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

blog.dropbox.com

81–90 of 413 posts

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

#81
About the AI thing (assuming it's true and not merely a convenient excuse for layoffs):

Is every company just planning to feed all of their customer data through GPT / OpenAI, or will they build their own AIs? The first choice seems risky, from a business, legal and privacy perspective. The second one would require a large amount of capital and has many other risks.

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

#82
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.

But how can you be certain that the answer is actually correct instead of just sounding correct?

ChatGPT can come up with completely made-up answers that just seem right.

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

#83
post #25

I recently migrated from Dropbox to Google One. I find Dropbox's personal pricing really baffling: you get 2 GB for free or have to move all the way up to 2 TB and pay £100 a year. 100GB for £16 via Google is a much more sensible offer.

I’m thinking of doing the same, especially as the Dropbox app doesn’t sync on iPhone whereas google photos do. But Ive delayed the migration for years as its too much of a pain

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

#84
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

HN is becoming a meme, kind of like how HN used to write off Reddit.

Off to lobste.rs then?

I do agree with this observation of yours, fwiw.

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

#86
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

HN is becoming a meme, kind of like how HN used to write off Reddit.

It's so far in it's own butt that it thinks it's normal to go get 10M to raise money to build a hot dog/no hot dog AI app, or a crypto picture of a monkey.

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

#87

>> “ We’ve believed for many years that AI will give us new superpowers and completely transform knowledge work” I’ve speculated that this is the rationale behind some of the recent layoffs. Finally we get some confirmation. As a heavy OpenAI user, I think it is a premature optimization.

It didn't read to me that they're laying people off because they think ChatGPT lets them need less employees, which is what most of the fearmongering (which may in time be justified) has been about A.I.

From what I read it sounded like they're making a major shift to investment in A.I. technology, and dropping departments in their company that don't align with that new direction (while aggressively hiring in the A.I. field).

Companies have shifted focus all the time in the past, and axed departments that no longer align with that vision. Meta's doing that right now with enterprise VR as they're dropping that to focus more on A.I. as well (have to jump on that A.I. bandwagon to please them shareholders, after all, which I don't doubt is half the reason Dropbox is doing this as well). But this isn't exclusive to A.I.

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

#88
post #29

Why is a digital storage company moving into AI? Personally haven’t used them for at least 5-6 years so I am out of the loop there. Seems like a poor excuse to cut people.

Maybe they will have a peek at your images/files and train some AI?

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

#89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I feel especially sorry for fired_employees[498] and fired_employees[499] who were just added to make the round number!

Or maybe happy for employees 501 through 504 who were on the chopping block, but because Round Numbers Are Nice(tm), got to keep their jobs!

But they went from comfortable but low performers, to literally the worst 5 employees in the company.

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

#90
post #54
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…

We don’t really need to know their whole product strategy, I just can’t even come up with plausible uses for AI that meaningfully change the company enough to require a layoff. I disagree on tour last point, organizations that have data useful for bespoke models store it in aws/etc whereas organizations with random files that they need to share across teams use Dropbox.
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