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Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

blog.dropbox.com

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Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#381

Post by _dark_matter_ »

vundercind wrote: post #141
triceratops wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Fire them? Then you would probably get a worse decision maker in the driver seat going forward Why? > who also didn't learn from experience of going through layoffs That's actually a valid point. We don't commonly fire normal employees for mistakes. The counterargument is CEOs aren't normal employees.

Yeah I'm not sure people with compensation well into the millions get to go "haha, sorry, still figuring this out!" Cool, can we pay you intern wages then? [EDIT] To make this a bit more substantive: I think this is a sign both that we need to stop with this whole professional-managerial-class horse-shit, promote people who know how to do the actual work of the business, and reduce exec wages because the job's simply…

Preach! The job is straightforward - lot of these decisions they make are very clearly articulated by LLMs. We need more businesses, more competition, not bigger businesses.

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#382

Post by iaw »

pembrook wrote: post #368
yellow_lead wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno. It may take 1-2 months to prepare for Leetcode style interviews, and this can be pretty mentally exhausting. Every time you fail to solve a leetcode question, it feeds your imposter syndrome, which is probably even worse due to getting fired.

Wow, that's horrible. And you might even have to stay at a 4 star instead of a 5 star resort in Bali when you take a vacation during your severance, job market is tough. Even worse, you might have to miss one contribution to your FATfire investment account to deal with the extra risk. Compounded, that missed contribution might mean you'll have to retire at 46 instead of 45. How dare these companies treat these people…

I don't think your tone aligns with the community guidelines[1]. Please consider not being snarky and sarcastic but actually responding to the merit of what people say here.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#383

Post by vel0city »

erikw wrote: post #254
gcr wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There's pretty much no way they'd qualify for Medicaid if they were a dev at Dropbox. The income limit for Medi-Cal is $20,783 for a single adult, $28,208 for a household of two adults. Chances are they were past that income limit the first few months of the year. You don't just immediately qualify after making $140k annualized for the first 10 months and then hit $0 one day.

Plus, they're getting 16 weeks of salary. At $140k/yr, that's $2,692/wk. Lets say their severance starts next week. There's 8 weeks left in the year. So they'll get 8 weeks of pay in 2025. $2,692 * 8 = $21,538. So no, they won't qualify for Medicaid at all in 2025 if they make that much as a single person.

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#384

Post by hiddencost »

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…

Uh, drop box cost per employee is likely closer to $750k, not $100k.

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#385

Post by csallen »

echoangle wrote: post #295
bhouston wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

People enjoy having a purpose and a mission in life. Leading a team of people that you put together, in order to improve a project you started, and knowing that doing so will improve both your lives and theirs, is incredibly fulfilling. Even if the day-to-day is full of hardships. In fact, working to overcome hardship is one of the primary source of meaning in life.

Kids are another example. They're expensive, they're annoying, they ruin your health, they take up your free time, they consume all your resources, and they're inherently needy, selfish, and largely incapable of being grateful. Yet raising kids can be profoundly rewarding and fulfilling, in part because of the hardships, and in part because you're contributing to something bigger than just yourself, which is another crucial ingredient of meaning.

Sitting around on a yacht doing nothing is not so different than moving into your parents' basement and doing nothing, save with better scenery. It's the kind of thing you crave when you're burned out, overworked, and jaded, the same way we crave sleep when we're tired and food when we're hungry. It's a reaction to a state of being. But we only desire sleep until rested and we tire of eating once we're sated.

If you ever get to your tropical yacht vacation you may find that, in much the same way, what you thought was a permanent desire was only a temporary one.

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#387

Post by voisin »

tootie wrote: post #225
voisin wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Didn't they at some point see that they have more people than valuable work Product roadmap probably had some ambitious ideas that got scrapped when earlier steps proved to not be marginal revenue generators. Jobs said it best: Dropbox is a feature not a product. All their efforts to make it a product (let alone a platform!) have worked against usability and alienated a lot of users. I am hopeful these layoffs sign…

They were (I think) first to market with fast, cheap cloud storage but at this point there's just too much competition and not enough differentiation. I have only the vaguest awareness of them trying to build some value adds to make Dropbox more of a collaboration tool, but I've never seen it get any adoption. I'm guessing those are the LOBs getting cut with this announcement.

I switched to OneDrive when it started getting bundled in free with Office 365. I also tried iCloud when it came in the Apple One subscription. Both are total shit compared to Dropbox. The sharing in iCloud is nothing short of laughable and OneDrive is just buggy Microsoft garbage (on my Mac - might be better on Windows). I am planning to move back to Dropbox which says something - I’d rather pay than use competitors’ products that come to me for “free”.

That said, I’d rather the company stick to its fundamentals with no further feature creep and focus on lower subscription cost rather than features to justify higher costs.

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#388

Post by geodel »

BossingAround wrote: post #120
ahstilde wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like it's 25% better than what you get in your country?

Personally, I'd consider this nothing to write home about. It's OK. Not great, not terrible. If we're laying off 20% of the company, I'd expect the package to be somewhere in the 6-12 months range. To me, that would seem more fair, considering they are completely restructuring the whole company.

Yeah, nothing to write home about until they pay inflation adjust salary till retirement age of 67 for all laid off employees.

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#389

Post by penguin_booze »

andyjohnson0 wrote: post #299

> "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 s…

"I earn the big money because I make decisions and I take risks (with others lives, but let's not talk about that). My decisions haven't worked; my risks haven't paid off. I'm however letting you take the hit, because I'm too important for that kind of shit. I've more decisions to make, and risks to take. My family is fine; my pay is fine. It's just you who are affected.". -- Your CEO, who still makes more money that you do (or don't), no matter what.

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#390

Post by turnsout »

baudpunk wrote: post #327

Kind of surprising to me, because I think I've tried every large competitor in the space, and have found there to be a gulf between the Dropbox UX and everyone else. I'm more than willing to pay their premium price. I was hoping Proton Drive would compete, but I felt like I was beta testing an inferior product. I guess Wu Tang was right.

Anecdotally, having been in client services, I saw Dropbox use plummet on both the client and agency side once the pandemic hit. People switched from syncing files to working directly on the same document in the cloud (e.g. Microsoft Word -> Google Docs, Keynote -> Google Slides, Sketch -> Figma)

In 2024, I wouldn't invest in any company that's based on "Files"

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