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Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

blog.dropbox.com

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Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#431

Post by randomdata »

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…

I expect a lot of people with that kind of money can't enjoy life as it disconnects them from everyone else. Your friends can't afford to do those things with you, so you either end up buying friends – with all the disillusionment that goes with that – or you turn away from people and get your fix trolling computers instead.

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#432

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#433

Post by fakedang »

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.

> 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.

Might be the first time I've heard this hot take out. What makes you think banks care what the org structure is for a public company? Banks don't care for size as long as the company is fiscally prudent and can prove it. They do check silly metrics sometimes like revenue per employee, but they really don't give a damn how your company is structured. By that metric, 2012 frat club Facebook wouldn't have been touched - yet they had like 10 investment banks frontrunning their book. In fact, I'd say 2012 Facebook IPO was the trigger for a lot of banks not caring about such silly things.

As a counterpoint to your argument, there are 200-500 employee biotechs not generating meaningful revenue that are trading publicly (and which went public without a SPAC play). The decision on who gets to go public falls on the exchange, not on the banks - they simply sell your stock to their investor list, and a flat structure with fewer than needed employees is actually a great selling point for a bank.

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#434

Post by JAlexoid »

karaterobot wrote: post #393
sk11001 wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's been a product for 17 years.

Not when your competition are consumer companies like Google, Microsoft and Apple.

I'm on Google One at $100 per year, getting more services than Dropbox can offer with their $120 plan.

Maybe they have a future in enterprise sales, but they are outcompeted even by Zoho in consumer space

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#435

Post by pixelatedindex »

Matticus_Rex wrote: post #406
duped wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Layoffs suck and no one wants to do it, but sometimes it's needed to save the ship. Layoffs are the trolley problem but you get to pick how many people are lying down on each side of the track and if you want yourself to be one of them. That said, if one reaches the conclusion that under their leadership they were forced to downsize by 20% (either due to over hiring, failure to reach revenue/growth targets, whateve…

>that should make that person one of the people on proverbial track That's a satisfying thing to say, but as practical advice it's absolutely terrible . Often that person's leadership wasn't the problem, but even when it was, that doesn't necessarily mean that the company will be better-off without them. And that's the question -- what will make the company most likely to be the most successful going forward? Even if…

> Often that person's leadership wasn't the problem

Then what is the problem? Ultimately you’re paid the big bucks for being held responsible. Why isn’t it never something like the CEO doesn’t get any stocks that year. I’m not saying he needs to leave the company but maybe he should take a substantial hit to his pay. He has enough money to put food on the table for many years, unlike the people who are let go where it’s mostly a mixed bag.

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#436

Post by BonoboIO »

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 think even the Mozilla CEO made more … I looked it up as I wrote this.

Nope … the Mozilla CEO makes 6.9M a year which is insane.

In comparison Drew is underpaid by a factor of 50 or more.

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#437

Post by beezlebroxxxxxx »

ramraj07 wrote: post #206
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?

Often they target the lowest performers for such layoff. Of course they rarely succeed in doing that, but the idea is that these people should have been let go anyway but weren’t for various reasons.

> Often they target the lowest performers for such layoff.

In my experience, this is often an after-the-fact rationalization by people who "survive" layoffs to explain them, and a convenient justification by leadership for layoffs. If you've ever been in the room when layoffs are planned or discussed, the actual process is way more focused on blunt cost, personality of the people involved or on the chopping block, and is often practically a tossup considering "performance" is not really a clear or meaningful metric (actually, more often it's arbitrary for most companies --- they will find the metric they need to justify laying off someone). This phenomenon is greater the bigger the company and the more abstracted managers and leadership are from their lower level employees.

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#438

Post by talldayo »

geodel wrote: post #396
stonemetal12 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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]

> but acting like petulant child and lashing out at CEO won't do much.

I don't think anyone is attacking the CEO with the expectation that he's got his iPad in-hand, reading every comment through his tears. What we are saying is that corporate doublespeak is unbelievably fucking grating when it doesn't correlate whatsoever with tangible change at the company. This kind of repeat behavior is what makes people (justifiably) laugh when CEOs walk out onstage.

Like when Tim Cook steps out on and insults us all perennially with his "best iPhone yet" comment. Like, duh, of-fucking-course it is! Why don't you tell me something I don't know, show me some form of change in your posture or the way you provide your products and services to me. Don't just advertise to me - convince me that you're not steering the company in a direction that sucks for everyone but the CEO.

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#439

Post by steveBK123 »

duped wrote: post #360
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. Layoffs are the trolley problem but you get to pick how many people are lying down on each side of the track and if you want yourself to be one of them. That said, if one reaches the conclusion that under their leadership they were forced to downsize by 20% (either due to over hiring, failure to reach revenue/growth targets, whateve…

Generally leaders are not going to fire each other.

So sometimes a doomed strategy will be pursued far longer than you'd expect, barring some board or activist intervention.

Some of it is self interest, some of it is hubris.. but also one can easily blame a bad run on some broader economic situation, specific competitor actions, or right strategy with wrong team (so fire the team) .. this works for a while until it doesn't.

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#440

Post by kshahkshah »

Hilift wrote: post #410
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?

Remember Better, the mortgage company? They were briefly notable for laying off 900 people on a Zoom call. However, no-one asked why a re-envisioned mortgage application/process was failing in the best possible market. My opinion is Dropbox most valuable commodity is the millions of Windows PCs with a system level scheduled task that is vulnerable to "hijacking"... basically they are a data stream.

It was not failing in the best possible market. Better was a successful lender for mortgage refinancing. Better struggled to establish itself within the purchase market which has far more complex relationships.
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