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Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

cnbc.com

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Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#151

Post by andrewem »

smeyer wrote: post #140
megamike wrote: post #132

COBRA? COBRA is a sad expensive joke

COBRA's joke is just the joke of the most expensive healthcare in the world and a system that largely ties healthcare to employment. It's not like there's anything extra expensive about COBRA; it's just all the questionable expense of American healthcare without an employer subsidizing it.

They say “NAMER-based employees will be eligible for up to six months of COBRA”. Note that by law, a former employee is eligible to pay for up to 18 months of continuation health coverage under COBRA. So perhaps they mean that Dropbox will pay the premiums for up to 6 months, but it’s awfully unclear as written.

(Also I assume “NAMER” means North America. It’s a funny way to say “The United States” in this context, given that presumably Canada and Mexico, which are in North America, don’t have a law called COBRA which is about this.)

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#152

Post by derwiki »

clra wrote: post #144
megamike wrote: post #132

COBRA? COBRA is a sad expensive joke

Out of curiosity, is there something lower cost/better that employees who have recently quit or been laid off should look into?

Lower cost, sure any number of options on the market. I used https://www.ehealthinsurance.com years ago between jobs

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#153

Post by busterarm »

tw04 wrote: post #117
brundolf wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's dismaying that even the best, most shining examples of unicorns that took off on the backs of good products and have stood toe-to-toe with the mega-corps, are now losing value simply because they're competing with the mega-corps , and being forced to look for acquisitions just like all the other startups. If that doesn't plainly show that big tech has gotten too big, I don't know what will.

I disagree, mega-corps aren't the problem. As Steve Jobs famously said: they're a feature, not a product. Even if you eliminate Microsoft, Google, AND Amazon from the discussion, the list of alternatives is endless. Synology and QNAP both have a "free" sync and share client. WD, Seagate, Samsung, Apple, not to mention the open-source options out there. Do the big 3 put MORE pressure on Dropbox, sure. But they never p…

> I disagree, mega-corps aren't the problem. As Steve Jobs famously said: they're a feature, not a product.

I almost kneejerk downvoted out of disagreement. Mega-corps are _a_ problem, but not the problem here, which you astutely pointed out.

Dropbox didn't/couldn't innovate beyond their core product is clearly the issue here.

Additionally, most of what I find that companies use Dropbox for equates to Shadow IT. Something that mature corporations ruthlessly eliminate.

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#154

Post by underseacables »

rmk wrote: post #143

Was the COO fired? It sounds like she was, reading this article. Is this a move to further reduce cost by rehiring in less-expensive locations? I imagine engineering functions will also be affected.

Probably asked to resign. If the business is continuing to fail, and the CEO doesn’t take responsibility, someone has to be sacrificed for the board, share holders, etc.

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#155

Post by someonehere »

Dropbox has not evolved over the last ten years. They’ve bolted on features, but as an admin the service is horrible to manage.

Case in point, the admin console is not user friendly. It’s so bad I can’t search for a file in someone’s personal shared folder. I have to rely on the APIs or a third party like BetterCloud to find what I need. When I talked to Dropbox about renewal for my company, we could pay an additional $20k-$30k to get a limited version of BetterCloud to get the admin features I want.

I’m also bitter because I interviewed there in their early days and they used my experience to get answers to problems they were facing on their team. My interview was free support for them and I knew afterwards the path they walked me down was intentional to get ideas on what problems they had.

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#156

Post by rmk »

megamike wrote: post #132

COBRA? COBRA is a sad expensive joke

It's the lesser of three evils: losing coverage altogether, having to buy it as part of an open risk pool, or continuing coverage as part of the company's risk pool and rates the company has negotiated for its employees. It would be nice to have better options, but they will all be very expensive for the taxpayer. Either way, the money has to come out of someone's pocket.

By getting more people insured, Obamacare was expected to have bent down the rising curve of healthcare costs. I am not sure if that has actually happened...

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#157

Post by u678u »

raiyu wrote: post #9

Dropbox has been hammered by Wall Street ever since it went public. On the surface it should be trading well enough given it's revenue growth from when it went public to now, however, the narrative of competing with both Microsoft and Google was a tough one to play down. Revenue growth will slow down to below 20% in 2021 which basically starts to take DBX out of the high growth tech stock focus and it is trading at l…

> Dropbox has been hammered by Wall Street ever since it went public.

"Hammered" ha SV lives in a dream world. Its barely making a profit and no great product in the future. It still has market cap more than say Wendy's and H&R Block put together.

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#160

Post by that_guy_iain »

underseacables wrote: post #154
rmk wrote: post #143

Was the COO fired? It sounds like she was, reading this article. Is this a move to further reduce cost by rehiring in less-expensive locations? I imagine engineering functions will also be affected.

Probably asked to resign. If the business is continuing to fail, and the CEO doesn’t take responsibility, someone has to be sacrificed for the board, share holders, etc.

Yea, the fact it's in the same message as the layoffs show it was part of the layoffs but she was important enough to mention by name.
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