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Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce
311–320 of 689 posts
Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce
#312I 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.
Usually they don't want any 11%, they want a specific 11% (or whatever) because they are cutting specific programs.
For example, when I was part of a layoff in 2001, the company mostly let go of engineers and IT (and kept all the sales and marketing), but it wasn't just any engineers, it was the engineers working on a specific product that was being cut.
Also, for IT, my boss came to the three of us and said, "I have to cut one of you, but you're all equally good, so you guys can decide amongst yourself if you want". So at least down at the lower level they did as you suggest.
Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce
#313Dropbox and Evernote, for me are two very similar companies. Startups that innovated on a great user experience and had a flawless execution in the beginning. I was an early adopter of both of them, and they worked well. Dropbox sync between different machines worked like magic. I still remember some of the nightmares my coworkers had with OneDrive in meetings when the files for the presentations were missing because…
There are lots of smaller tech businesses that could make a good living for a few hundred folks, but are extremely vulnerable to FAANG companies putting out a half-baked competitor. Strategically, from the FAANG perspective, it makes sense to spend a little money (for them) dipping a toe into every pond "just in case." On the flip side, it makes bootstrapping a sustainable business extremely difficult. If Google give…
The problem is that maybe Steve Jobs was right after all and Dropbox is a feature not a product. Dropbox file syncing is best in class but for the vast majority of users that is probably not the most important thing for them. Most people won't run into the hard edge cases that Dropbox has solved better than the others. And something like Google Drive derives it's value from he fact that is deeply integrated into GSuite
Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce
#314As someone who was impacted by a past round of Uber layoffs, seeing this kind of messaging from the top is refreshing.
Everyone is at risk.
Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce
#315This is interesting because having layoffs at a company that should be going off like a rocket during a pandemic is odd. What is going on at Dropbox that prevented them from taking advantage of the huge shift to remote work?
For individuals Dropbox is quite expensive compared to services like OneDrive. Microsoft 365 Personal is 70$/year and gives you 1TB on OneDrive and full access to the Office offering. Dropbox for individuals is 200$/year for 3TB. And nothing else. Unless you're hoarding data or want to avoid Microsoft, the choice is simple. And I'm sure you have even cheaper services.
> Unless you're hoarding data or want to avoid Microsoft
...or have access to a licensed copy of the "real" Microsoft Office, the desktop app, which doesn't lag (that much), where all keyboard shortcuts work, drag-and-drop isn't too surprising, and you can use over a slow/metered/non-existent connection (bus, train, airplane), so you don't really care about Office 365.
Or you use it for something other than Word, Excel and Powerpoint. I know plenty of people who do architecture, landscaping or design who use Dropbox precisely because most of the things they use it for don't involve Office (much).
For lots of people, Microsoft 365 Personal is 70 $/year for 1 TB and a bunch of things that might as well be Google Docs, which are free. 200$/year for three times more storage space isn't a terribly bad deal.
Edit: yes, I realize Microsoft 365 allows you to use the desktop apps. That doesn't add much if you already have the desktop apps. Or if you don't need either the web or the desktop version.
Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce
#316Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't understand why this doesn't get more discussion. It's a much more conservative step than "medicare for all" and would do a lot of good.
As I understand it, you need collective bargaining against insurers to keep individual premiums down. Employers do that today, and if employers just pay out their insurance spend to employees, the employees will get less insurance as a result. A single payer system means the government negotiates on behalf of all of the citizens, allowing it to keep costs down much more than our current system.
Or you mandate that the insurers can only rate on certain variables (e.g. zip code) and/or you mandate a pooling system so that insurers who have many low risk people on their books subsidise insurers who have many high risk people.
Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce
#317I have a couple connections on LinkedIn that work at Dropbox, and through them I have noticed a decent amount (certainly more than usual) of somewhat-high-up individuals leaving Dropbox in the past couple weeks. Might just be completely coincidental, but I wonder if they had advance notice (or perhaps just saw the writing on the wall)? Also anecdotal and total speculation, I interviewed at Dropbox a couple years ago…
I use Paper and have to say I quite like it - I started using it at my current job where it seemed common and hadn’t heard of it before. The main thing I like it for is quickly putting together group TODOs - you can create checkboxes with [] and can tag people’s names to items and add deadlines. That combined with some indentation is exactly the level of structure I like to organize such things. I’m surprised to find out here that it seems so unpopular.
Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce
#318I recall someone who worked there describing people being paid to do nothing, just so they wouldn't be hired by anyone else. Sounded like they had fat to cut. Regarding their product and viability, I've always relied on their product and have found it to generally perform better than OneDrive or Google drive. But I can get 1TB of OneDrive for $70/year with all the Office apps and I need Google drive for my phone's ph…
How well does OneDrive work for files that aren't MS Office files?
OneDrive probably works just fine for a personal setting with limited files.
But as of about two years ago when we tried to migrate to it for business purposes.. it was an insane nightmare. It simply could not handle a filesystem with a few hundred thousand files AT ALL.
I think this was still at the time where OneDrive Business was technically a different product than OneDrive personal, and some bastardization with SharePoint (which I know nothing about).
But anyway- unless things have changed, OneDrive Business is not usable with a large amount of files.
Dropbox has been rock solid for years with a LOT of files. Although, recently I have been experiencing issues where dropbox just keeps getting stuck and has to be restarted. I also loathe their windows explorer integration.
Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce
#319This is interesting because having layoffs at a company that should be going off like a rocket during a pandemic is odd. What is going on at Dropbox that prevented them from taking advantage of the huge shift to remote work?
I think Box ate their lunch in the corporate sphere and they have a lot more competition in the consumer space from things like OneDrive and iCloud Drive. The only reason I still have Dropbox at all is because I don’t have a reason to pull the plug—and it wouldn’t have to be much of an excuse.
I wonder if the omission is due to HN bias of disliking Google, but Google Drive has the largest market share in the segment Dropbox competes in.
Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce
#320Dropbox and Evernote, for me are two very similar companies. Startups that innovated on a great user experience and had a flawless execution in the beginning. I was an early adopter of both of them, and they worked well. Dropbox sync between different machines worked like magic. I still remember some of the nightmares my coworkers had with OneDrive in meetings when the files for the presentations were missing because…
I think both of these companies could be successful, profitable small software shops if they stayed focused and lean. But they raise money and need to shoot for the moon, and it becomes all or nothing, and that's how they end up in trouble.