7 ms·

What Figma plans to do inside Adobe

74 points by jerryjerryjerry 4y ago

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
samsin 4y ago
Isn’t it “what Adobe plans to do inside Figma”?
- ndfjguvyYfjf 4y ago
  No?
- notRobot 4y 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 4y ago
  In this title, Figma probably refers to the company, not the software product.
samwillis 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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.
    - doctor_eval 4y ago
      As an “older” person I think you’re right to call this out, but perhaps a more generous reading would suggest “old timer” rather than “elderly”; as in, the people who have been at Adobe for years, and underlie the culture that gives us the Adobe of today.
- whywhywhywhy 4y 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.
prox 4y 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 4y 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_eval 4y 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.
  - prox 4y 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 4y ago
The fate of all acquisitions.
ENGNR 4y 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 4y ago
  Do you mean HTML/CSS/JS ? If so that's a very very difficult task to do.
  - arkitaip 4y 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.
- prox 4y 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/ https://pinegrow.com/ is also interesting in that regard.
Sakos 4y 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.
whywhywhywhy 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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.
  - whywhywhywhy 4y 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.
    - lotsofpulp 4y ago
      I assume it is PR. Previously, broadcasters and their journalists held some bargaining power in interviews such that in exchange for being able to access a broad population, the interviewee would be willing to subject themselves to the journalist’s questions. The internet kind of obviated that role, so now there is no need for an interviewee to subject themselves to questions they do not want, because they can reach everyone they want at no cost by putting up a blog post on their website.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
kypro 4y 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 4y 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 4y ago
    This feature for Penpot is now their #1 priority, they said that they'll be available soon.
- gherkinnn 4y 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.
  - kypro 4y 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.
lvl102 4y ago
Why are they allowing this acquisition? This is anticompetitive.
- dbbk 4y ago
  Who is "they"
  - scyzoryk_xyz 4y ago
    https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/competition-guidance/guide-antitrust-laws/antitrust-laws https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/competition-guidance/gui... https://www.usa.gov/federal-agencies/antitrust-division https://www.usa.gov/federal-agencies/antitrust-division
S4mb 4y ago
If any Figma are interested in an alternative, try the free & open source alternative Penpot (https://penpot.app/ 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 4y 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 4y ago
So are there Figma clones? If not, how many teams are starting on one right now? :)

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

samsin 4y ago

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

ndfjguvyYfjf 4y ago
No?
notRobot 4y 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 4y ago
In this title, Figma probably refers to the company, not the software product.

samwillis 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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.
  - doctor_eval 4y ago
    As an “older” person I think you’re right to call this out, but perhaps a more generous reading would suggest “old timer” rather than “elderly”; as in, the people who have been at Adobe for years, and underlie the culture that gives us the Adobe of today.
whywhywhywhy 4y 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.

prox 4y 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 4y 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_eval 4y 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.
- prox 4y 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 4y ago

The fate of all acquisitions.

ENGNR 4y 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 4y ago
Do you mean HTML/CSS/JS ? If so that's a very very difficult task to do.
- arkitaip 4y 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.
prox 4y 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/ https://pinegrow.com/ is also interesting in that regard.

Sakos 4y 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.

whywhywhywhy 4y 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 4y 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 4y 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.
- whywhywhywhy 4y 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.
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    I assume it is PR. Previously, broadcasters and their journalists held some bargaining power in interviews such that in exchange for being able to access a broad population, the interviewee would be willing to subject themselves to the journalist’s questions. The internet kind of obviated that role, so now there is no need for an interviewee to subject themselves to questions they do not want, because they can reach everyone they want at no cost by putting up a blog post on their website.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

kypro 4y 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 4y 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 4y ago
  This feature for Penpot is now their #1 priority, they said that they'll be available soon.
gherkinnn 4y 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.
- kypro 4y 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.

lvl102 4y ago

Why are they allowing this acquisition? This is anticompetitive.

dbbk 4y ago
Who is "they"
- scyzoryk_xyz 4y ago
  https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/competition-guidance/guide-antitrust-laws/antitrust-laws https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/competition-guidance/gui... https://www.usa.gov/federal-agencies/antitrust-division https://www.usa.gov/federal-agencies/antitrust-division

S4mb 4y ago

If any Figma are interested in an alternative, try the free & open source alternative Penpot (https://penpot.app/ 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 4y 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 4y ago

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