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Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

blog.dropbox.com

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Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#141

Post by vundercind »

triceratops wrote: post #80
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…

> Fire them? Then you would probably get a worse decision maker in the driver seat going forward Why? > who also didn't learn from experience of going through layoffs That's actually a valid point. We don't commonly fire normal employees for mistakes. The counterargument is CEOs aren't normal employees.

Yeah I'm not sure people with compensation well into the millions get to go "haha, sorry, still figuring this out!"

Cool, can we pay you intern wages then?

[EDIT] To make this a bit more substantive: I think this is a sign both that we need to stop with this whole professional-managerial-class horse-shit, promote people who know how to do the actual work of the business, and reduce exec wages because the job's simply not all that damn special and the comp shouldn't be so high that only godlike-perfect performance could possibly justify it, because in truth nobody's that good at it.

Step one of this would be reducing M&A activity (hellooooo antitrust enforcement) and reigning in the power of finance, since letting Wall Street suits put their HBS frat brothers in charge of everything is at the heart of why this stuff's how it is.

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#143

Post by golol »

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…

I suppose it is the following: 1. Maybe they didn't over-hire but instead the economic conditions changed. 2. Maybe instead of gradually letting go of people it is best to wait and then strike once and hard.

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#144

Post by IshKebab »

Kind of crazy that Dropbox has 2600 employees no? What do they all do? Isn't Dropbox finished?

I guess there's a very small number maintaining the core Dropbox stuff and most of them are working on speculative projects to increase revenue (e.g. this Dash thing they mentioned)?

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#145

Post by qeternity »

cma256 wrote: post #50
qeternity wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 latter. If you can not manage the company correctly and it leads to the job losses of hundreds of people not to mention the millions in salary that was wasted by their poor planning then yes they should be immediately relieved and not allowed to run any other company. They are clearly incompetent. Considering dropbox is not facing some economic recession outside of its control we can only blame the CEO's incompet…

I don't really get why layoffs mean that the company was not managed correctly.

Let's say you believe you have an opportunity that will double the value of the company, with a 30% probability, or cost the company 10% of it's value. This means it has an expected value of +21%. This is pretty good, and exactly the sort of thing shareholders want from their management. So you increase headcount and pursue the opportunity.

In the 70% scenario when that doesn't work, you have to downsize. Failure is not just possible, it's probable. That doesn't mean that the CEO mismanaged...they may have, I don't know the Dropbox details. But in the scenario where they haven't mismanaged, what do you want? Do you want companies to never take these risks in the first place?

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#146

Post by ToucanLoucan »

colechristensen wrote: post #92
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…

If you're running a SaaS that isn't customer-interaction heavy, you can usually get away with dropping about 80% of your technical staff (if, of course, you pick the correct 20%, which is not easy). Having worked in several startups through the early growth stage, it's just surprising how much you don't get more done with, say, a 500 employee company than a 50 employee company. There is a ton of room to grow less and…

Staffing your business (or even team) with the right number of people to accomplish a job is a real challenge that the majority of managers don't engage with, instead simply trying to grow their little kingdom to the largest size they can, both for intrinsic power reasons, and also to foster greater jobs for themselves later on.

If I see a manager put "led a team of 40" on their resume, in the interview, I ask "did you need 40 people? Did you need more, did you need less, and how would you have found out?" and the number of times this completely catches them off guard is staggering. It's like... did you choose that number for a reason? Or was that just the most you could fit in your budget?

And sure many hands make light work, but there's an inflection point where the sheer weight of your organization becomes a liability, where getting anything done or changed requires the involvement of so many people that most just don't bother unless it's an emergency. That's how you get corporate rot, and that's how you get all the massive companies we rag on here about all the time who have been making like, 5 products since before most of us were born that everyone fucking hates but everyone uses because everyone else does.

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#147

Post by voisin »

bhouston wrote: post #131
voisin wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

100%. Doesn’t even have to be zero growth - just growth less than investors want to see, as implied in the P/E ratio (since investors control the P).

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#148

Post by jeffbee »

brk wrote: post #66
jimberlage wrote: post #4

Honestly, this doesn't strike me as a bad layoff announcement, with one caveat. I’m writing to let you all know that after careful consideration, we've decided to reduce our global workforce by approximately 20% or 528 Dropboxers. Should be replaced with I’m writing to let you all know that after careful consideration, we've decided to reduce our global workforce by approximately 20% or 528 people. You should never u…

The employee pet name shit is just really tired at this point. It's as bad as the job postings still looking for Rock Stars or Ninjas or whatever. They're not Dropboxers, they're not associates, they are employees. Pretending otherwise is foolish on both sides.

Dropbox was where I first encountered the infantilization of the workplace, with animated emojis all over your biannual performance review. It was a shock, having come from a real company run by adults. Now everyone thinks this is normal, at least at companies that use Slack where 40% of the traffic is animated emojis.

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#150

Post by bigstrat2003 »

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?

At a minimum, don't say "I'm taking responsibility" when you aren't facing any consequences whatsoever. If an executive wants to talk like that, they best put skin in the game. Otherwise, shut up.
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