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Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

cnbc.com

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Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#71

Post by brundolf »

raiyu wrote: post #36
brundolf wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meh, we're talking a single-digit increase in price to go from the previous-lowest tier to the current-lowest 2TB tier. I only use a tiny fraction of it, but it's still a good value. The family thing makes sense - I don't have a family I would share with so it's never come up - though couldn't you just sign into the same account on multiple devices?

Signing into the same account on multiple devices creates security and ownership issues, much better to be able to delegate permissions and also keep ownership clearly understood.

Is that really a concern within a household? Give each person a top-level directory

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#72

Post by spoonjim »

prionassembly wrote: post #58
whywhywhywhy wrote: post #22

Knew the writing was on the wall for this company the moment I had to dig into a drop down chevron to find the download button for a file shared with me on Dropbox. Making it frustrating to collaborate with paying customers of your platform is a sure sign something is rotten.

Dropbox had a discontinuous price increase a couple of years ago that soured me on them. I'm still a user -- the price is still a couple of notches below marginal utility. But I no longer recommend it. Something similar happened to Evernote -- I stopped liking the brand when I started to feel price-gouged. And then I quit on them shortly after when the apps were not snappy and well-organized to my liking (at the pric…

Because software switching is annoying, raising prices is the oldest trick in the book for getting revenue growth when you have tapped out the potential inherent in your product.

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#74

Post by hattar »

manigandham wrote: post #52
whywhywhywhy wrote: post #22

Knew the writing was on the wall for this company the moment I had to dig into a drop down chevron to find the download button for a file shared with me on Dropbox. Making it frustrating to collaborate with paying customers of your platform is a sure sign something is rotten.

The company is nowhere near failing. It's just not necessary to be as big as it is. Dropbox still has the best sync technology by far, however they failed to really capitalize on a single market. The consumer side cares more about value and it's hard to compete with Microsoft/Apple/Google while the business side is already well-served by Box.com. I still think there's a good opportunity if they can build on storage t…

> the strange "dropbox" app window that opens instead of a file explorer.

Every time I encounter this I reconsider my Dropbox subscription.

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#75

Post by F00Fbug »

nvarsj wrote: post #35
raiyu wrote: post #9

Dropbox has been hammered by Wall Street ever since it went public. On the surface it should be trading well enough given it's revenue growth from when it went public to now, however, the narrative of competing with both Microsoft and Google was a tough one to play down. Revenue growth will slow down to below 20% in 2021 which basically starts to take DBX out of the high growth tech stock focus and it is trading at l…

What do you use as an alternative to Dropbox? I haven't found anything that works as well across multiple platforms. I really hate all the feature bloat in it, which I never use, and weird decisions like dropping non-ext4. But still, for basic file syncing it seems hard to beat.

Have a look at Syncthing.

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#76

Post by dash2 »

prionassembly wrote: post #58
whywhywhywhy wrote: post #22

Knew the writing was on the wall for this company the moment I had to dig into a drop down chevron to find the download button for a file shared with me on Dropbox. Making it frustrating to collaborate with paying customers of your platform is a sure sign something is rotten.

Dropbox had a discontinuous price increase a couple of years ago that soured me on them. I'm still a user -- the price is still a couple of notches below marginal utility. But I no longer recommend it. Something similar happened to Evernote -- I stopped liking the brand when I started to feel price-gouged. And then I quit on them shortly after when the apps were not snappy and well-organized to my liking (at the pric…

>For a while I was storing fiches de police (what's the name for that in American? Light cardstock with lines?) in shoe boxes, but I ran out of shoeboxes. I've begun using cans from canned peaches and pineapples.

Hmm... you may not be Dropbox's most typical consumer! :-)

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#77

Post by The_Colonel »

dralley wrote: post #10
jimmaswell wrote: post #5

Dropbox lost me permanently as a potential customer with their greed and disregard for user experience. Constant nagging if you're at ~80% your free limit and the more recent draconian device limits for two examples. I hope they fail.

I get what you're saying but "greed" is not the way I would put it. Look at their financials, 2020 is the first year in their history in which they will have been profitable at all. I think as consumers we're starting to get totally unrealistic expectations about what kinds of services small companies (ie. not behemouths like Google, Microsoft, Apple) should be able to provide to everyone for free. With that said, ye…

> 2020 is the first year in their history in which they will have been profitable at all.

That's because they are absolutely bloated company given the relatively simple service they provide. In 2019, they employed 2300 people.

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#78

Post by SaberTail »

prionassembly wrote: post #58
whywhywhywhy wrote: post #22

Knew the writing was on the wall for this company the moment I had to dig into a drop down chevron to find the download button for a file shared with me on Dropbox. Making it frustrating to collaborate with paying customers of your platform is a sure sign something is rotten.

Dropbox had a discontinuous price increase a couple of years ago that soured me on them. I'm still a user -- the price is still a couple of notches below marginal utility. But I no longer recommend it. Something similar happened to Evernote -- I stopped liking the brand when I started to feel price-gouged. And then I quit on them shortly after when the apps were not snappy and well-organized to my liking (at the pric…

"index cards", perhaps?

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#79

Post by raiyu »

brundolf wrote: post #55
raiyu wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's certainly one perspective, the other is that in the consumer segment churn is high but also the are a tremendous amount of people. Dropbox had a head start but over time other companies like Google where able to build out competing services and because the total population of potential consumers continued to increase, a lead today, doesn't guarantee a lead tomorrow. The other side of is that what made Dropbox…

> The other side of is that what made Dropbox amazing at the beginning, the ability to sync files with direct access on your computer, is actually now a detriment I disagree; file syncing is still exactly what I want. Disk space has gotten exponentially cheaper over the years, and at the same time the amount of bulk media that people store as personal files has been dramatically cut down thanks to streaming services…

Yeah I think there is still definitely a segment that want the disk syncing, but for me it was actually becoming a hinderance and having everything online was actually much easier. Plus I started doing more file storage that I was accessing both on desktop and iphone. Certainly the original use case for Dropbox of local sync was amazing and exactly what I needed years ago, but my work/life needs have changed over time and I wouldn't be surprised if a larger amount of people are falling in to the cloud first category today as compared to when Dropbox originally launched.

Back then cloud syncing just made no sense at all because the speeds were pretty bad and inconsistent.

Not saying everyone falls into this category, but just pointing out that the market has evolved somewhat from their original position.

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#80

Post by FreakyT »

planb wrote: post #34
disantlor wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, Dropbox is a great product that makes my life/workflow with music production so much easier and convenient. Moving interface things around is at worst annoying but really just trivial. I don't understand why people on HN get so reliably get fired up about UI changes.

These are not simply UI changes. Dropbox implements more and more dark patterns that go directly against everything it once stood for. This service used to be a fire-and-forget way to have a local directory that's also online and on multiple machines. Now it's a service that tries to be everything at once and never gets out of your way.

Completely agree! Dropbox was at its best when it had almost no UI outside of "sync status" and "pause/resume" in a menu. Now they constantly shove their terrible UI in your face when all you ever want to do is sync/view your files.
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