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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

#141

Post by spamizbad »

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…

Having worked in this industry for two decades (and a Dropbox user since its public launch) the "product strategy" of most of these companies is close to just spitballing. If you want a recent example you can look at Facebook lighting almost $40 billion with their Metaverse product.

To add to that, Product leadership at technology companies has evolved to be much less technical, so they aren't going to have any deep insight about AI that, say, a software engineer who has worked in that field might have.

But hey, if in a few years Dropbox launches a popular AI-based feature I'll gladly eat my words because I'll probably be using it. They could benefit from enhancing their search functionality, for example -- but that's just a nice-to-have feature, not something revolutionary.

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

#142

Post by wahnfrieden »

meling wrote: post #92
afavour wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Totally agree… I wish I could buy Dropbox’s minimal feature set: syncing files. And that they’d improve that feature rather than adding features I don’t use or want.

iCloud

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

#143

Post by wruza »

thesimon wrote: post #82
ignoramous wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Most companies work that way already, even small ones. Doesn’t end the world (doesn’t make it a perfect place to live in either).

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

#144

Post by treeman79 »

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…

Blockchain and NFT brings no real value to most people.

My non techie wife and all her friends love ChatGPT and use it daily. My kids friends use it to do all their homework. Which is pissing off my kids as I won’t let them use it.

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

#145

Post by starky »

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.

Dropbox lost me years ago when they removed the 15GB or whatever limit I had with bonus space. I got the message about what they wanted and uninstalled when they started hounding me through app notifications to pay for extra space because I only had "__ MB" of space remaining.

Oh well, between Amazon syncing my photos as part of Prime and GDrive I have plenty of cloud storage for my needs.

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

#146

Post by spamizbad »

seanalltogether wrote: post #111
cushychicken wrote: post #36

500/0.16 = 3125 That's a much leaner headcount than what I would expect for a company with as large a market footprint as Dropbox.

And yet I can't help but wonder what they need that many people for? The core of dropbox is still file syncing with extra tooling to enhance that. Figma had just over 200 people when they sold to Adobe and that is a pretty complex application.

Sales, marketing and support probably make up a majority of their workforce.

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

#147

Post by nicenewtemp84 »

thesimon wrote: post #82
ignoramous wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's basically as good as the average coworker in most companies, and more useful still than the lower end of coworkers I've had.

I describe AI as a new intern or assistant. Pretty useful, but don't bet your company on their answer.

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

#148

Post by hbn »

globalise83 wrote: post #24
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…

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

180 jobs would have been saved if we counted in base 8!

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

#149

Post by grepfru_it »

jjoonathan wrote: post #131
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…

Yes, but Dropbox Photos still: Lacks an exclusion mechanism, so icons leak in Includes STL files as photos and fails to display them Sometimes misses photos for no obvious reason It's difficult for auto-tagging to add value in the presence of unrelated dealbreakers. Laying off people working on unsexy features does not inspire confidence that they have these priorities in order.

What generates 80% of the revenue usually comes from 20% of the customers. What I’m trying to say is that those 20% DGAF about Dropbox photos.

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

#150

Post by palata »

rybosworld wrote: post #110
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…

> we JUST finished having every company try to pivot to blockchain and NFT I really don't think there are many existing companies that "pivoted" to blockchain and NFT. Certainly not a majority.

"tried to pivot", that's very different. Maybe it should read "announcing that they would try to pivot", but you get the idea.

I have seen many companies announce that they would look into blockchain and NFT. Which is exactly what Dropbox is saying now for AI.

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