Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce • Hacker News Board

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#481

Post by JohnJamesRambo » Wed, Jan 13, 2021, 9:05 PM UTC

bambax wrote: post #450

bachmeier wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Dropbox and Evernote, for me are two very similar companies. I was also going to comment on their similarities. It's not mentioned as often, but Evernote's biggest selling point in the beginning was that they figured out how to make multidevice sync work. The product was good, but not unique. In the early days there were no competitors that could offer the comfort of Evernote's sync. Unfortunately both companies st…

I don't understand the point about pricing. I find it cheap for something that works perfectly, across any device/OS and never fails, never breaks, and is extremely fast (insanely fast). The only way one would prefer something half-baked just because it's "free" is if they don't really care about robustness and dependability. That said, maybe the current Covid crisis is hurting them more than others. I used to travel…

It’s likely you have enough money that it isn’t prohibitive to you. I think most people would find $10 a month for file syncing crazy. Why would I pay for that instead of Google Drive? It’s one more company I have to share my data with and hope they don’t lose it/get hacked. At least I can log in once with Google (or OneDrive if you are in the Microsoft ecosystem) and two factor authentication and be done with it. I don’t understand the Dropbox business model at all. Hoping people are uninformed about better alternatives? 9 billion market cap for that?

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#482

Post by cma » Wed, Jan 13, 2021, 9:06 PM UTC

Closi wrote: post #434

bayindirh wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Dropbox is a feature not a product. I don't think so. It's a product which enables a lot of useful features on a variety of devices, including Linux desktops. No competitors of Dropbox enables the same functionality under Linux. This is why I use, and will continue to use it. Yes, iCloud just works and Google Drive works well enough, but none of them works on Linux. Nextcloud doesn't create too many problems but ne…

It’s obviously hard to know exactly what Jobs meant, and sadly he is not here to be able to ask him, but here is my best guess as to what he meant: In the early days of computing people would sell task managers, file managers, memory optimisers, software to burn data to a CD etc. As time went on, these ‘products’ just became features of the operating system. While it used to make sense for people to own a copy of Ner…

Still, cross-operating sync of files has become far more important than when Dropbox was launched, with many more people juggling multiple operating systems (OSs which are often adversarial with one another).

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#483

Post by Chyzwar » Wed, Jan 13, 2021, 9:06 PM UTC

Closi wrote: post #434

bayindirh wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Dropbox is a feature not a product. I don't think so. It's a product which enables a lot of useful features on a variety of devices, including Linux desktops. No competitors of Dropbox enables the same functionality under Linux. This is why I use, and will continue to use it. Yes, iCloud just works and Google Drive works well enough, but none of them works on Linux. Nextcloud doesn't create too many problems but ne…

It’s obviously hard to know exactly what Jobs meant, and sadly he is not here to be able to ask him, but here is my best guess as to what he meant: In the early days of computing people would sell task managers, file managers, memory optimisers, software to burn data to a CD etc. As time went on, these ‘products’ just became features of the operating system. While it used to make sense for people to own a copy of Ner…

There is a lot of useful things you can do with file storage. You can build plenty of products that synergize with Dropbox. Dropbox is failing to execute on these ideas. I was using Dropbox Carousel, now I use Google Photo. I wanted to use Dropbox Mailbox, but it was killed shortly after. Dropbox mobile app so bad that I needed to buy dedicated app to listen my music on Smartphone. They introduced computer backup in 2020! You still can sync only one folder!

They chase after an enterprise consumer but this would put them into direct competition with Microsoft, a fight that they cannot win.

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#484

Post by rodgerd » Wed, Jan 13, 2021, 9:11 PM UTC

sdenton4 wrote: post #477

eachro wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linux is just 2% of the desktop market. Apple and Microsoft have good enough cloud storage + sync, so Dropbox needs to be even more compellling on macOS/windows to survive. Their Dropbox Transfer offering is a nice alternate revenue stream for them. I wonder what else they can come up with.

(And like 75% of the mobile market!)

The *ix userland is nowhere in the mobile market, and Dropbox is not a kernel extension. Google could replace Linux with another kernel tomorrow and it would be irrelevant to Android users; Dropbox-for-Android is irrelevant to Dropbox-for-Linux-Desktops.

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#485

Post by tinyhouse » Wed, Jan 13, 2021, 9:13 PM UTC

avrionov wrote: post #370

bachmeier wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Dropbox and Evernote, for me are two very similar companies. I was also going to comment on their similarities. It's not mentioned as often, but Evernote's biggest selling point in the beginning was that they figured out how to make multidevice sync work. The product was good, but not unique. In the early days there were no competitors that could offer the comfort of Evernote's sync. Unfortunately both companies st…

Very good point about the pricing. Looking at their income statement [1] DropBox is not a very efficient company: Cost Of Revenues: $413.7M (22%) in software companies this includes Operations and customer care. There are spending as much as video sharing sites or video conferencing app. R&D Expenses: $727.8M (39%). This is an insanely high number for a company that is not a startup. The average for bigger companies…

This is out of context. Maybe show how these costs have been changing over time vs revenue change to make it more meaningful.

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#486

Post by tinyhouse » Wed, Jan 13, 2021, 9:14 PM UTC

avrionov wrote: post #451

tinyhouse wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anyone working at either company that's not looking for a job should be What?? I don't know about Evernote. But did you look at the financials of Dropbox? They have a solid sheet so maybe take a look before you suggest people there to look for another job. They decided to shift their focus to enterprise. They made a decision not to compete on the consumer side. Enterprises don't need a free tier. I don't know if th…

See my post about their expenses [1]. If they don't grow the investors are not going to be happy about the high engineering expenses. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25766475

Expenses alone don't tell the whole store. I replied on your original comment.

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#487

Post by pbreit » Wed, Jan 13, 2021, 9:15 PM UTC

aeturnum wrote: post #309

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…

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…

"There are lots of smaller tech businesses that could make a good living for a few hundred folks, but are extremely vulnerable to FAANG"

I would disagree strongly with that. FAANG is not interested and actually has trouble competing in sub $100m markets.

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#488

Post by apple4ever » Wed, Jan 13, 2021, 9:19 PM UTC

Sad for the people involved, but not surprising.

They restricted syncing to 3 devices only. And the only way to remove that was to pay some exorbitant price (I think it was like $20 a month). So I switched to OneDrive. And ended up paying for the extra space (at $7 a month) which also included office.

They really did not think their plan through, even after people complained.

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#489

Post by apple4ever » Wed, Jan 13, 2021, 9:20 PM UTC

bambax wrote: post #450

bachmeier wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Dropbox and Evernote, for me are two very similar companies. I was also going to comment on their similarities. It's not mentioned as often, but Evernote's biggest selling point in the beginning was that they figured out how to make multidevice sync work. The product was good, but not unique. In the early days there were no competitors that could offer the comfort of Evernote's sync. Unfortunately both companies st…

I don't understand the point about pricing. I find it cheap for something that works perfectly, across any device/OS and never fails, never breaks, and is extremely fast (insanely fast). The only way one would prefer something half-baked just because it's "free" is if they don't really care about robustness and dependability. That said, maybe the current Covid crisis is hurting them more than others. I used to travel…

$120 is not cheap, not to me.

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#490

Post by tinyhouse » Wed, Jan 13, 2021, 9:20 PM UTC

kersten wrote: post #415

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 agree and I'd love to support Dropbox. But I think in order for me to consider that they'd need to have a somewhat competitive pricing model. For example: I'm currently slowly running out of my free Google cloud storage that came with my Gmail account (15GB?). The next step for me is to upgrade to 100GB which will probably be enough for at least the next 10 years or so. With Google Drive that will cost me $1.99 per…

You're not a potential customer. They gave up on consumers and focus on companies. Cannot blame them they don't want to lose money on individual users like the competition.