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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

#221

Post by busterarm »

brundolf wrote: post #114
pjc50 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Historically there has been an argument in economics over whether markets necessarily tend towards consolidation, and I'm inclined to agree with Stiglitz that they do: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/05/joseph-stiglitz-are-m... Especially in markets with strong network effects. Barring government action, operating systems / platforms will necessarily either directly subsume their most profitable applications, or…

I agree completely. I think history (at least, the past 150 years) has shown this clearly. I've come to see an economy of corporations as a stew that tends to "clump up" and needs to be periodically "stirred" as part of the natural course of its development.

It's cyclic between consolidation and new investments.

We're just ramping up into the consolidation period now.

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#222

Post by 3guk »

Sad to hear - I never quite realised how awesome Dropbox was until we were forced by our company to migrate to OneDrive / Sharepoint.

I can't help but feel that 2021 is going to be full of companies who are re-structuring and announcing layoffs...

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#223

Post by toyg »

DixieDev wrote: post #111
josefresco wrote: post #67

Clients share files with me using Dropbox so I need a Dropbox account. My Dropbox account is now close to full and I have to "manage it". I don't like how files shared with me count against my quota and I don't like having to babysit a service my clients use to share files. I wonder how many business owners "just pay" to make the nag messaging go away.

Not a Dropbox user myself, but this system of counting shared files towards your quota seems pretty awful, and I'm surprised I've not seen more complaints about it. Do other cloud storage providers work this way?

I think Google Drive and Mega do (they definitely used to).

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#224

Post by dunham »

toyg wrote: post #171
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not likely to add smaller packages though, since they KNOW 99% of their customers will never go up that high. It's a bit like gmail; they offered 1 GB at the time (if I recall correctly?) which was a ridiculous amount that in practice, 99% of people would NEVER reach. But it was great PR. Mind you, gmail is "free". If Dropbox were to offer a 500GB package for half price, 99% of their customers that found out…

> they would likely open themselves up to a class action suit for people who feel like they overpaid for years. That's overly dramatic. Companies cut prices every day. It is however true that Dropbox cannot compete on price with the likes of MS, Google, and Apple. They can only compete on experience and features, and few people are impressed by their evolution in those areas. Do we really need a monstruous (and monst…

The useless, giant electron ticked me off. That was soon followed by a price increase. So I dropped them.

On the way out, Dropbox blocked me from deleting 'tex.web' on my local machine, because it thought it owned anything with a '.web' extension.

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#225

Post by a_wild_dandan »

drawkbox wrote: post #150
megamike wrote: post #132

COBRA? COBRA is a sad expensive joke

Healthcare needs to be disconnected from the employer. Public option and private and all healthcare benefits need to go to salary. It would make workers able to change jobs easier, businesses able to start and compete with others/countries easier, and would reduce ageism as well as going direct to consumer it would help the fixed pricing market of healthcare/medical services and supplies. We don't get our auto/home/l…

It astonishes me that a global health crisis can ironically trigger loss of healthcare for millions. That's such an abject failure of a system.

You're right, healthcare has no business being tightly coupled to employers -- or employment, in my opinion. Everyone should have healthcare.

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#226

Post by simplemen »

jedberg wrote: post #168

This is interesting because having layoffs at a company that should be going off like a rocket during a pandemic is odd. What is going on at Dropbox that prevented them from taking advantage of the huge shift to remote work?

At one time, Dropbox was the easiest and best solution if you were using Android, MacOS, and Windows. I used to pay for 1TB account although Apple offered 2TB for same monthly fee. But the Dropbox destroyed their simple UI to this ugliness clusterfuck. That was the motivation for me to cancel it and move 100% into Apple's ecosystem.

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#227

Post by babyshake »

planb wrote: post #34
disantlor wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, Dropbox is a great product that makes my life/workflow with music production so much easier and convenient. Moving interface things around is at worst annoying but really just trivial. I don't understand why people on HN get so reliably get fired up about UI changes.

These are not simply UI changes. Dropbox implements more and more dark patterns that go directly against everything it once stood for. This service used to be a fire-and-forget way to have a local directory that's also online and on multiple machines. Now it's a service that tries to be everything at once and never gets out of your way.

You can tell that an increasing proportion of their product engineering is based around figuring out how to convince/trick people into paying, or paying more. This seems to be the rule and not the exception for SaaS companies that have grown to a certain point.

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#228

Post by soneil »

cgearhart wrote: post #194
jedberg wrote: post #168

This is interesting because having layoffs at a company that should be going off like a rocket during a pandemic is odd. What is going on at Dropbox that prevented them from taking advantage of the huge shift to remote work?

I think Box ate their lunch in the corporate sphere and they have a lot more competition in the consumer space from things like OneDrive and iCloud Drive. The only reason I still have Dropbox at all is because I don’t have a reason to pull the plug—and it wouldn’t have to be much of an excuse.

Their device limit gave me my reason to leave them. When they started haemorrhaging corporate customers, they attacked their consumer users. I can't say I find the result hugely shocking.

Re: Dropbox to cut 11% of its global workforce

#230

Post by rapht »

dgellow wrote: post #213
jedberg wrote: post #168

This is interesting because having layoffs at a company that should be going off like a rocket during a pandemic is odd. What is going on at Dropbox that prevented them from taking advantage of the huge shift to remote work?

For individuals Dropbox is quite expensive compared to services like OneDrive. Microsoft 365 Personal is 70$/year and gives you 1TB on OneDrive and full access to the Office offering. Dropbox for individuals is 200$/year for 3TB. And nothing else. Unless you're hoarding data or want to avoid Microsoft, the choice is simple. And I'm sure you have even cheaper services.

I actually switched to OneDrive when Dropbox changed their pricing a while ago. Microsoft's offering was way more competitive on both price (€100/yr for 5x1TB) and features (Office access and integration, etc.)
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