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Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

blog.dropbox.com

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Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#551

Post by tschellenbach »

The same forces that enable high tech salaries, also make layoffs more likely.

- The market for talent is competitive. So companies bid up to the absolute max they can - The market for managers is also competitive. Creating dynamics that lead to larger teams and raises for team members - Companies allow things like remote work, which is a perk, but also has a lot of abuse in terms of how much work gets done

The end result is that if companies are spending their max, if there's a shock to the market/system etc they have to cut. You'd see this less if there was more padding/ less competitive pressure/lower salaries.

I think that's fine and the system is working as intended. People should be freed up to move to other roles where they can be productive. Your manager doesn't get upset when you leave, bit weird how people feel so differently when they get fired.

The issue is not that you're getting fired. The issue is that healthcare is attached to employment, that makes zero sense. There should also be some reasonable government provided safety net so people can reskill/learn and move to other fields.

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#552

Post by sosodev »

seneca wrote: post #536
TechDebtDevin wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Severence is only so they can dodge regulatory scrutiny. They are not doing it out of the goodness of their hearts and was a line-item in the burden category for those employees when they were hired.

There's really no pleasing some people. Companies make cuts and don't give generous packages, they're evil. They give a package and it's just so they can dodge scrutiny. This kind of no-win complaining is tiresome.

Obviously the win is not laying people off. It's no secret that tech companies have not been hiring for sustainability and that sucks.

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#553

Post by spit2wind »

TechDebtDevin wrote: post #496
steveBK123 wrote: post #380

Very generous severance packages and companies/laders should be commended for this. If it's a one-and-done big cut with generous packages to save the company, then good on them. Somehow overhiring and maintaining said headcount long enough to need to do a 20% cut is probably less commendable, but not exactly an outlier there in the current climate. I've always wondered about all these standalone "point solution" comp…

Severence is only so they can dodge regulatory scrutiny. They are not doing it out of the goodness of their hearts and was a line-item in the burden category for those employees when they were hired.

What regulatory scrutiny do you mean? They don't need to provide severance, as far as California law seems concerned. I'm not a Californian, but an Internet search shows they're an at-will state. So it seems like everything is on the (legal) level.

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#554

Post by lucianbr »

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

What's the basis for this claim? I would rather think often it was the problem. Not absolutely every time, but most times. After all, the C-suite makes the decisions. I can not believe management decisions do not influence the course of a business.

Sure, it's possible that outside circumstances were such that no decision could avoid a bad outcome. But that's a rather unlikely possibility. Most of the time, outcomes depend on decisions. Otherwise businesses would be some headless automatons. And if that was the case, we should not pay execs much at all.

It's an obvious cheat: when times are good - it's all because of the leaders, when times are bad, it's all because of the environment. This is what they claim, but it is not the truth. Again, what's the basis for this claim? Any proof, studies, anything?

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#555

Post by randomdata »

crazygringo wrote: post #508
ericmcer wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It always seemed common sense to me that once a piece of software became stable and profitable you would need a much smaller engineering staff than when it was being built. The opposite seems to happens and orgs 10X their engineer headcount once they start making money. It makes sense to keep some high performers and a few redundancies to stabilize/modernize it and make small improvements, but it feels like tech got…

> once a piece of software became stable and profitable you would need a much smaller engineering staff than when it was being built This is not generally the case, except in monopoly situations. Your software product generally has a competitor, and they're busy trying to make theirs better than yours -- whether with more features, better integrations, whatever it is. So your staff size generally stays about the same…

> Your software product generally has a competitor, and they're busy trying to make theirs better than yours

Unless you are selling a commodity. There is a good case to be made that what Dropbox sells is a commodity.

> That's capitalism failing.

That's government failing.

1. You can't dig the moats necessary to establish a monopoly without regulation to support it.

2. If/when the government screws up, the onus is on it to fix the problem before the situation gets out of hand.

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#557

Post by protonprivacy »

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.

Can you share more about your experience, which platform you were using and what features you were looking for so that we can share it with the team?

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#558

Post by ilamont »

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?

> A new product, a new market, a spinoff.

Five or 10 years ago, they were doing a lot of this. Dropbox Paper ("a collaborative online workspace that allows you to create, share, and edit documents and notes with your team") for one. It's still active but it never took off. I was just notified that there is some sort of migration taking place which is probably related to the RIF.

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#559

Post by momojo »

atlintots wrote: post #12

[flagged]

Request: Any tech-recruiters on here who can validate this? I spent a single month in June job hunting (mid-level SWE, DE roles) and it was terrible. Hundreds of applicants per position. It felt like being a fresh-grad again. But that's just my anecdata

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#560

Post by s1artibartfast »

DrillShopper wrote: post #512
s1artibartfast wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Why isn’t it never something like the CEO doesn’t get any stocks that year. Performance based compensation is absolutely standard for CEOs- Both in terms of options and stock grants.

Do those metrics count "number of people laid off" explicitly? We know they do implicitly because laying off people makes the company more profitable, but is there any penalty for killing jobs? If not, shouldn't there be?

No, I dont think there should be a penalty by default.

The objective of a company isnt and shouldn't be to run a charity. Some amount of layoffs are desirable just as a matter of housekeeping. Layoffs can be a hard part of doing a good job.

I think there are extreme examples and tactics where layoffs cross a moral line but not a legal line. for example, I think the humane thing to do is freeze hiring before layoffs so you dont relocate someone only to let them go.

That said, there are already a lot of business incentives to avoid turbulence in headcount. It is slow and expensive to hire people and let them go.

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