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Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

blog.dropbox.com

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Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#161

Post by jryan49 »

voisin wrote: post #133
Shank wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 - th…

I feel like this would be the few times where virtue signaling is probably a benefit. It can make all the people in the company feel like the leader is on their side, and maybe make the employees less resentful and be more productive.

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#162

Post by qeternity »

triceratops wrote: post #85
pizzathyme wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most big tech companies did mass layoffs in the past few years. They are now fully recovered and posting record profits this week all with the same leadership. You are saying they are incompetent and someone else could have navigated this better?

Those profits could've been even higher if they hadn't overhired, then paid out massive sums in severance.

A company's profits will, without exception, be lower if they never take any risks.

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#163

Post by dylan604 »

elric wrote: post #90

I'm always a bit confused by profitable companies with (presumably) large reserves laying off lots of people. I get that they want to remain profitable. But sure 500ish people could be put to some use? A new product, a new market, a spinoff. Whatever? Are you telling me that no one in such a big, wealthy company of clever engineers has any use for a bunch of talented people?

But which people: the sales/marketing, the developers that actually make the product, across the board? At some point, development gets to a stable and solid product, so revenue increases come from staffing up sales/marketing. So does that mean you can reduce the devs to try and increase new users or that you've overstaffed the sales/marketing? Maybe there's just too damn many middle managers? Will the cutting be a surgical blade or a broad axe?

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#167

Post by krisoft »

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…

> What is management exactly doing during the time they went from 1 excess person to 500?

It is usually not the case that these people are standing around and doing nothing. It is more that they are working on initiatives and projects which the company is discontinuing now.

When the company has a lot of money investors expect them to spend some of it in finding new directions and opportunities. It's not all just spent on keeping the lights on, and the servers humming.

If they don't do this people in 3 years will be asking "What has Dropbox been doing all these years?"

If they are doing it right you are just amazed by the steady trickle of new features and services, and improvements which keep the company relevant in the years to come.

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#168

Post by a0123 »

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…

> Jokes aside, how do you end up having more than 500 excess people than what you need?

There never is an excess amount of workers (sure, there probably are 4-5 exceptions). What happens is that they need those employees, but instead are going to demand that the employees that are left pick up the slack. Which they will because they need a roof over their head.

Those companies are merely cutting costs, they don't actually have any excess employee.

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#169

Post by [deleted] »

BossingAround wrote: post #57
absoluteunit1 wrote: post #29

The severance package is great! I don’t think I would be upset (unless I was extremely passionate about a project I was working on)

Really? 16 weeks of salary, or 4 months of pay. In my country, you get 3 months of pay as standard when you're fired from your job. Doesn't seem that great to me to be honest.

[deleted]

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#170

Post by bottom999mottob »

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…

As a recent example, when you have "the great resignation" of 2021 turn into (in my view) "the great hiring" of 2021 followed by the Silicon Valley Bank collapse of 2023, it's obvious that hiring managers just follow what is trendy.

Obviously past results do not guarantee future, but what the masses follow is generally a recipe to disaster. I think that's why we're seeing the return/visibility of stacked ranking. Management theorists see one successful company trive or a former successful company fall, and then everyone follows suite because they're "data driven," not driven by first principles

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