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Dropbox Leases Giant New SF Office, Plans To Grow To 400+ Employees

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Re: Dropbox Leases Giant New SF Office, Plans To Grow To 400+ Employees

#21

Post by qq66 »

rednaught wrote: post #20
Spyro7 wrote: post #6

I know that they have taken some heat for security issues of late, but, frankly, I love this company and their product and I am happy to see them doing well. The magic of Dropbox is that it strikes just the right balance between simplicity and power. When my mother deleted a book that she had been writing for almost a year (and its backup), I was able to show her how to retrieve deleted documents from Dropbox. It was…

It's unfortunate when most are so mesmerized by great but incomplete magic that the magic creators are unwilling to conjure something even more magical to include safety like client-side encryption. Reworded for the downvotes: Don't punish users because most may not even be aware of the lack of security in Dropbox by not using client-side encryption. If it's too difficult to explain, then it's time to go back and add…

Client-side encryption severely worsens the economics of Dropbox, and not everyone needs it. If you want that you're perfectly entitled to go build your own competitor, which will have higher costs.

Re: Dropbox Leases Giant New SF Office, Plans To Grow To 400+ Employees

#22

Post by dmbass »

funkah wrote: post #11
mtogo wrote: post #2

In related news, Dropbox employees were surprised to find that the new building's locks could be opened with any key and that despite the landlord's Terms of Service, janitors and other building staff can in fact open and view private containers and documents belonging to employees.

That's a great point, Dropbox totally had a security bug that one time.

In my estimation, if their system was decently designed, instead of granting anyone access to everything, nobody should have been granted access to anything if there is an authentication problem. Can you possibly imagine a worse system than they currently use (that still attempts to provide security)?

Re: Dropbox Leases Giant New SF Office, Plans To Grow To 400+ Employees

#23

Post by qq66 »

MikeCapone wrote: post #9

Maybe I'm just an ignorant not-involved-in-a-startup person, but what is Dropbox doing with these 400+ employees? To me Dropbox seems like it's a pretty simply and mature product feature-wise. Have they announced that they're expanding into other products? I just hope they won't bloat Dropbox the way that some of these one-main-feature softwares were inflated in the past (ICQ, etc). edit: I guess what got me thinking…

Any organization at scale just needs a lot of people to deal with keeping the wheels on the bus. There are Computer Science problems that need to be solved every day to keep the site running, a team to handle billing problems, fraudulent payments, a sales team to go after corporate customers, now you have so many people in the office that you need inhouse HR... oh look, now you need a recruiter to start keeping all these candidates coming in the door... now you need accountants to make sure that all of these people get paid on time...

Re: Dropbox Leases Giant New SF Office, Plans To Grow To 400+ Employees

#24

Post by ceejayoz »

dmbass wrote: post #22
funkah wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a great point, Dropbox totally had a security bug that one time.

In my estimation, if their system was decently designed, instead of granting anyone access to everything, nobody should have been granted access to anything if there is an authentication problem. Can you possibly imagine a worse system than they currently use (that still attempts to provide security)?

How do you know what they "currently used"? Do you really think their authentication really defaults to "yes" still?

Re: Dropbox Leases Giant New SF Office, Plans To Grow To 400+ Employees

#25

Post by rednaught »

qq66 wrote: post #21
rednaught wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's unfortunate when most are so mesmerized by great but incomplete magic that the magic creators are unwilling to conjure something even more magical to include safety like client-side encryption. Reworded for the downvotes: Don't punish users because most may not even be aware of the lack of security in Dropbox by not using client-side encryption. If it's too difficult to explain, then it's time to go back and add…

Client-side encryption severely worsens the economics of Dropbox, and not everyone needs it. If you want that you're perfectly entitled to go build your own competitor, which will have higher costs.

It's already been built such as Spideroak and Wuala. Dropbox could capture more of the market and even concerned businesses if they make this even as much as a simple configurable option. If the data deduplication costs higher because of client-side encryption, then charge me the commodity price of storage for that option. Not everyone needs it but some do...

Re: Dropbox Leases Giant New SF Office, Plans To Grow To 400+ Employees

#26

Post by funkah »

dmbass wrote: post #22
funkah wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a great point, Dropbox totally had a security bug that one time.

In my estimation, if their system was decently designed, instead of granting anyone access to everything, nobody should have been granted access to anything if there is an authentication problem. Can you possibly imagine a worse system than they currently use (that still attempts to provide security)?

Depends on what you keep in there. For a lot of people, losing access to their documents would probably be worse than the (very small) risk of someone else seeing them.

But anyway I don't think a discussion of Dropbox's security model is very germane here.

Re: Dropbox Leases Giant New SF Office, Plans To Grow To 400+ Employees

#27

Post by aristidb »

qq66 wrote: post #21
rednaught wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's unfortunate when most are so mesmerized by great but incomplete magic that the magic creators are unwilling to conjure something even more magical to include safety like client-side encryption. Reworded for the downvotes: Don't punish users because most may not even be aware of the lack of security in Dropbox by not using client-side encryption. If it's too difficult to explain, then it's time to go back and add…

Client-side encryption severely worsens the economics of Dropbox, and not everyone needs it. If you want that you're perfectly entitled to go build your own competitor, which will have higher costs.

They could charge for it separately.

Re: Dropbox Leases Giant New SF Office, Plans To Grow To 400+ Employees

#28

Post by Jarred »

rada wrote: post #12

To all those wondering about 400+ new hires, you can view and vote on the proposed featureset at dropbox.com/votebox. Some popular requests: - sync folders outside of the My/Dropbox folder - read/write permissions for shared files/folders - remote destroy/purge if laptop is stolen - streaming audio/video - windows mobile support - reseller/branding program - internationalization ... and much more.

This is just some speculation as to why I think Dropbox is going to be something awesome (it's good right now, but not awesome). I'm not really in any position to make these suggestions (or expect them to be followed), so I'm going to more than likely sound crazy.

I don't really know what the vision behind Dropbox is, but (in my own opinion) it should be the place where people's personal files are stored. From there, people build cross-platform apps making it more useful. They are already doing this, but they need to take the "next step", which is probably what they want to do with their incoming 400 employees.

Generally, people store all their files on their home computer, and to solve the problem of "I can't access my files on the go" people started using laptops as their primary computer. That's not really a good solution because then you have to carry a computer around. Smartphones and tablets are sort of solving this, but they bring the same overall issue of "My stuff on here is different from my stuff on there". What Dropbox could do is host people's actual "computers", where computer is defined as software, files, and settings. So when you load up your smartphone or you friends smartphone you can access the smartphone version of your computer, and the tablet version of your computer on tablets, and the desktop version of your computer on desktops.

It wouldn't feel like you're using "your laptop" or "your friends tablet" or "your iPhone" because the only difference between any kind of computer is whose signed in right now. Dropbox is in a favorable position to do this, but so is Apple, Google, and Microsoft.

It's a pretty crazy (and unlikely) notion, but how else will Dropbox grow?

Re: Dropbox Leases Giant New SF Office, Plans To Grow To 400+ Employees

#29

Post by ghshephard »

I find it humorous that (otherwise highly intelligent, and well informed) members of HN are asking "What do they need all these people for" - DropBox is getting a rumored $5B valuation - which implies, no, requires they start to ramp up both their revenue and, eventually, profit.

That's going to require either (A) a LOT more customers, or (B) More profitable Customers.

(A) is just going to be a huge headache in terms of legal issues, support issues, infrastructure, etc...

(B) is going to require an entirely new model of sales - SEs, RFP writers, Marketing, Salespeople, Finance people working in many markets, channels, etc...

Regardless - 400 employees for a $5 Billion company is on the absolute low end of where they will be if they actually justify that (rumored) valuation.

The challenge comes when you start charging for these services and/or take on the corporate customers - if you run it ala CraigsList - you let the community police itself, and just hire a core infrastructure team, call it a day. Companies that start actively marketing their product, pick up an enormous number of bodies, and, of course, the finance/hr/it/management/executive teams required to support those bodies.

Re: Dropbox Leases Giant New SF Office, Plans To Grow To 400+ Employees

#30

Post by Sukotto »

ghshephard wrote: post #29

I find it humorous that (otherwise highly intelligent, and well informed) members of HN are asking "What do they need all these people for" - DropBox is getting a rumored $5B valuation - which implies, no, requires they start to ramp up both their revenue and, eventually, profit. That's going to require either (A) a LOT more customers, or (B) More profitable Customers. (A) is just going to be a huge headache in terms…

  I find it humorous that (otherwise highly intelligent, and
  well informed) members of HN are asking "What do they need 
  all these people for"
I'm one of those who asked that question. The way I become better informed is to acknowledge my ignorance, then ask questions in the hopes of reducing it.

You make some good points.

I would feel better about your answer if you didn't seem so condescending though.

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