Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Dropbox to reduce global workforce by about 16%, or 500 staff

blog.dropbox.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 413 posts

Re: Dropbox to reduce global workforce by about 16%, or 500 staff

#251

Post by jonny_eh »

stingraycharles wrote: post #194
Hamcha wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can understand some of the skepticism, we JUST finished having every company try to pivot to blockchain and NFT and now it seems history is repeating with AI. However, I also totally see the point, as an example: the biggest reason I like Google Photos is the automagic tagging on the pictures, I can just write any random description and it usually finds them across 10+ years of photos I have stored (not perfect, bu…

Eh, I worked for a video analytics startup in 2016 and we had investors (and a CEO) who were desperately pushing to do stuff with AI because everyone was doing stuff with AI. Needless to say, the startup ended up alienating their customers and eventually failed and “exited” for a five figure sum. The current “wave” of AI and deep learning and whatnot has been going on for almost a decade, longer than blockchain and d…

The new hype is generative AI, sparked by image generators like Midjourney and large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT.

Re: Dropbox to reduce global workforce by about 16%, or 500 staff

#252

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

soared wrote: post #18

> In an ideal world, we’d simply shift people from one team to another. And we’ve done that wherever possible. However, our next stage of growth requires a different mix of skill sets, particularly in AI and early-stage product development. We’ve been bringing in great talent in these areas over the last couple years and we'll need even more. Imagine building a company that lets users store files online, seeing chatg…

LoL - you won't need files in the future.

ChatGPT will just generate your documents on the fly from prompts you memorize.

Re: Dropbox to reduce global workforce by about 16%, or 500 staff

#253

Post by jonny_eh »

rybosworld wrote: post #110
Hamcha wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can understand some of the skepticism, we JUST finished having every company try to pivot to blockchain and NFT and now it seems history is repeating with AI. However, I also totally see the point, as an example: the biggest reason I like Google Photos is the automagic tagging on the pictures, I can just write any random description and it usually finds them across 10+ years of photos I have stored (not perfect, bu…

> we JUST finished having every company try to pivot to blockchain and NFT I really don't think there are many existing companies that "pivoted" to blockchain and NFT. Certainly not a majority.

I believe all of these are either dead or almost dead:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2023/01/04/square...

https://decrypt.co/121872/ubisoft-rabbids-nfts-sandbox

https://vanguard-x.com/blockchain/nfts-are-coming-to-youtube...

Re: Dropbox to reduce global workforce by about 16%, or 500 staff

#254

Post by lostlogin »

mieubrisse wrote: post #132
soared wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don’t really need to know their whole product strategy, I just can’t even come up with plausible uses for AI that meaningfully change the company enough to require a layoff. I disagree on tour last point, organizations that have data useful for bespoke models store it in aws/etc whereas organizations with random files that they need to share across teams use Dropbox.

There's a thing I saw on LessWrong a while ago where he says, "Before declaring a thing impossible, ask, 'Have you put 5 minutes on the clock and just brainstormed?'" In that spirit, here's me doing this about AI at Dropbox: - Get consent from users and train a personalized AI on user files, to answer questions like, "Where is my meeting with Thiago?" - Provide built-in support for number crunching on unstructured me…

You’re thinking about AI from a Dropbox customer POV.

What if it’s more about using customer data to Dropbox’s advantage? Combined with the telemetry you can’t turn off, they can mine the shit out of users.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35724939#35726399

Re: Dropbox to reduce global workforce by about 16%, or 500 staff

#255

Post by Spivak »

rexreed wrote: post #245
Spivak wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Dropbox is, like a lot of companies right now, is struggling to find new revenue with new features added to their existing product lines and is divesting themselves of new work on mature products to focus on new markets. AI just being something exciting in general that has everyone hyped. I would have thought HN would celebrate a company that's publicly decided to stop fucking with the Wi-Fi.

You had me until that last sentence. I have no idea what you're referring to with Wi-Fi.

The fact that Dropbox likely is going to stop constantly messing with their core offerings.

Re: Dropbox to reduce global workforce by about 16%, or 500 staff

#256

Post by rchaud »

afavour wrote: post #112
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re not the target customer. A lot of people do use those tools, although most of them are outside of the tech world. You’d probably be better off using a different service if it bothers you so much.

I stopped using Dropbox a long time ago (though switching cloud storage services is not trivial!). My point is a more general one, that today's tech companies can't just be , they must expand and expand. To butcher a quote from Grandpa Simpson: “I used to be ‘the target customer’, but then they changed what ‘the target customer’ was. Now I’m not ‘the target customer’ anymore and ‘the target customer’ seems weird and…

The key to attracting a Dropbox is to follow Rule 1 or Rule 2:

Rule 1: Be an enterprise account that uses the "Call us for a quote" option, and does not complain about feature changes or removals

Rule 2: Don't break Rule 1

Re: Dropbox to reduce global workforce by about 16%, or 500 staff

#257

Post by stcroixx »

rco8786 wrote: post #54
soared wrote: post #18

> In an ideal world, we’d simply shift people from one team to another. And we’ve done that wherever possible. However, our next stage of growth requires a different mix of skill sets, particularly in AI and early-stage product development. We’ve been bringing in great talent in these areas over the last couple years and we'll need even more. Imagine building a company that lets users store files online, seeing chatg…

> Imagine building a company that lets users store files online, seeing chatgpt released, and then laying off 16% of your company to.. use ai to store files better? I really don’t see how new ai capabilities lead to big layoffs and new opportunities for Dropbox snark incoming - Imagine thinking you understand the product strategy for a 14 year old, publicly traded company with thousands of employees without working t…

As a customer, I don’t care much what their strategy is as long as my file storage keeps working. I do care if the company that I’m using for file storage is going to start treating that as a ‘legacy’ business while they chase something unrelated in an attempt to expand their market, none of which helps me. Also, the hint that a service like this is even considering reading my stored data and training AI on that would be a huge red flag. Sounds like executives chasing investors at the expense of customers again.

Re: Dropbox to reduce global workforce by about 16%, or 500 staff

#258

Post by rchaud »

phendrenad2 wrote: post #214
soared wrote: post #18

> In an ideal world, we’d simply shift people from one team to another. And we’ve done that wherever possible. However, our next stage of growth requires a different mix of skill sets, particularly in AI and early-stage product development. We’ve been bringing in great talent in these areas over the last couple years and we'll need even more. Imagine building a company that lets users store files online, seeing chatg…

It's almost like companies are doing whatever the hype cycle demands. Two years ago it was all about having a huge headcount. Now it's about being "lean" but also "all in on AI". Smart engineers will take a 6 week bootcamp on ML and go right back to work.

Two years ago, it was Dropbox thinking that people really needed a word processor, so they built "Dropbox Paper"

Re: Dropbox to reduce global workforce by about 16%, or 500 staff

#259

Post by paxys »

andreabergia wrote: post #213

> You'll also have some time TODAY AND TOMORROW to wrap up and say goodbye to colleagues. As an European, I don't think I will ever get used to the fact that in the US people can be told "go home, you're fired" like that, effective immediately.

They will likely remain on the payroll for many months. Tech company of that stature give very generous severance packages.

Re: Dropbox to reduce global workforce by about 16%, or 500 staff

#260

Post by [deleted] »

afavour wrote: post #42
soared wrote: post #18

> In an ideal world, we’d simply shift people from one team to another. And we’ve done that wherever possible. However, our next stage of growth requires a different mix of skill sets, particularly in AI and early-stage product development. We’ve been bringing in great talent in these areas over the last couple years and we'll need even more. Imagine building a company that lets users store files online, seeing chatg…

Compared to my mindset a decade ago I've become so cynical about the whole SV tech scene. There's value there, of course: Dropbox was a fantastic service when it first came out. But these companies are incentivized to keep expanding until they occupy the entire universe. Now Dropbox wants to be my word processor. Next it wants to use AI to touch up my photos or whatever the hell because AI is the New Hot Thing tech c…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN