41–50 of 162 posts
This is tangential, and I'm not a designer so this is just one dev's opinion, but I found Dropbox's latest rebrand (dropbox.design) to be a bizarre departure for them. It was so off the wall I just assumed it was some sort of parody site until I realized it was official. I'm in no place to determine if it's "good" or "bad", but it's certainly an...interesting direction, if nothing else.
This is just a file sync. A good one. But 1500 employees for that? This goes way beyond my imagination.
Presumably relatively few of those people are really technical. The rest would be handling DMCA requests, support calls, enterprise sales, etc.
Still seems like a lot of people. I think that a lot of the time, middle management argue for hiring staff because having lots of reports gives you credibility -> seniority -> more money. Sure, it reduces profits, but if the majority of your remuneration is salary then that doesn't matter.
This is just a file sync. A good one. But 1500 employees for that? This goes way beyond my imagination.
Naive question, but why would large companies favor leasing instead of just outright purchasing the property? It seems that when the terms of the lease are up, the leasing company has almost unlimited leverage in the next negotiation (unless the tenant company doesn't mind relocating all of its employees).
This is just a file sync. A good one. But 1500 employees for that? This goes way beyond my imagination.
This is tangential, and I'm not a designer so this is just one dev's opinion, but I found Dropbox's latest rebrand (dropbox.design) to be a bizarre departure for them. It was so off the wall I just assumed it was some sort of parody site until I realized it was official. I'm in no place to determine if it's "good" or "bad", but it's certainly an...interesting direction, if nothing else.
This is just a file sync. A good one. But 1500 employees for that? This goes way beyond my imagination.
Naive question, but why would large companies favor leasing instead of just outright purchasing the property? It seems that when the terms of the lease are up, the leasing company has almost unlimited leverage in the next negotiation (unless the tenant company doesn't mind relocating all of its employees).
When they lease a space, it's a contract, so they could put in favorable language for renewing the lease. Guinness brewery famously has a 9,000 year lease paying only £45 annually.
Naive question, but why would large companies favor leasing instead of just outright purchasing the property? It seems that when the terms of the lease are up, the leasing company has almost unlimited leverage in the next negotiation (unless the tenant company doesn't mind relocating all of its employees).
If you think about it - do you want to invest in 'real estate' or your 'high growth business'. And buildings are very expensive so it would be a huge amount of cash. And cash-flow is always an issue in a growth company.
Of course, it would mostly be financed with a mortgage, but then you get into a weird balance sheet situation - massive asset, and if the company folds, or wants to move, what do you do with it? It's hard to just 'flip' a building. Do they want to 'manage a property' in that 'old area they used to be in'?
Aside from the operational/cash flow issues, it wonks up the companies metrics as well. This 'big ball of assets' can distort all the reporting metrics.
Companies really don't want to 'own' anything unless it's a totally core thing to their experience.
Long-term leases can be negotiated with future pricing in mind.
Think Hotels: Four Seasons and Fairmont don't even own most of their hotels! They get big, long-term funds (think Saudi sovereign funds) to buy the real estate, and then sing a super long term lease-deals and then the hotel is really just an 'operating company' with those physical asset off the balance sheet.
'Owning property' is usually a fundamentally different business than whatever is going on inside the buildings.
If you are a 'growth' company, your cash is almost always better used in your business.
If you are a 'massive fund' (or a bank) that needs to park gazillions of dollars around the world long-term and you want fairly low risk but some kind of return - you buy property.
Is one way to look at it.