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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

#121

Post by dspillett »

pdntspa wrote: post #99
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…

Really tired of how everyone is always trying to take over the world. Can a utility just stay a utility?

> Can a utility just stay a utility?

Only small indie utilities.

For most other things, to grow initially to serve the intended functions to as much of the target audience as possible, requires investment. Investors want that growth to continue, even if it makes little or no sense to the original objectives.

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

#122

Post by furyofantares »

stefan_ wrote: post #65
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Because it said "about 16%, or 500 employees" - the "about" prefixes both things. I understand how you can read it otherwise, but it is how I read it.

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

#123

Post by CharlesW »

AJRF wrote: post #41

"These transitions are never easy, but I’m determined to ensure that Dropbox is at the forefront of the AI era, just as we were at the forefront of the shift to mobile and the cloud. We’ll need all hands on deck as machine intelligence gives us the tools to reimagine our existing businesses and invent new ones. And I'm committed to doing everything in my power to best position ourselves for the future and unlock our…

Dropbox is a place where people put data. AI is built on data. A simple use case is something along the lines of, "Put all of your technical documentation in Folder X, then deploy Folder X as a Generative AI chatbot you can ask questions to".

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

#124

Post by great_psy »

avnfish wrote: 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.

Shouldn’t those prices be affected by moores law ?

I think I remember the tier prices being roughly the same since the service came out.

I get that salaries went up which adds to price, but over time it feels like storage price should go towards zero.

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

#126

Post by spaceman_2020 »

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…

AI is the perfect match for Dropbox. Search only finds relevant files. AI trained on my data can help me extract actual insights from the files.

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

#127

Post by soco »

Hamcha wrote: post #93
rco8786 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I can understand some of the skepticism, we JUST finished having every company try to pivot to blockchain and NFT and now it seems history is repeating with AI. However, I also totally see the point, as an example: the biggest reason I like Google Photos is the automagic tagging on the pictures, I can just write any random description and it usually finds them across 10+ years of photos I have stored (not perfect, bu…

You should call yourself lucky - I search in my Google Photos for something generic like "sunset" and I get 2 pictures if I'm lucky. No idea why... :(

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

#128

Post by thegginthesky »

AJRF wrote: post #41

"These transitions are never easy, but I’m determined to ensure that Dropbox is at the forefront of the AI era, just as we were at the forefront of the shift to mobile and the cloud. We’ll need all hands on deck as machine intelligence gives us the tools to reimagine our existing businesses and invent new ones. And I'm committed to doing everything in my power to best position ourselves for the future and unlock our…

I'd love to be able to ask questions about technical documentation, code bases, contract PDFs and so on, without having to worry to send my data unprotected to another company that doesn't have a Enterprise contract or can assure us of SOC 2 compliance.

If the AI can interpret what I mean, find the file, link me to the sources and distill the information and context, it will be major productivity boom.

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

#129

Post by xwdv »

afavour wrote: post #120
xwdv wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if I told you you could replicate all of that with proven battle tested technology… for free.

"you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224

It’s a testament to the Unix philosophy that after all these years, Dropbox has grown and morphed into something that people no longer enjoy, and yet if you simply followed that advice years ago, you would still have a system today that works exactly as you intended, and in 50 years when Dropbox is long gone as a company, that system will still be working as built, and even after you die, that system can be inherited by your children and grandchildren and still work as well as it did on day one. This is the timeless way of building.

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

#130

Post by qumpis »

soco wrote: post #127
Hamcha wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can understand some of the skepticism, we JUST finished having every company try to pivot to blockchain and NFT and now it seems history is repeating with AI. However, I also totally see the point, as an example: the biggest reason I like Google Photos is the automagic tagging on the pictures, I can just write any random description and it usually finds them across 10+ years of photos I have stored (not perfect, bu…

You should call yourself lucky - I search in my Google Photos for something generic like "sunset" and I get 2 pictures if I'm lucky. No idea why... :(

Maybe you need to keep objects centered when you take pictures :)
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