Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction • Hacker News Board

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#131

Post by bhouston » Wed, Oct 30, 2024, 2:14 PM UTC

voisin wrote: post #113

avgDev wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is actually quite good. I am surprised.

A P/E on its own is not good or bad. If the company’s earnings are in decline you would expect a low P/E, and if they were growing aggressively then you would expect a high P/E. It is only when there is a mismatch when the ratio becomes interesting. I am not saying it isn’t interesting in this case but the comment you are replying to does not tell any information that would lead to the conclusion it is “quite good.”

Yeah if there is no growth but a lot of earnings the stock should probably start to pay dividends no? Otherwise what is it doing with all that cash it is generating?

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#132

Post by FirmwareBurner » Wed, Oct 30, 2024, 2:14 PM UTC

aprilthird2021 wrote: post #74

recroad wrote: post #44

TIL that nobody knows what they're doing. Jokes aside, how do you end up having more than 500 excess people than what you need? What is management exactly doing during the time they went from 1 excess person to 500? Did they just hope the "macroeconomic headwinds" would become tailwinds? Didn't they at some point see that they have more people than valuable work, and maybe we should deal with that problem instead of…

> how do you end up having more than 500 excess people than what you need? Not sure if you are serious or not, but understanding the output of knowledge workers is a famously difficult task.

>understanding the output of knowledge workers is a famously difficult task

That's why large companies don't look at individual worker output (performance reviews are mostly performative and subjective) and just look at stock prices and profits.

If "line goes up", it means workers as a whole must be doing a good job , even if individually many might not be good at their jobs, but as long as line goes up, nobody cares to look too deep into the hows and whys.

If line stops going up, then they start laying them off more or less randomly or forcing RTO, or such things regardless of individual performance.

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#133

Post by voisin » Wed, Oct 30, 2024, 2:14 PM UTC

Shank wrote: post #70

pizzathyme wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unpopular opinion, but I don't understand this type of comment. It sounds like people want executives to get some kind of punishment or pain as a consequence of laying people off. But what would that even look like? A fine? That would probably make no practical difference, and would discourage them from making changes that need to be made. Fire them? Then you would probably get a worse decision maker in the driver se…

> But what would that even look like? > Iwata ran the Kyoto, Japan-based video game company [Nintendo] from 2002 until his death in 2015. To avoid layoffs, Iwata took a 50% pay cut to help pay for employee salaries, saying a fully-staffed Nintendo would have a better chance of rebounding. [0] [0]: https://www.cnbc.com/2024/02/13/nintendo-ceo-once-halved-sal...

By taking that pay cut, how many employees could Nintendo keep that would otherwise have been fired? 5? 20? Certainly not in the hundreds or thousands. This just seems like virtue signalling.

Edit: to expand on my point re virtue signalling: the article states the CEO took a salary cut, not total compensation (and it doesn’t elaborate on the value of the cut). Salary is a small fraction of CEO total compensation - the bulk of which is stock based, and even in the event that stock grants were also cut, the CEO surely already had significant stock. Cutting a relatively small component of compensation in order to boost the stock price which disproportionately adds to the CEO’s personal wealth seems like virtue signalling to me. If the CEO said “shareholders be damned, morale and culture are all that matters in the long run, no layoffs etc etc” that would seem more meaningful.

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#134

Post by kiba » Wed, Oct 30, 2024, 2:14 PM UTC

insane_dreamer wrote: post #71

[flagged]

It's like how in the US we lament how the government can't afford to take proper care of its citizens (you know, basic things like universal healthcare, education, etc.) while spending $750B a year on the military.

It's not the government can't afford, it's that we aren't willing to allocate. The US is an incredibly wealthy country after all. We can unlock even more wealth if there's political will to fix how we do urban planning.

Also, we have military commitments around the world that underpins the global order. Decades of underinvestment in our defense industrial base and unneeded military adventures had led us to be woefully underprepared for our current security environment.

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#135

Post by umeshunni » Wed, Oct 30, 2024, 2:14 PM UTC

magicalhippo wrote: post #65

We’ve heard from many of you that our organizational structure has become overly complex, with excess layers of management slowing us down. So we're making more significant cuts in areas where we're over-invested or underperforming while designing a flatter, more efficient team structure overall. So a lot of middle management getting let go then?

That's been the trend at many companies recently. Cut a middle layer and consolidate.

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#136

Post by nsxwolf » Wed, Oct 30, 2024, 2:15 PM UTC

klausa wrote: post #110

ahstilde wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like it's 25% better than what you get in your country?

“25% better than legally required minimum” is not generally considered “great” in many circumstances.

Comparison is the thief of joy. In the US, any amount is... infinity %? Undefined %? better than the legally required minimum of 0.

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#137

Post by wakamoleguy » Wed, Oct 30, 2024, 2:15 PM UTC

recroad wrote: post #44

TIL that nobody knows what they're doing. Jokes aside, how do you end up having more than 500 excess people than what you need? What is management exactly doing during the time they went from 1 excess person to 500? Did they just hope the "macroeconomic headwinds" would become tailwinds? Didn't they at some point see that they have more people than valuable work, and maybe we should deal with that problem instead of…

It has been even more than 500 excess employees. 300 were laid off in January 2021, and another 500 in April 2023. The percentages imply that headcount bounced around from 2800 down to 2500, up to 3100, down to 2500, up to 2600, and now down to 2100.

These same macroeconomic headwinds have existed for some time now, and the fundamentals of Dropbox’s core business commoditization haven’t changed for the better.

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#138

Post by KaiserPro » Wed, Oct 30, 2024, 2:15 PM UTC

qeternity wrote: post #41

lifeisgood99 wrote: post #2

"As CEO, I take full responsibility for this decision" Oh hey another one that takes responsibility by taking on 0 consequences.

Genuine question: what do people want from a CEO in this situation? What consequences do you want the CEO to face? A token reduction in pay? Being fired?

The same consequences that a person lower down the ranks would have.

For example, if I lead a team that fails, the team will be disbanded and I will be either fired or demoted. (obviously if there are external factors I/we might be reprieved )

If the CEO leads an aggressive strategy that doesn't playout, they rarely get fired and certainly don't get demoted.

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#139

Post by elif » Wed, Oct 30, 2024, 2:15 PM UTC

recroad wrote: post #44

TIL that nobody knows what they're doing. Jokes aside, how do you end up having more than 500 excess people than what you need? What is management exactly doing during the time they went from 1 excess person to 500? Did they just hope the "macroeconomic headwinds" would become tailwinds? Didn't they at some point see that they have more people than valuable work, and maybe we should deal with that problem instead of…

This is literally every startup I've ever worked for. Grow before you need to, constantly expand your market. This is like 101 stuff

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#140

Post by rchaud » Wed, Oct 30, 2024, 2:15 PM UTC

vkazanov wrote: post #48

this is a good deal, better than most retention packages out there. But why is every ceo feels obligated to use this kind of meaningless corpo speak in these emails? "Macro Headwinds", "full responsibility"?

PR-speak is the same everywhere. The audience for this is Wall St, not the general public.