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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

#101

Post by dalrympm »

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.

I have been a Dropbox customer for several years and every single time I try to download a file from the web I get stumped.

It's really a user hostile interface and it's up there on my list of things to replace but not high enough that I've done anything about it.

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#102

Post by Ozzie_osman »

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.

I don't think the writing is on the wall at all here. I think the company over shot a little, by trying to be a general-purpose enterprise platform instead of a tool (or suite of tools).

But from what I know the core business and the team are still really strong. They're just more of a Slack and less of a Microsoft, and probably have to adjust for that realization.

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#103

Post by adiM »

fortran77 wrote: post #66

I stopped using Dropbox and starting using Microsoft OneDrive. For the same price, I get the same amount of storage, plus an Outlook account, Office 365 on-line, the iOS and Android apps, and installable desktop versions of the Office Suite.

The only trouble is that the last time I checked there was no sync client for Linux.

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#104

Post by throw3848 »

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.

Charge yearly... Works for domains..

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#105

Post by dmicah »

tlogan wrote: post #23

The only way that Dropbox can stay independent is that they develop some email solution. Small companies (which I believe are core of Dropbox business) need just 3 things: email, docs and spreadsheets.

Dropbox had acquired the Mailbox email client in 2013, but then shut it down in 2015. This was a very annoying turn of events for people who used the app prior to the acquisition.

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#106

Post by indymike »

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.

Credit card fees are negotiable with most processors. You can get a fee structure that is optimized for low dollar transactions.

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#107

Post by polote »

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…

> Dropbox still has the best sync by far than any other system

This is a common dev thought. But almost no company in the world is going to care about that. You can onboard some consumer with that point but I hope they don't actually try to sign companies using that.

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#108

Post by marcosdumay »

chrisseaton wrote: post #29
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.

> 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. Why is this such a huge problem for you? Seems super minor?

It's a really reliable signal that the company is optmizing for the wrong things. The company just got out of its way to make non-customers life harder, that normally doesn't happen by accident.

It's not impactful by itself, but the more impactful things are less reliable as signals anyway.

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#109

Post by stunt »

cecida wrote: post #62

Microsoft Office 365 with 1TB of OneDrive storage per person for up to 6 people for €69 a year is almost impossible to compete with.

Microsoft Office 365 convinces some companies to use Azure over AWS. Eating Dropbox lunch is plain sailing for Microsoft.

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#110

Post by uniformlyrandom »

beached_whale wrote: post #50
raiyu wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My use case maybe different from yours but GDrive has worked well for me.

The others are generally not supported on Linux. Dropbox has a cli client here that mostly works. At least if we are talking Google/Microsoft. Or the companies are small enough to go under overnight and leave me in a lurch

Google drive unofficial client works pretty well for me on Linux.
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