13 Years, 9 Months…

13 years and 9 months is the average amount of time that the current members of the Adobe Type Team have been here. The team consists of 14 members spread across our planet. Three members are in our Tokyo, Japan office, one is in our Beijing, China office, and the remaining ten are in the San Jose, California headquarters. What’s more, I believe that all but one of us have been in no other team since joining Adobe.

I joined Adobe in July of 1991, which means that I celebrated my 19th year just last month. Still, I am the third senior member, in terms of tenure at Adobe. Two or three others are right on my tail. This is a good thing.

So, what does this mean or imply? In my opinion and experience, this simply means that the Adobe Type Team consists of fourteen world-class people who have a strong passion and dedication to type and typography, as evidenced by their long tenure at Adobe, and perhaps more so by their equally-long tenure as members of the Adobe Type Team. There is a lot of history and expertise here, and being part of such a team is a pleasure and honor, and brings great satisfaction. I am sure that others in the team feel the same. Needless to say, working with our valued customers—some of whom work at type foundries themselves—is an equally pleasurable experience. Whether it is design, development, or testing, our work is never done, and perhaps more importantly, it is never done in a vacuum.

(BTW, I wrote a short Perl program a couple of years ago that outputs the average amount of time, in terms of years and months, that the Adobe Type Team members have been here. A recent execution of this program is what inspired this post.)