Not surprised.
Perhaps Im wrong but their price offering compared to Google Drive and iCloud is a bit much right?
Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce
341–350 of 689 posts
Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce
#342I didn’t skimmed the article. Quick question, is it only Sales and Marketing or layoffs does include engineering too?
Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce
#343Earlier quoted context omitted.
At one time, Dropbox was the easiest and best solution if you were using Android, MacOS, and Windows. I used to pay for 1TB account although Apple offered 2TB for same monthly fee. But the Dropbox destroyed their simple UI to this ugliness clusterfuck. That was the motivation for me to cancel it and move 100% into Apple's ecosystem.
I'm still not sure what I could migrate to that would give me solid and trustworthy sync/access across Windows, Mac, iOS, and Linux. I'm happy to pay whatever I pay for Dropbox -- I don't actually remember what it is -- but I'd rather they stop throwing in bullshit kitchen-sink features.
I still use Dropbox because I care about what you mentioned, but I think the next best thing is Seafile, however it has bad symlink handling.
Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce
#344Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> 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. The number of consumer services the average consumer actually pays for is very small. Video services like Hulu and Netflix are the primary exception, but they benefitted greatly from being compared…
They could’ve stayed small if they hadn’t taken VC money and hired hundreds of engineers in downtown SF.
Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce
#345Earlier quoted context omitted.
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, Exc…
> 200$/year for three times more storage space isn't a terribly bad deal.
If you use the storage, then sure. But I would assume that you can then find better prices for 3TB.
You can see it this way:
- if you want an office license, it's 70$/year, and as a bonus you have a dropbox equivalent for free for 1TB.
- if you want some storage, up to 1TB, OneDrive is 70$/year, and as a bonus you have access to the complete office suite for free (yes, you can download all the office applications to run them locally and up to date, and also have access to the web versions)
I personally don't see how Dropbox can compete. The competition is cheaper, has more features, and offers almost the same user experience.
Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce
#346Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why should they be going off like a rocket?
more people are working remotely which probably requires more people looking for ways to share files more efficiently.
I imagine that sharing files would be the same regardless of whether you are remote or not. Even in a real office people don't usually hand USB sticks back and forth.
Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce
#347Dropbox 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…
man I love evernote. I dont want to use ios notes and deal with all the confusion icloud brings. I love using a service that is hyper focused on one thing and does it well.
Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce
#348Earlier quoted context omitted.
By not innovating in new products would be my guess. Dropbox is their product and? There's "Corporate Dropbox" and that's it?
They should have gone all in on Dropbox Paper and building out an office suite to compete with GSuite and O365. Didn't happen.
Dropbox Paper itself was an acquisition.
Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce
#349Earlier quoted context omitted.
The issue with this approach is that the company then leaves itself vulnerable to a big brain drain. If the bulk of those volunteers end up being your best seniors/leads who know they can just go down the street and pick up another job at comparable comp all while getting a cozy three month vacation that you're bankrolling...well, it's easy to see how you could be left in a much worse position imo.
The high performers, the people who make money for the company, are rarely the first to be let go.
Wrong. People with the highest salary are usually the first to be let go, regardless of their status or contribution.
update: you think rationally, looking from the "greater good" perspective. Decisions are never made like that in reality. The way it happens is the board says "we need to cut expenses by X% or else", and that becomes your new "rational" -- or you lose your CEO job. Nobody cares about long term consequences in situations like that.
Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce
#350> "The move will affect 315 people, who will be notified by the end of the business day." I'm guessing more than a few found out from this article directly. What a rough way to find out you were laid off.
How do you find out if you are getting laid off from the article exactly?