Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction • Hacker News Board

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#291

Post by CharlieDigital » Wed, Oct 30, 2024, 3:06 PM UTC

dangus wrote: post #289

CharlieDigital wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Open the "More" menu in your Dropbox interface and I think you may be surprised at how many different products they have. Yeah, but what if I don't need/want "more"? I just want my files on my different devices.

I never said you personally are their ideal customer profile.

My point is that this is probably the case for most users; the "more" doesn't mean anything because it's some functionality created by underemployed product managers rather than things that customers actually need/want to pay for. If you have to point out "hey, look here under this 'more' menu", then it's not part of the primary value proposition for the product and not why someone would pick that product. Sure, it might be that it is useful for some subset of users, but that you need to wave people down to show them that value means that it's probably not that valuable.

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#292

Post by opjjf » Wed, Oct 30, 2024, 3:06 PM UTC

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.

Do you earn SF salaries in your country?

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#293

Post by fwip » Wed, Oct 30, 2024, 3:07 PM UTC

yojo wrote: post #182

ziddoap wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They say "I take responsibility" and then.. don't take any responsibility. It's insult on injury. How big of a bonus will this CEO get this year? Last year?

I think Houston being a cofounder means the financial picture looks different. Last year he made $1.5M in total comp. Which is a lot in absolute terms, but cutting his pay to zero would only allow keeping ~6 of those laid off. OTOH, he owns 25% of a $9B company. His salary is a rounding error compared to the performance of the stock. Not to be an apologist, but I bet Drew really does feel responsible. He’s not profes…

True - it means he could transfer, say, a billion dollars worth of stock to the affected employees and still be a billionaire. If he actually felt all that bad about it, of course.

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#294

Post by faramarz » Wed, Oct 30, 2024, 3:11 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #281

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? This question always gets posted to HN, and is always the top comment whenever an article talks about how many people Company XYZ has. It seems like a lot of people just have never worked for a company that's growing (in terms of both profit and the amount of _stuff_ they are trying to do). Companies' need for people grows quadrat…

And not to mention acquisitions come with their engineers, sales staff, support and management crew.

The leadership should have been rebalancing yearly and quarterly in small chunks so they’re not in a position like this. It’s also a strategic play, while they come out with their major AI move next. That’s my guess. Gotta satisfy that board somehow

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#295

Post by echoangle » Wed, Oct 30, 2024, 3:11 PM UTC

bhouston wrote: post #244

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…

> Drew Houston's total compensation for the year in 2023 was $1.5M That is insanely low for the CEO of a public company of Dropbox's size. But I suspect he owned a lot of shares in the company so when it went public, so he doesn't need salary, it is just a rounding error in terms of his wealth. EDIT: Yeah, he is worth $2B according to Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/profile/drew-houston/

I always wonder what gives these people the drive to continue. Maybe I’m lazy and lacking vision but if I were worth 2B, I don’t think I would go to the office every day just to get accused of mismanagement when I have to lay people off. I would take my yacht to the Caribbean and slack off.

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#296

Post by disgruntledphd2 » Wed, Oct 30, 2024, 3:11 PM UTC

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #283

yojo wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is DropBox was trying to transition from sync and share to being a multi-product document-centric company (look at acquisitions like HelloSign). One possibility is they staffed up a bunch of projects on bets that ultimately didn’t turn into viable products, and are now pulling the plug.

More like the cloud sync functions out of the box on Google, Microsoft and Apple products caught up in features and already got good enough for the customer base of these to not bother paying extra for Dropbox no matter how much better they would have been. See Evernote. It's difficult to go against Apple, Google and Microsoft when they're vertically integrated and can squeeze you on all sides offering an OS, email,…

For me, Dropbox's moat and USP is that they make all of their money from file storage, giving me some confidence that they'll ensure it keeps working.

That's definitely not something one can say about their BigTech competitors.

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#297

Post by fwip » Wed, Oct 30, 2024, 3:12 PM UTC

zo1 wrote: post #239

pizzathyme wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unpopular opinion, but I don't understand this type of comment. It sounds like people want executives to get some kind of punishment or pain as a consequence of laying people off. But what would that even look like? A fine? That would probably make no practical difference, and would discourage them from making changes that need to be made. Fire them? Then you would probably get a worse decision maker in the driver se…

It's the grey goo of manager-speak. It rides both sides, but never truly picks one. The other two options: blame employees(someone not you), or take some form of punishment as an individual. I too do it sometimes, and I feel bad each time. I at least tell people what it is and that it's just the reality of the situation. I'm not gonna commit career suicide and jeopardize my family's livelihood but I also won't blame…

Ah, you're only going to endanger the livelihood of your employees' families, most of whom have substantially less wealth than you. I bet the rest of your employees don't really care that you "feel bad."

At least they learned not to trust you, though.

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#298

Post by bunderbunder » Wed, Oct 30, 2024, 3:12 PM UTC

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #283

yojo wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is DropBox was trying to transition from sync and share to being a multi-product document-centric company (look at acquisitions like HelloSign). One possibility is they staffed up a bunch of projects on bets that ultimately didn’t turn into viable products, and are now pulling the plug.

More like the cloud sync functions out of the box on Google, Microsoft and Apple products caught up in features and already got good enough for the customer base of these to not bother paying extra for Dropbox no matter how much better they would have been. See Evernote. It's difficult to go against Apple, Google and Microsoft when they're vertically integrated and can squeeze you on all sides offering an OS, email,…

I think that is why Dropbox has been trying to diversify their offerings. They know as well as the rest of us do that cloud storage that's only cloud storage and not much else will have serious trouble competing with cloud storage that you also need to have to work conveniently with Google Docs, or Office 365, or whatever.

But, as parent poster pointed out, taking on that new work requires hiring people to do it. But that's expensive, and those new products need to start generating revenue quickly in order to cover the increased payroll costs.

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#299

Post by andyjohnson0 » Wed, Oct 30, 2024, 3:13 PM UTC

> "As CEO, I take full responsibility for this decision and the circumstances that led to it, and I’m truly sorry to those impacted by this change."

As with other CEOs who say such things in similar situations - does this "responsibility" amount to anything? Like loss of salary or options or seniority. Or is this just empty words?

I appreciate that this action is probably necessary to safeguard the business but, as someone who has been at the sharp end of a number of redundancies, I wish leaders would be honest:

"We tried stuff but it didn't work. I was and am in charge, and I'm staying. We're making you redundant because we need the money more than we need you."

Obviously no leader would say such a thing. But the people affected (and thas not just those being made redundant) deserve honesty, not platitudes.

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#300

Post by FirmwareBurner » Wed, Oct 30, 2024, 3:14 PM UTC

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #296

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More like the cloud sync functions out of the box on Google, Microsoft and Apple products caught up in features and already got good enough for the customer base of these to not bother paying extra for Dropbox no matter how much better they would have been. See Evernote. It's difficult to go against Apple, Google and Microsoft when they're vertically integrated and can squeeze you on all sides offering an OS, email,…

For me, Dropbox's moat and USP is that they make all of their money from file storage, giving me some confidence that they'll ensure it keeps working. That's definitely not something one can say about their BigTech competitors.

>For me, Dropbox's moat and USP is that they make all of their money from file storage, giving me some confidence that they'll ensure it keeps working.

To me that's now become a red flag with these companies. Not speaking of Dropbox in particular but all these start-ups from the past that offered a free new innovative product/service for Android/iOS went to shit soon after Appel and Google copied and integrate similar functionality into the OS out of the box, leading to investor money drying up and the company suddenly paywalling and gouging existing users to make money to survive. Look at Evernote, LastPasss, Cerberus, etc. but also Amazon, Netflix, etc, enshitification galore.

Google and Apple are less likely to do that since they already make more money than God and tend not to want to fuck up their reputation just to squeeze a few more bucks from their users.

That's why I don't trust these small app companies anymore, since they'll get squeezed out by Apple, Microsoft and Google, and enshitification will ensure. The app is good in the beginning for a few years when VC money is abundant and their goal is user growth at any cost, but after that suddenly once you're locked in, you get paywalled, as the company tries to squeeze more money from you so VCs can get their money back. Rinse and repeat. So no thanks, I got burned a few times already.