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

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#541

Post by cm2187 » Wed, Jan 13, 2021, 10:48 PM UTC

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…

Or you can use synology for free if you own a NAS.

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#542

Post by onepointsixC » Wed, Jan 13, 2021, 10:48 PM UTC

snarkypixel wrote: post #398

emptyparadise wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why can't a good feature survive on the market?

Because it can be copied and doesn't have a defendable business model. For most people, consolidating many services into one is just more convenient, even if it means using a "good-enough" version of that feature.

How is that meaningfully different than a product which can be copied?

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#543

Post by benhurmarcel » Wed, Jan 13, 2021, 10:51 PM UTC

ubermonkey wrote: post #300

simplemen wrote: post #226

Earlier 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.

Nextcloud. You can buy the service directly at various providers, such as Hetzner.

Another solution is Google Drive, adding Insync for desktop sync.

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#544

Post by dhnajsjdnd » Wed, Jan 13, 2021, 10:55 PM UTC

greatgirl wrote: post #529

jwr wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dropbox is only a "failure" if you require continuous growth. Let's pause for a moment and think: why do we require that? I know, markets, etc, but Dropbox could be a pretty good medium-sized business and be just fine. Well, another way to look at it is that Dropbox is a failure because instead of doing one thing right and optimizing the heck out of it, it tries to do many things, most of them badly, in the name of g…

I've always felt this, I've never seen a business actually _do_ this. Why don't businesses just stop employing so many people? Stop expanding? Stop trying to acquire more users? I mean, I know from my economics studies that businesses kind of have to keep competing or they die. It's just really sad.

They got where they are by raising from investors on the premise they would 10x the money, and also hired top talent with stock options that are only worth anything if the company similarly increases in value. If ambition wasn’t in their DNA, they never would have gotten to the good state you liked in the first place.

The payoff if the growth attempts work is asymmetric, so it’s worth the risk.

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#545

Post by onepointsixC » Wed, Jan 13, 2021, 10:57 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…

Just how vulnerable are those smaller businesses? I can't help but think of unsuccessful half baked FAANG products which failed to kill the competition. Do you have any specific examples in mind?

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#546

Post by loosescrews » Wed, Jan 13, 2021, 10:59 PM UTC

apendleton wrote: post #375

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,…

It has seemed to me for a while that they need to more fully compete with Google Workspace (formerly G Suite) and Microsoft Office 365. A big missing piece of that is email, as you said. They even acquired an email startup called Mailbox, but they killed it instead of adding an email service [1]. Every company needs email, and the most popular email services include Dropbox and Paper like products.

Slack is available as a standalone offering and is very popular, so a Slack clone may not be required. For everything else, limiting your customers to those already paying for duplicate services raises the bar. Your service needs to be enough better that it is worth paying for it twice.

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2015/12/8/9873268/why-dropbox-mailb...

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#547

Post by treis » Wed, Jan 13, 2021, 11:02 PM UTC

grumple wrote: post #363

treis wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like a failure of expectations. Dropbox created a market and delivered an extremely well executed product to meet it. But that wasn't enough to satisfy the expectation of growth that VC funded businesses have.

"Innovate or die" seems to ring true here.

I'm not sure I agree. A magic folder that syncs across all your devices is going to be useful for the foreseeable future. Eventually maybe Dropbox dies without real innovation but I think that fundamental concept could last for decades.

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#548

Post by rland » Wed, Jan 13, 2021, 11:02 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's a very easy precedent for this. Just widen anti-trust.

Back when we actually imagined that government could stand up to powerful companies, we dealt with the Railroads with the tools of anti-trust. The situation was almost comically similar:

+ New, hyped technology;

+ Which received huge capital investment from newly printed money;

+ And which lent itself to a natural monopoly;

+ Which crushed competitors;

+ By offering to buy them for high prices;

+ Or by severely undercutting competitors

We already did this, we already solved this problem. Issue is that it happened before any of us were born. So I guess we have to go through the pain of learning this lesson all over again. It should be plainly obvious that we haven't even really started, as evidenced by the plaintive "bUt WhAt Do wE DO aBoUT tEcH!?" cry that comes out every time these companies flex their muscle.

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#549

Post by woeirua » Wed, Jan 13, 2021, 11:04 PM UTC

At least in the customer space, I think Dropbox's main problem is that they have refused to offer lower space / lower cost packages. I can get 100 GB on Google Drive for $2 / month. The lowest package on Dropbox is $10 / month for 2 TB. I barely even fill half of the 100GB that I'm using on Google Drive. Why would I pay 6x as much for storage that I'm never going to use?

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#550

Post by xtracto » Wed, Jan 13, 2021, 11:07 PM UTC

jedberg wrote: post #403

xtracto wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's the 64,000 dollar question, isn't it? It seems like three months is pretty typical. When someone gets six months most people call them "lucky". When someone gets a year people call it "unheard of". No whether that's fair or not is anyone's guess. That's an interesting take from the point of view of the USA. They address international DropBox employees in passing in the letter. For Mexico, by law companies ha…

As an American who has friends in sane countries, I feel the same way. But keep in mind we still have unemployment insurance in the US, where the government pays you for a few months after you lose your job (although it's capped pretty low). Also sometimes the way the USA does it makes sense too. I was at a company that did a layoff once where they wanted to get rid of some underperformers in Europe, but Europe had s…

Right, completely agree. We have the example of Orange telephone in France (previously France Telecom) : A company that needed to reduce workforce, but because of the strong labor laws (skewed in favour of the employee) the executives decided to make life miserable to employees to push them to quit... the result was tragically pushing them to suicide ( https://www.dw.com/en/france-orange-top-bosses-caused-employ... ).

I like the safety net option. It kind of decouples it from the goodwill of the company, and (I being kind of in favour of socialist practices) it will be easier to apply to the whole population.