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Dropbox to reduce global workforce by about 16%, or 500 staff

blog.dropbox.com

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Re: Dropbox to reduce global workforce by about 16%, or 500 staff

#61

Post by bentt »

ignoramous wrote: post #37
soared wrote: post #18

> In an ideal world, we’d simply shift people from one team to another. And we’ve done that wherever possible. However, our next stage of growth requires a different mix of skill sets, particularly in AI and early-stage product development. We’ve been bringing in great talent in these areas over the last couple years and we'll need even more. Imagine building a company that lets users store files online, seeing chatg…

As an example: Dropbox can answer questions from the documents you've shared with them. They stand a good chance as anyone else to build a "personal chatgpt" / "enterprise chatgpt". Dropbox is also big on photos, I believe, the latest advancements give them a shot at taking on Google Photos.

I actually love this angle. Personally trained models based on our own data. They have the storage infra. They also have a means of distributed compute since they are installed on so many PCs. If they werent an annoying and aimless product I would be excited!

Re: Dropbox to reduce global workforce by about 16%, or 500 staff

#62

Post by dheera »

smcl wrote: post #2

Nice, round number. I wonder if that was a carefully thought out coincidence, or they fiddled with the numbers a bit until they got the right payroll savings then rounded it to the nearest 100. I suspect the latter - when I see a nice, round number of people being fired it makes me think that they decided "how many people do we need to sacrifice to appease the finance gods" rather than "how many of these roles are re…

> Nice, round number.

500 is also a businessy-salesy round number, compared to 512 which is what an engineer would have considered a round number. Gives some clues as to where the number came from.

Re: Dropbox to reduce global workforce by about 16%, or 500 staff

#63

Post by fallat »

rco8786 wrote: post #54
soared wrote: post #18

> In an ideal world, we’d simply shift people from one team to another. And we’ve done that wherever possible. However, our next stage of growth requires a different mix of skill sets, particularly in AI and early-stage product development. We’ve been bringing in great talent in these areas over the last couple years and we'll need even more. Imagine building a company that lets users store files online, seeing chatg…

> Imagine building a company that lets users store files online, seeing chatgpt released, and then laying off 16% of your company to.. use ai to store files better? I really don’t see how new ai capabilities lead to big layoffs and new opportunities for Dropbox snark incoming - Imagine thinking you understand the product strategy for a 14 year old, publicly traded company with thousands of employees without working t…

The most real HN comment I've seen in years.

Re: Dropbox to reduce global workforce by about 16%, or 500 staff

#64

Post by treis »

Aardwolf wrote: post #21
neom wrote: post #14

"As the world moved from physical film to digital photography, or from land lines to wireless communication, or from DVD rentals to streaming, opportunity and disruption went hand-in-hand. Companies that embraced a new reality and took decisive action did well. Companies that held onto the past or tried to have it all did not. These transitions are never easy, but I’m determined to ensure that Dropbox is at the foref…

Because AI is what you need to store your files... AI is super cool, but at least for storage of my files in the cloud I prefer something "dumb" to be honest

The money is in enterprise and with all of a company's files they're well positioned to do something AIish on them. Not sure there's anything really there but also don't think they have much choice but to jump on the hype train

Re: Dropbox to reduce global workforce by about 16%, or 500 staff

#65

Post by stefan_ »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #38
smcl wrote: post #2

Nice, round number. I wonder if that was a carefully thought out coincidence, or they fiddled with the numbers a bit until they got the right payroll savings then rounded it to the nearest 100. I suspect the latter - when I see a nice, round number of people being fired it makes me think that they decided "how many people do we need to sacrifice to appease the finance gods" rather than "how many of these roles are re…

The article says “about 16%”. I don’t think the number in the article should be taken as an exact count. > it makes me think that they decided "how many people do we need to sacrifice to appease the finance gods" rather than "how many of these roles are really needed to achieve the goals we set ourselves". Any big layoff involves, or is possibly the result of, shifting goals. Company goals change, especially as chang…

When one number is given as exact, and the other prefixed with "about", your intuition is that the exact number is not in fact an exact count? That is very odd.

Re: Dropbox to reduce global workforce by about 16%, or 500 staff

#66

Post by _jplc »

soared wrote: post #18

> In an ideal world, we’d simply shift people from one team to another. And we’ve done that wherever possible. However, our next stage of growth requires a different mix of skill sets, particularly in AI and early-stage product development. We’ve been bringing in great talent in these areas over the last couple years and we'll need even more. Imagine building a company that lets users store files online, seeing chatg…

I think their mindset is considering the "storing files" product "done" and doesn't need more features.

Now they're creating completely new products to include with the same subscription that have little or nothing to do with the original product.

Document writing and signing, password storage, screen capture, video review/approval process, invoices (beta)...

Re: Dropbox to reduce global workforce by about 16%, or 500 staff

#67

Post by PragmaticPulp »

afavour wrote: post #42
soared wrote: post #18

> In an ideal world, we’d simply shift people from one team to another. And we’ve done that wherever possible. However, our next stage of growth requires a different mix of skill sets, particularly in AI and early-stage product development. We’ve been bringing in great talent in these areas over the last couple years and we'll need even more. Imagine building a company that lets users store files online, seeing chatg…

Compared to my mindset a decade ago I've become so cynical about the whole SV tech scene. There's value there, of course: Dropbox was a fantastic service when it first came out. But these companies are incentivized to keep expanding until they occupy the entire universe. Now Dropbox wants to be my word processor. Next it wants to use AI to touch up my photos or whatever the hell because AI is the New Hot Thing tech c…

You’re not the target customer. A lot of people do use those tools, although most of them are outside of the tech world.

You’d probably be better off using a different service if it bothers you so much.

Re: Dropbox to reduce global workforce by about 16%, or 500 staff

#70

Post by teeray »

soared wrote: post #18

> In an ideal world, we’d simply shift people from one team to another. And we’ve done that wherever possible. However, our next stage of growth requires a different mix of skill sets, particularly in AI and early-stage product development. We’ve been bringing in great talent in these areas over the last couple years and we'll need even more. Imagine building a company that lets users store files online, seeing chatg…

It's nothing more than fan service for Wall Street. They like hearing about cost-cutting measures and new hotness ("AI! GPT!"). It's just like slapping "blockchain" onto arbitrary things in 2018 to stim your valuation.
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