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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

#371

Post by awill »

avrionov wrote: post #299

Dropbox 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…

Both evernote and dropbox started making the free service worse by limiting how many devices you could connect. Dropbox also dropped support for xfs filesystems on Linux (which they later brought back, but not after infuriating Linux users). That's when I stopped using both. I then moved to Google Drive (which is half the price of Dropbox), and moved to using markdown note apps sync with Google Drive (which is free!)

I don't think there's a single example of a company where >90% of their userbase if free, and they succeed after making the free user experience worse. They're thinking in terms of money (or reducing costs), but the other view is that they're making the experience for >90% of customers worse.

What dropbox seems to forger is that many of their enterprise contracts happened precisely because the decision makers used dropbox personally, and liked it. By screwing over your free customers, you are actually only hurting future sales.

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#372

Post by sizzle »

avrionov wrote: post #299

Dropbox 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…

Office 365 with MS Teams seems to have reached feature parity with Dropbox and slack in one nice suite of products that just work together seamlessly. You hit on an important insight, with O365 you can edit your documents right from the cloud and cross platform integration is tight with OneDrive and MS Teams.

What does everything think?

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#373

Post by avrionov »

thinkharderdev wrote: post #313
aeturnum wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 GSui…

> Dropbox is a feature not a product.

When you are against FAANG every product is just a feature.

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#374

Post by manigandham »

pradn wrote: post #302
hattar wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the strange "dropbox" app window that opens instead of a file explorer. Every time I encounter this I reconsider my Dropbox subscription.

Unfortunately, it's inevitable, since presenting a regular file explorer looks like they're competing in the commodity file syncing / backup space, not the higher-value enterprise collaboration space. They're trying not to be a "feature" as Steve Jobs called them.

But the dropbox "app" doesn't even really do that much, it's just a clone of a native file explorer, but worse.

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#375

Post by apendleton »

tidepod12 wrote: post #186

I 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…

We used Paper for awhile, but eventually didn't want to keep paying for both that and G suite (which we do anyway for mail). Personally, though, I think Paper is excellent. It's the first document-authoring tool I've spent much time with that understands that most of what we write will be consumed on (variably-sized) screens rather than in print, and yet is still accessible to less-technical folks. My sense, though, from our experience, was that it's pretty polarizing, and some people strongly prefer something more like Word.

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#376

Post by oblio »

howmayiannoyyou wrote: post #44

Dropbox: - CPU runaway consumption on OSX. - Annoying off-on drive storage paradigm. - Annoying integration with other apps (eg. Excel). - Little differentiation from competition. - Poor integration with their other offerings (eg. Paper). But most importantly, a complete failure of vision and innovation. There are 5 or 6 initiatives they could implement now that would turn the tide.

> There are 5 or 6 initiatives they could implement now that would turn the tide.

And those are?

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#377

Post by awill »

schnable wrote: post #320
avrionov wrote: post #299

Dropbox 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.

I understand that Dropbox feels they need to add features to compete, especially as they compete with Google and OneDrive, which both bundle a bunch of extra free stuff. But that should never be at the cost of your core product. Dropbox purchased zulip, and then dropped it. They also launched paper. Not sure anyone uses that.

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#378

Post by aeturnum »

jedberg wrote: post #357
aeturnum wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Perhaps a new anti-monopoly law that prevents orgs from entering into competition without any potential for profit? That's an interesting idea, but if you think about it, a lot of companies are in the same boat. How long did Uber go before making a profit? Amazon? Heck, Microsoft spent eight billion dollars until Xbox started turning a profit for them. Xbox probably would have never existed if not for Microsoft tak…

Yah, it's definitely not "the one perfect idea to fix the problem." Tho, FWIW, I think that Uber and Amazon and the Xbox division were all working towards profitability the entire time. By contrast, I don't believe Google has ever said they intend to make Keep profitable. This wouldn't be the first time the regulators are given the responsibility of telling the difference between incompetence and bad luck v.s. anticompetitive malfeasance.

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#379

Post by remir »

santoshalper wrote: post #233
CedarMills wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their UX has become worse, questionable design choices, and 2 GB limit is almost a joke. Chances are, if you're in the market, you just use something like Box which provides a lot more value for free.

I'm a long time user and when people talk about the UX (many, not just you), I am always puzzled. What UX are you speaking of? For me, Dropbox is just a folder on my hard drive with no real UX to speak of. It's the ultimate "gets out of my way and just works". Are you talking about the web site?

Dropbox tried to branch out into the "collaboration space" with their Paper feature/product and since then, the web UI has got worse.

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#380

Post by mdoms »

jimmaswell wrote: post #5

Dropbox lost me permanently as a potential customer with their greed and disregard for user experience. Constant nagging if you're at ~80% your free limit and the more recent draconian device limits for two examples. I hope they fail.

The absolute audacity of free tier customers lol. You were a liability on their balance sheet.
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