Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Dropbox S-1

sec.gov

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

311–320 of 404 posts

Re: Dropbox S-1

#311

Post by Frondo »

lsc wrote: post #308
throwaway93192 wrote: post #247

I'll just point out that the SVP of engineering, a former Microsoft exec, received $34 million in compensation, since joining less than 6 months ago. For all employees that are considering joining a startup as rank-and-file engineers and putting in years of effort, remember that your compensation will be paltry compared to founders and top execs. When your work finally pays off, it will mostly pay off for them. Good…

>Good for you if you're OK with that extreme imbalance. But, I know too many people that discovered only upon an exit, that the financial reward was never destined for them. so personally? I don't care about the imbalance, I care about what I'm getting and how that compares to what I can get elsewhere. I understand I'm playing in a rich man's sandbox, and I'm okay with that. The fact that the man three levels up make…

Ok, personally, I do care about the imbalance, and I strongly encourage my fellow techies to care, too.

Why? Because when enough of us care, we can change the sandbox itself. None of this stuff is set in stone.

Great that you're content with crumbs, but I'm not, and I certainly don't want to see the next generation of technicians laboring under the same conditions as so many of ours has done. I'll do my part to leave the world a better place for my successors; not just the same status quo. What's the point of life otherwise?

Re: Dropbox S-1

#312

Post by Frondo »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #250
throwaway93192 wrote: post #247

I'll just point out that the SVP of engineering, a former Microsoft exec, received $34 million in compensation, since joining less than 6 months ago. For all employees that are considering joining a startup as rank-and-file engineers and putting in years of effort, remember that your compensation will be paltry compared to founders and top execs. When your work finally pays off, it will mostly pay off for them. Good…

It never was and never will be. We like to pretend that employees are so fairly compensated, and yet I had to fight tooth and nail to get a mere 2% equity. The thought of an equity stake closer to 10% was almost unheard of. But you bet I'd have had an impact large enough to justify those returns, in the sense of http://paulgraham.com/equity.html Except... It's not quite that simple. Most people don't care. The vast m…

I'm soon moving into management and I still think unions would be a fantastic idea all across the tech sector.

The whole of a business is already a collectively organized unit, by its nature. When each of us, each individual technician, goes into negotiations, we're already up against the entirety of the business. Banding together is literally the only way to balance that scale.

The Screen Actors Guild would be a good model for a tech union--they obviously reward top box office draws richly, but the low end of the scale is still well cared for.

Re: Dropbox S-1

#313

Post by gt_ »

beatpanda wrote: post #251
dragonwriter wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When your work finally pays off, it will mostly pay off for them. Well, it'll mostly pay off for major capital holders (which founders are likely but not certain to be, depending on the course of business before then, and top executives at the time may or may not.) Top executives as such (outside of their role, if any, as capital holders) may get more benefit than you, but even if so it will be much less than the c…

The Techies Are Finally Reading Marx

I doubt it, but a nuanced debate of his ideas on the part of those who purport to be so open to unconventional ideas would be refreshing. We love to promote learning from iteration but still remain amazingly averse to doing so in practice. I think this is just another example of that.

The moonshot of UBI is an acrobatic avoidance of Marx, relatable if you were raised with the American indoctrination of Marx == Hitler (yeah I know but the lack of ideological overlap, or any overlap at all, hasn’t mattered because patriotism). We are due some maturity in this area.

And on another hand, one should be forgiven for mistaking the open source movement for Marxism.

Re: Dropbox S-1

#314

Post by lsc »

Frondo wrote: post #311
lsc wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Good for you if you're OK with that extreme imbalance. But, I know too many people that discovered only upon an exit, that the financial reward was never destined for them. so personally? I don't care about the imbalance, I care about what I'm getting and how that compares to what I can get elsewhere. I understand I'm playing in a rich man's sandbox, and I'm okay with that. The fact that the man three levels up make…

Ok, personally, I do care about the imbalance, and I strongly encourage my fellow techies to care, too. Why? Because when enough of us care, we can change the sandbox itself. None of this stuff is set in stone. Great that you're content with crumbs, but I'm not, and I certainly don't want to see the next generation of technicians laboring under the same conditions as so many of ours has done. I'll do my part to leave…

>Great that you're content with crumbs, but I'm not, and I certainly don't want to see the next generation of technicians laboring under the same conditions as so many of ours has done. I'll do my part to leave the world a better place for my successors; not just the same status quo. What's the point of life otherwise?

dude, I'm a silicon valley computer technician. I literally make 10x what the service people I see every day make, and on top of that, my employer cooks gourmet meals for me, 3x a day, and provides a luxury bus system. Yes, I'm at near the bottom of my local technical prestige hierarchy, but If you think these are crumbs, If you don't think that this is worth a little bit of bowing and scraping, I think you need to stop and look around... look at how normal people live.

If you want to work to make the world a better place, If you want to alleviate suffering, work to raise the salaries of those who make 1/10th what we do.

Re: Dropbox S-1

#315

Post by B-Con »

diggs wrote: post #276
gwbas1c wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Early at my days at Syncplicity, (a Dropbox competitor,) I specked out what was needed for true client-side encryption with no ability to decrypt on the server. It's very easy to do, from a technical standpoint. (We solve the problem by letting our large customers run their own servers, with their own authentication via single sign on.) The problem is that the user experience for client-side encryption is awful! Ever…

There's also no deduplication with client-side encryption.

In the traditional model, yes. But if you're willing to make sacrifices... see previous discussion on this topic when it came up with Mega, de-duplication, and client-side encryption: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5084261

Re: Dropbox S-1

#316

Post by drieddust »

adventured wrote: post #303
throwaway93192 wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, he'd be fired. Perhaps have to testify in front of Congress, even. Accountability is worth $8M a year?

The average NBA player salary is $6 million per year. In the next few years all of the NBA players combined (~420 players) are set to make more in salary than all the S&P 500 CEOs earn in salary combined. Should top executives at $10 billion companies (7x the average value of an NBA team) receive compensation on par with professional athletes? How does that not make sense? The US will spend $10 billion per year compe…

Executive compensation and performance is negatively correlated.

NBA stars make money by exposing themselves to downside. They have fan, they generate direct revenue and last but not the least they have their skin in the game. One injury and their playing career is over for good. What does these executives bring to table? Can 10 of them alone deliver the product and services to customer?

And when they fail ,they simply take large severance and fade away to a beach only to come back fully rejuvenated to fuck again.

Re: Dropbox S-1

#317

Post by antisthenes »

Frondo wrote: post #311
lsc wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Good for you if you're OK with that extreme imbalance. But, I know too many people that discovered only upon an exit, that the financial reward was never destined for them. so personally? I don't care about the imbalance, I care about what I'm getting and how that compares to what I can get elsewhere. I understand I'm playing in a rich man's sandbox, and I'm okay with that. The fact that the man three levels up make…

Ok, personally, I do care about the imbalance, and I strongly encourage my fellow techies to care, too. Why? Because when enough of us care, we can change the sandbox itself. None of this stuff is set in stone. Great that you're content with crumbs, but I'm not, and I certainly don't want to see the next generation of technicians laboring under the same conditions as so many of ours has done. I'll do my part to leave…

So why just the techies? Shouldn't you be advocating for everyone to be receiving a larger share of the pie when the company does well?

> I certainly don't want to see the next generation of technicians laboring under the same conditions as so many of ours has done.

Oh please. US West coast engineers already have it nearly as good as it can possibly get on this planet, in all of human history. The violin playing for the horrible conditions they must endure is very small if at all existent.

I'd be totally with you if you were advocating for a fairer CEO/Owner vs Worker pay in general, but singling out 'techies' is kind of a disingenuous way to go about it.

Re: Dropbox S-1

#318

Post by hn_throw_1234 »

Frondo wrote: post #311
lsc wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Good for you if you're OK with that extreme imbalance. But, I know too many people that discovered only upon an exit, that the financial reward was never destined for them. so personally? I don't care about the imbalance, I care about what I'm getting and how that compares to what I can get elsewhere. I understand I'm playing in a rich man's sandbox, and I'm okay with that. The fact that the man three levels up make…

Ok, personally, I do care about the imbalance, and I strongly encourage my fellow techies to care, too. Why? Because when enough of us care, we can change the sandbox itself. None of this stuff is set in stone. Great that you're content with crumbs, but I'm not, and I certainly don't want to see the next generation of technicians laboring under the same conditions as so many of ours has done. I'll do my part to leave…

"crumbs"

What field are you in in this industry? I started making more than my parents combined income by 25. This industry pays incredibly well.

Additionally, you're not all addressing any imbalance in impact. "Imbalance" as seen from a perspective of dollars per worker isn't very meaningful unless you advocate for removing incentives and defaulting to a system more reminiscent of communism.

Re: Dropbox S-1

#319

Post by lsc »

hn_throw_1234 wrote: post #318
Frondo wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, personally, I do care about the imbalance, and I strongly encourage my fellow techies to care, too. Why? Because when enough of us care, we can change the sandbox itself. None of this stuff is set in stone. Great that you're content with crumbs, but I'm not, and I certainly don't want to see the next generation of technicians laboring under the same conditions as so many of ours has done. I'll do my part to leave…

"crumbs" What field are you in in this industry? I started making more than my parents combined income by 25. This industry pays incredibly well. Additionally, you're not all addressing any imbalance in impact. "Imbalance" as seen from a perspective of dollars per worker isn't very meaningful unless you advocate for removing incentives and defaulting to a system more reminiscent of communism.

>Additionally, you're not all addressing any imbalance in impact. "Imbalance" as seen from a perspective of dollars per worker isn't very meaningful unless you advocate for removing incentives and defaulting to a system more reminiscent of communism.

I actually... want to point out that there's a lot of disagreement there, at least in the technical field. There are a lot of people who claim that money is mostly a 'hygiene issue' in that you need to pay something in the realm of what your people could get elsewhere or else people will leave, but that actually paying more doesn't make that much difference.

Personally, I think it varies a lot. I know that you can pretty reliably get me to switch jobs by offering me an additional 20%...[1] but I know people in my field who are better than I am, technically, who basically don't ask for raises, and end up making a lot less than I do simply because I ask for more. These people mostly only switch jobs when the situation forces it. And some of those people are brilliant people and incredible workers.

I mean, we're talking on the order of 10 and 20%, not orders of magnitude here, but the point being that the relationship between money and motivation is not as clear cut as it is, say, in sales

[1]Another interesting side is that while you can totally get me to switch jobs by giving me more money, I'm not sure you can get me to do much better at my current gig by offering me more money; I think I'm already in the neighborhood of doing the best I can. But, would this change if my salary stopped going up?

Re: Dropbox S-1

#320

Post by kome »

lsc wrote: post #314
Frondo wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, personally, I do care about the imbalance, and I strongly encourage my fellow techies to care, too. Why? Because when enough of us care, we can change the sandbox itself. None of this stuff is set in stone. Great that you're content with crumbs, but I'm not, and I certainly don't want to see the next generation of technicians laboring under the same conditions as so many of ours has done. I'll do my part to leave…

>Great that you're content with crumbs, but I'm not, and I certainly don't want to see the next generation of technicians laboring under the same conditions as so many of ours has done. I'll do my part to leave the world a better place for my successors; not just the same status quo. What's the point of life otherwise? dude, I'm a silicon valley computer technician. I literally make 10x what the service people I see…

to be fair, you can do both at the same time. and not only you can, but to achieve the second, you need the first.
Post reply on HN