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

Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

blog.dropbox.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

391–400 of 1001 posts

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#391

Post by bigstrat2003 »

kraig911 wrote: post #183

Dropbox my one critique is can you please make it affordable again. I just can't justify the cost as there are cheaper services out there. I don't care about PDF signing etc. I fear OneDrive/Google Drive are eating you lunch because it's a hard sell to be competitive against them price wise.

I left Dropbox when they added (and preemptively enabled) a checkbox that shared your data with them for AI training. I refuse to do business with a company that will just unilaterally invade my privacy like that. They can make it as cheap as they want, I'll never go back.

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#392

Post by steveBK123 »

siliconc0w wrote: post #195
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?

I'm a libertarian in most things but I still don't like layoffs from profitable companies. Like it's probably not good for our society that people have to up end their life every few years and probably move to find a new job. Both my parents stayed in the same job for their careers and it meant they could stay in the same place, have kids, build ties to the community, etc. Seems important if you want to not die out a…

> Both my parents stayed in the same job for their careers

My father was the same, BUT.. this is an INCREDIBLY risky thing to do career-wise in the modern era. Given how much tech advances and that we actually face international competition that a lot of our boomer parents didn't during their career, I don't see really any going back either.

Some of the worst layoff situations I've seen were guys who worked in the same company for 25 years.. long enough that their knowledge & skills was too company-specific, but not long enough to retire. Just because someone seems indispensable doesn't mean they are safe.

Having to drain savings for 1-2 years jobless after a layoff in the last 10 years of your career and reset at a probably lower salary can set back your retirement 10 years.

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#393

Post by karaterobot »

sk11001 wrote: post #378
kraig911 wrote: post #183

Dropbox my one critique is can you please make it affordable again. I just can't justify the cost as there are cheaper services out there. I don't care about PDF signing etc. I fear OneDrive/Google Drive are eating you lunch because it's a hard sell to be competitive against them price wise.

Steve Jobs was right - Dropbox is a feature, not a product.

It's been a product for 17 years.

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#394

Post by [deleted] »

echoangle wrote: post #358
pc86 wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people do exactly that but it's rare that someone will simultaneously have the drive to do something that will generate them billions of dollars and also be willing or able to just stop working at that point. Also remember once you have that much money a lot of things become basically free, both figuratively ($100,000 to a billionaire is nothing) and literally (comped rooms, gifts, etc for basically every event…

True, it’s probably that this drive is what allowed them to be billionaires in the first place. Just to rant a bit more: the Wordpress situation makes this point even more crazy to me. Mullenweg has about 400m and instead of retiring and enjoying life, he’s arguing with anonymous users on Hacker News. No offense against hacker news but defending my life decisions on HN isn’t exactly the first thing I would do if I co…

[deleted]

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#396

Post by geodel »

stonemetal12 wrote: post #176
yieldcrv wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how would you like the next CEO to handle it, for reference?

Stop saying "take responsibility" if they aren't actually. If you knock a girl up and you "take responsibility" it means you getting married. If you are in a car wreck and you "take responsibility" it means you are paying for repairs. If you commit a crime and "take responsibility" you are going to jail. So if a CEO is "taking responsibility" it should be something like that second case, dollars from their own pocket…

[flagged]

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#397

Post by Spooky23 »

umeshunni wrote: post #128
aprilthird2021 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slack shot their own selves in the foot iirc. They were miles ahead of any competitor, employees loved it, and then they just started gouging all their whale customers in contract negotiations, to the point that they started looking elsewhere... If this isn't the full picture, let me know. I was at multiple companies trying to move away from Slack as the cost was not justifiable

What are they moving to, though? I can't imagine that Teams is any better.

Teams is close enough, especially given its cost.

Slack displayed alot of hubris and didn’t pivot. Their goal should have been Microsoft or Google acquisition.

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#398

Post by onion2k »

amelius wrote: post #365
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…

> Layoffs suck and no one wants to do it, but sometimes it's needed to save the ship. But they always fire the weak employees, not the ones that can easily help themselves. Maybe we should have some laws that randomize the layoffs ...

they always fire the weak employees

This is definitely not the case. Companies use a lot of different mechanisms to choose who to lay off, and it's rarely entirely performance based.

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#399

Post by bigstrat2003 »

yellow_lead wrote: post #184
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)

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.

With all due respect, that sounds like a personal shortcoming to me. One can (and should) not take interviews personally. One also can (and should) be able to acquit oneself well at an interview even without prep time.

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#400

Post by crabbone »

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?

Why not? Some companies do try this. It rarely succeeds though. The reason is that re-education en-masse, restructuring of the chain of command, re-allocation of resources are hard. Most businesses at some point enter the phase where the inertia is the strongest driving force: they only need to apply a tiny fraction of initial force to keep the lights on. At this point, trying to restructure is bound to be very hard.

Maybe, if the company can foresee and realistically assess the problems it's about to face, it may gradually prepare for the transition. I've seen this happen at my friend's job at Dell storage division: some storage product failed, they tried to reshuffle the teams to start working on something else, with some code reuse from the previous one. It still didn't go well, and a lot of people were still let go (because the initial effort of developing a new product cannot really accommodate an army of various kinds of extra personal that's necessary for mature product). They sort-of survived, but with a huge loss.

Post reply on HN