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Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

blog.dropbox.com

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Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#251

Post by FirmwareBurner »

artyom wrote: post #194
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…

In my experience a lot of hiring in those big or publicly traded companies is to "build the structure to get promoted". When you're big, investors and banks and auditors don't like flat structures with a lot of individual contributors. A vertical structure is a must to go public. The rest is people playing the game they're forced into.

>In my experience a lot of hiring in those big or publicly traded companies is to "build the structure to get promoted".

This comment should be at the top. Not just at the top of the thread, but at the top of HN homepage.

It's how during the pandemic many companies just suddenly doubled their headcount without any extra output in products or quality, and now we're seeing somewhat of a correction to that with all the layoffs.

It's how you see people in tech hubs climb to the top of some large companies despite never having worked longer than a year at any company. Nothing against job hopping but I ask myself what skills and value people like that actually bring, who have 10x 1-year of experience, as they're never in a place long enough get to see the end results of their work and decisions, if they're good or bad, they barely pass the onboarding stage.

It's also how many of these large orgs end up failing long term. Look at Intel now, or german auto makers, as the goal of each worker there becomes gaming the system to getting yourself a promotion at the cost of the org as a whole, instead of adding value to get a promotion, since the org is very bad at setting the right goals and incentives for the workers. Google and the like who have a monopoly with an impossible moat or an infinite money cheat can resist this enshitification much much longer than the rest of the companies.

I'm not even mad, in the end most people are just playing the game, they don't get to write the rules of the game, and the ones who do are out of touch with reality so they can't be mad when people try to game it for their personal advantage.

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#252

Post by TechDebtDevin »

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…

Labor = KPIs not People.

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#253

Post by kiba »

insane_dreamer wrote: post #191
kiba wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's like how in the US we lament how the government can't afford to take proper care of its citizens (you know, basic things like universal healthcare, education, etc.) while spending $750B a year on the military. It's not the government can't afford, it's that we aren't willing to allocate. The US is an incredibly wealthy country after all. We can unlock even more wealth if there's political will to fix how we do u…

That last paragraph could have been taken directly out of the defense contractor lobbyist handbook. Congratulations. Seriously -- we don't have military commitments to "underpin the global order". We have military commitments to "protect our political and economic interests" -- and who do those benefit? The American people? Nah, not really. But the American people are the ones footing the bill for it, choosing to red…

Seriously -- we don't have military commitments to "underpin the global order". We have military commitments to "protect our political and economic interests" -- and who do those benefit? The American people? Nah, not really. But the American people are the ones footing the bill for it, choosing to reduce our own quality of life in order to exert power over other nations (and invade them at will).

Of course, it's our political and economic interests. We're a hegemony. This is not controversial. Unless you want China and Russia, the other two nations on the permanent security council, deciding what goes. That would be not for the benefit of the American people, but for their benefit.

Beside, it's not like there's a lack of spending in healthcare. Our healthcare spending is very high. According to wikipedia, it's something like nearly 18% of GDP.[1]

Universal healthcare will probably reduce how much money we spend on healthcare and making it affordable for everyone while improving health outcome.

It's a false dichotomy between military spending and our domestic needs, and the government is always in charge. You should read about the last supper and the peace dividend. The government downsized spending after the cold war and now we have a less robust defense industrial base. Some form of downsizing is inevitable especially if we want to reap the peace dividend but it's clear that we had gone too far in the way we downsized.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_finance_in_the_Uni...

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#254

Post by erikw »

gcr wrote: post #213
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)

This is a bullshit package because of the healthcare. I was laid off from a different company with access to 18 months of COBRA. Dropbox is offering a third of that. Lots of job searches take longer than 6 months, so the employees are going to be left high and dry right when they need it the most. For the non-Americans, my COBRA expenses are about USD$2,000/month for me and my partner. I’m paying as much for healthca…

All West Coast states have free healthcare (medicaid) available if your income is below a certain threshold. And there is no time limit on that. It won’t help with rent, but at least these folks won’t be completely without healthcare access.

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#255

Post by debacle »

mrthrowaway999 wrote: post #160
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…

> Actually, I know why. It's because they have too much money and when you have too much cash, you start splurging without thinking and then one day the chickens come home to roost. This is an incredibly uncharitable and shallow take, on the level of that comment many years ago that said something along the lines of "what's so interesting about Dropbox? It's just rsync, I could build it in a weekend". We don't operat…

The problem with DropBox is that it can't really compete with Google, Microsoft, Adobe, Amazon Drive, etc. It's too narrow of an offering.

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#256

Post by MrHamburger »

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?

It is basically showing that company is out of ideas, so only thing which they mange to do now is bean counting.

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#257

Post by briandear »

a0123 wrote: post #168
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 act…

Or they hire Accenture.

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#258

Post by flappyeagle »

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…

how about you estimate a software project to within 20% accuracy? I've never seen it happen once for anything beyond the most trivial thing. have some humility buddy

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#259

Post by dangus »

mrthrowaway999 wrote: post #160
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…

> Actually, I know why. It's because they have too much money and when you have too much cash, you start splurging without thinking and then one day the chickens come home to roost. This is an incredibly uncharitable and shallow take, on the level of that comment many years ago that said something along the lines of "what's so interesting about Dropbox? It's just rsync, I could build it in a weekend". We don't operat…

I think what people forget about layoffs is that all those "excess" employees who have been there didn't sit around doing nothing during the time they were there.

Those 20% of Dropbox staff wrote a bunch of code, made a bunch of sales, and did a lot of other tasks that will have an impact even after they don't work there anymore.

Even though they are being laid off, their contributions still have a positive impact on the company. Even the government treats it this way from a taxation basis: software that is written by engineers is treated as a depreciating asset that is amortized over 5 years.

In other words, if I write some code that consumes $100 worth of my labor, that engineering work is considered by the IRS to be an asset to the company with book value from now until 5 years from now. If I'm laid off, the company still has that $100 asset on their books, which depreciates over 5 years.

It's perfectly normal for a business to plan out their future based on uncertainty and risks. If they only hired people they knew 100% they would need forever, they'd miss out on a lot of opportunities.

Extending this logic far out enough and we could say ridiculous things like "How could IBM be so irresponsible to hire hundreds of thousands of engineers to make business mainframes when their marketshare will dwindle to a sliver in 40 years?"

The truth is that businesses need the employees that they need at a point in time, and that number is constantly changing.

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#260

Post by Workaccount2 »

andygcook wrote: post #208

For context, Drew Houston's total compensation for the year in 2023 was $1.5M: > According to our data, Dropbox, Inc. ... paid its CEO total annual compensation worth US$1.5m over the year to December 2023. That's a notable increase of 34% on last year via https://finance.yahoo.com/news/heres-why-dropbox-inc-nasdaq-... Even if Drew took minimum wage, that would save ~15 jobs assuming $100K all-in comp (which seems lo…

Public company CEO pay is almost always paid by shareholders not by the company itself.

It's so misleading that these "CEO compensation is 100x employee pay" stats always get kicked around like it is an apples to apples comparison. It's not.

CEO's get paid in stock which they need to redeem from shareholders. Employees get paid with cash which them redeem from the company's checking account. They are different sources of money.

It's so annoying that this keeps getting repeated, on and on and on. It's totally disingenuous.

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