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

Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

cnbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 689 posts

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#91

Post by djhworld »

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…

For me the main reason I'm not a Dropbox customer is their rigid pricing structure, £7.99 a month for 1TB is good value for people who use 1TB, but I only need like 10% of that so would be wasting money

I'm guessing they bank on a small % of "whale" consumers using all their allowance and everyone else being way under the limit

I've stuck with Google drive for the 100gb plan at £1.99 which suits my needs, but would move to Dropbox in a heartbeat if they offered a similar tier

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#92

Post by chrisseaton »

nobleach wrote: post #64
chrisseaton wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why you think cutting some jobs means they can't possibly also need to hire for other jobs?

For the reasons stated in other places. Seeing a company that's cutting a large portion of their workforce is just bad optics. Yes, YOU may perceive it as wise business, but those who are looking to have a job in a year might not feel good about hiring on with a company that just had a layoff of a significant part of their workforce. What's to stop them from laying you off when their new plan doesn't work out as well…

If you need to make people redundant for business reasons then you need to do it.

It's not careless to do something that needs to be done. What should they do instead? Try to conceal the layoffs? I think that's illegal in most jurisdictions.

And they also cannot stop hiring.

All the actions here are rational and as carefully done as they could be.

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#94

Post by shroom »

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…

I'm a paying customer for Dropbox and I've just had it installed on my computer for when I occasionally had to share files with customers. Never really felt I used it to any extent but I also never canceled my subscription because I'm happy for what it is and I can't bother to find alternatives.

However my computer recently crashed and when "re-installing" Dropbox I discovered that they have many more useful "Apps" included like backup and password-sync and a neat paper scanning app for the phone. All of which I was very happy to discover. So I see myself keeping my subscription for the foreseeable future. :)

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#95

Post by brianwawok »

djhworld wrote: post #91
manigandham wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

For me the main reason I'm not a Dropbox customer is their rigid pricing structure, £7.99 a month for 1TB is good value for people who use 1TB, but I only need like 10% of that so would be wasting money I'm guessing they bank on a small % of "whale" consumers using all their allowance and everyone else being way under the limit I've stuck with Google drive for the 100gb plan at £1.99 which suits my needs, but would m…

Real hard to make a business with a $2 a month fee. When credit card fees in the US, the bank is eating like 50 cents of it. I think 7-8 bucks/pounds is about the minimum price for many apps to bother with it. Below that rather just have a limited “free” tier.

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#96

Post by pjc50 »

brundolf wrote: post #21
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…

It's dismaying that even the best, most shining examples of unicorns that took off on the backs of good products and have stood toe-to-toe with the mega-corps, are now losing value simply because they're competing with the mega-corps , and being forced to look for acquisitions just like all the other startups. If that doesn't plainly show that big tech has gotten too big, I don't know what will.

Historically there has been an argument in economics over whether markets necessarily tend towards consolidation, and I'm inclined to agree with Stiglitz that they do: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/05/joseph-stiglitz-are-m...

Especially in markets with strong network effects. Barring government action, operating systems / platforms will necessarily either directly subsume their most profitable applications, or capture all the market "rent" from them.

Ultimately "network shared storage" is a feature rather than a product. For much of their history they were value-added resellers of AWS.

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#97

Post by SteveGerencser »

josefresco wrote: post #67

Clients share files with me using Dropbox so I need a Dropbox account. My Dropbox account is now close to full and I have to "manage it". I don't like how files shared with me count against my quota and I don't like having to babysit a service my clients use to share files. I wonder how many business owners "just pay" to make the nag messaging go away.

Very much this. I don't use Dropbox personally. But I have clients that use it extensively and when they all share large files with me I am suddenly in the pay tier just because someone added me to a folder with 100 10 minute videos in it.

It feels an awful lot like double and triple dipping to me.

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#98

Post by itsnot2020 »

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.

I'm very happy with Tresorit - https://tresorit.com

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#99

Post by pjc50 »

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…

What is the bandwidth of a peach tin full of index cards, anyway?

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#100

Post by vladjjj »

brianwawok wrote: post #95
djhworld wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me the main reason I'm not a Dropbox customer is their rigid pricing structure, £7.99 a month for 1TB is good value for people who use 1TB, but I only need like 10% of that so would be wasting money I'm guessing they bank on a small % of "whale" consumers using all their allowance and everyone else being way under the limit I've stuck with Google drive for the 100gb plan at £1.99 which suits my needs, but would m…

Real hard to make a business with a $2 a month fee. When credit card fees in the US, the bank is eating like 50 cents of it. I think 7-8 bucks/pounds is about the minimum price for many apps to bother with it. Below that rather just have a limited “free” tier.

But I'd pay $25 a year in a heartbeat, otherwise I'm shuffling between free tiers.
Post reply on HN