just photoshop for you. But specialists like her feel like they will end up paying more for even shittier buggier tools.

srdesigner• 4 years ago

The Affinity Suite of tools (competitors to PS, IL, ID) are very much great alternatives to the Adobe ecosystem. Pricing is significantly less too.

RunSet• 4 years ago

is Adobe really that bad?

No. Adobe is worse than that.

https://news.hitb.org/content/adobe-denies-responsibility-dm...

lvl102• 4 years ago

Why are they allowing this acquisition? This is anticompetitive.

dbbk• 4 years ago

Who is "they"

scyzoryk_xyz4• 4 years ago

https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/competition-guidance/gui...

https://www.usa.gov/federal-agencies/antitrust-division

S4mb• 4 years ago

If any Figma are interested in an alternative, try the free & open source alternative Penpot (https://penpot.app/). I like it and the team behind it (Kaleidos) always does great work (I love their JIRA alternative Taiga to bits).

bombcar• 4 years ago

Transforming adobe from the inside is about as likely as Boba Fett transforming the Sarlacc from the inside. Instead of being slowly digested.

nottorp• 4 years ago

So are there Figma clones? If not, how many teams are starting on one right now? :)

What Figma plans to do inside Adobe

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