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Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

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251–260 of 689 posts

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#251
post #210

These egotistical CEOs need to work on how to deliver difficult news without making so much of it about how hard it is on themselves. > This is a hard message for me to send > This is one of the toughest decisions I’ve had to make in my 14 years as CEO No one asked how you feel, Drew. You'll be fine.

I don’t disagree, but is it such a bad thing to convey some empathy?

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#252
post #248

I understand it's a management decision, but I'm curious as to why companies don't really start with "hey, we need to lay off 11%. Who here would like to volunteer. Here are the perks we are going to offer" See how many that gets you. Then again, that might get you more than 11% if you aren't careful.

That way you lose the people who have the best prospects elsewhere, often your top employees. This way you can pick which 11% you least want to keep.

More than losing the people who have the best prospects, you lose the ones that feels the least connected to the company. Even if you have many other prospects, if you still feel strongly for the company you work, you'll probably stay. The ones that leaves if you ask them to, wouldn't have stayed for very long anyway.

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#253

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…

I can get Office 365 Family (6 people), each one getting 1TB, plus 60 mins of skype per month each, plus word, excel, PowerPoint, online and desktop. Dropbox's Family plan, includes only 2TB of storage and basically nothing more (I know about paper but who uses it?). Office365 costs 50 euros per year. Dropbox 200 euros per year! Four times as expensive, and much less features. They are crazy expensive.

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#254

Dropbox is often cited as a success story when it comes to startups. But makes me think, is this what we should call successful companies? Companies that takes others money, grow the company until they've grown too much and need to fire people because of their poor decisions? Sure, Dropbox is a whole of 13 years old, which is infinity time on the internet, but considering the rest of the ecosystem with businesses (wh…

The point of taking others' money really isn't relevant, as those investors have had their exit when Dropox IPO'ed almost 3 years ago. Today's announcement is a product of the company Dropbox is today, not then.

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#255
post #163
post #143

Was the COO fired? It sounds like she was, reading this article. Is this a move to further reduce cost by rehiring in less-expensive locations? I imagine engineering functions will also be affected.

> Was the COO fired? It sounds like she was, reading this article. Knowing nothing about the internals at Dropbox, it does sound like it (on the surface at least). Having worked at a couple major tech companies now, executives never get fired. They "step down", or go on sabbatical ... and never come back. The usual hallmark of the action is that the email about it isn't sent by the leaving executive themselves, it's…

Also, the terms of whatever seperation gets figured out often includes keeping the exec as an employee (in a legal sense). They might not actually be doing any meaninful work, but but they still get the paychecks, extended time to exercise options/stock, health benefits, etc ...

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should they be going off like a rocket?

All remote collaboration software is growing like bonkers during the pandemic because of remote work.

How workflow changes regarding storage when employees start working remotely?

People will just share the same way they shared while in the office.

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could have just said continued healthcare for 6 months - that's got to be a lot better than paying for 6 months of COBRA.

It's the same thing. COBRA means you continue any healthcare plan you had while employed, with the only difference being you pay the full premium rather than your company subsidizing it. But in this case, it seems Dropbox is still subsidizing it (if that is indeed what that sentence in the letter means)... so it is just continued health coverage.

It's not the same thing. Continued healthcare means you are fully on the employer plan and afterwards, the COBRA timer starts. Paying for COBRA means the timer starts now.

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That minimum fee has recently increased. Like 1-2 months ago. You are not going to negotiate that down with VISA/MC. Talk to a bar/restaurant worker, who gets to see the transaction fees.

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#259
post #181

off topic: I'm the type of person who likes to select text while reading, and this page is terrible for that. It seems to replace the select cursor icon with a highlighter icon, which is super jarring. It also adds a weird popup after you selected text.

I agree, on top of that the animation while scrolling feels like scroll-hijacking. At first I thought the page is somehow laggy, when it isn't.

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#260

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…

I can't talk about GDrive or iCloud. However, window's cloud storage is REALLY good. Far better than dropbox IMO. It actually surprised me how seamless it worked on my new laptop. Everything just worked out of the box, the only thing I had to do was provide my windows credentials (benefits of that sort of integration). That being said, I've not tried to access those same files from my phone. Maybe that's worse. Dropb…

Do you mean Onedrive? It's not built-in but installed by default on Windows. It's still not as good as Dropbox. For example it only recently added differential syncing (for non-office files)[1] while Dropbox puts much more effort into syncing tech [2].

Most people probably won't notice the difference because the alternatives are good enough now. But if you have millions of files in deep folders, constant changes from multiple devices, or need instant syncing, then Dropbox is still worth the premium for the performance.

1. https://office365itpros.com/2020/04/28/onedrive-differential... 2. https://dropbox.tech/infrastructure/rewriting-the-heart-of-o...

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