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Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

blog.dropbox.com

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Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#171

Post by cma256 »

qeternity wrote: post #145
cma256 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 opportunit…

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

Probably the part where they very directly attributed the layoff to mismanagement.

> We’ve heard from many of you that our organizational structure has become overly complex, with excess layers of management slowing us down.

> [We're] designing a flatter, more efficient team structure overall.

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#173

Post by insane_dreamer »

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?

He should be fired.

If the company miscalculated, or mismanaged, to the degree that it suddenly has to cut 20% of its workforce in order to survive (or give shareholders what they want), then yeah, that's a pretty big mistake, and your head should be the first one to roll.

I bet you'd have a lot fewer CEOs calling for mass layoffs.

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#174

Post by dylan604 »

rchaud wrote: post #140
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.

Gotta prevent panic in stockholders is the main priority of a CEO in publicly traded companies. They only concern themselves with the well being of their employees as much as how it affects the stock price.

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#175

Post by jeffbee »

IshKebab wrote: post #144

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)?

> Kind of crazy that Dropbox has 2600 employees

No, the HN consensus is they are massive geniuses for moving out of AWS. Nobody here ever accounts for the extra datacenter, hardware platform, hardware ops, infrastructure ops, etc.

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#176

Post by stonemetal12 »

yieldcrv wrote: post #14
skwee357 wrote: post #6

Being sorry - check Takes full responsibility - check Layoffs are still there

how would you like the next CEO to handle it, for reference?

Stop saying "take responsibility" if they aren't actually.

If you knock a girl up and you "take responsibility" it means you getting married.

If you are in a car wreck and you "take responsibility" it means you are paying for repairs.

If you commit a crime and "take responsibility" you are going to jail.

So if a CEO is "taking responsibility" it should be something like that second case, dollars from their own pocket to the effected party.

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#177

Post by insane_dreamer »

golly_ned wrote: post #172

This is a great severance plan. 1. 4 months pay + 1 week per year of tenure. 2. Receive Q4 vests. 3. Upcoming approved leaves paid in cash. 4. Year-end bonuses paid. 5. Keep company devices.

You know what's better than a great severance plan? Keeping your job.

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#178

Post by schnebbau »

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…

It shows the rest of the staff that you actually are taking responsibility.

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#180

Post by dylan604 »

empath75 wrote: post #82
glimshe wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If he was responsible for the conditions that led to the layoff, he could also resign.

Layoffs happen even in well run companies.

well run companies do not hire more employees than they can afford
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