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Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

blog.dropbox.com

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Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#581

Post by echoangle »

mrkramer wrote: post #571
echoangle wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 who have mission and vision of the future are entrepreneurs because they want to solve problems and help other people not because they want to become rich and sail with yacht. Listen to Snapchat's founder and CEO Evan Spiegel[0] why he didn't sell to Facebook for $3 billion. He even didn't sell to Google which offered 10x more ($30bn) for Snapchat. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVu6M72XWUI

To clarify, I actually kind of get it for businesses that actually have a important mission (using my definition of important of course). If you’re working on curing cancer, I would understand that a CEO doesn’t want to leave even if he’s set for life. I just don’t see entertainment and service businesses like Snapchat or Dropbox as actually meaningful endeavors. To me they are nice to have and something I would work at for money, but I wouldn’t feel like I’m making the world a better place. Maybe that’s exactly the thing I was misunderstanding about those CEOs, they truly think their work is needed and important for the world.

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#582

Post by formerlurker »

insane_dreamer wrote: post #71

[flagged]

Larry Page and Sergey Brin control over 51% of all votes at Google. Similarly, Zuckerberg controls over 60% of the votes at Facebook.

I took a look at https://www.opensecrets.org/ and surprise surprise, Google and Facebook were major election fund contributors to Silicon Valley representatives, like Ro Khanna. This tells me who really holds power.

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#584

Post by pjmlp »

otteromkram wrote: post #540
pjmlp wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope, MBAs have to learn exponential growth is impossible to accomplish forever. Companies should be managed to be profitable, while paying employees and business expenses. Anything other is a pipe dream that eventually blows up, but since only employees suffer while the MBA guys go to become CEO of yet another adventure, who cares. /s

I have an MBA and am not a CEO. I'm probably better at developing software than you, too. But, I do get a chuckle out of what you believe is a "diss," when you're actually stating that MBA holders will not only do better in life, but they'll also control your fate. Keep that narrative alive; I love it!

Like all rules there are exceptions, and I am old enough to remember when management was battled earned from the trenches, not people thinking they could manage any random company.

It is like assuming generals can win wars straight into the battlefield after graduation from military school.

Some get lucky, most of them do not, then again the little soldiers are the ones thar have to worry with the actual outcome.

Good that you're having fun.

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#586

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

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?

Interestingly enough, I once worked at a company that saw how huge amounts of money could be made taking the exact opposite approach.

This all came about because this company had built a couple of hugely successful, and profitable, enterprise software products. So this company then decided to plow a ton of money into building out other products. The company was also pretty famous for having a high employee bar, and their college recruiting process was kind of legendary for attracting top CS and other tech grads.

However, this company discovered that building follow on successful products, even with lots of really smart people, is extremely difficult. As a not-perfect analogy, think of all the "one hit wonders" out there in the music industry. Beyond those one hit wonders, the vast majority of the rest are basically two hit wonders. Point being, once you've built a really successful product, even if you have tons of smart people, there is no guarantee that plowing money into another product will give you a positive ROI.

So this company realized this, and then saw there were a lot of other small-to-midsize software companies who were similar: they had one or two really successful products, but then were trying to use money from that to expand and grow into other areas, usually with little or no success. So this original company pivoted their business model: they went out to buy these "one hit wonder" software companies, immediately stopped any investment into other products, laid off as many people as possible and outsourced the operations and maintenance of the few successful products to low-cost locales (at the time, India and China) and then essentially just milked the subscription revenue until the product slowly petered out. That is, they weren't really investing in big new features in the product, but the product had a lot of existing customers who didn't (or couldn't) move off of it right away, so often they had at least a couple years of milking the existing revenue dry. I called it "the world's most successful and depressing business model".

My overall point in telling this story is that when you ask "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?", that often times the answer is "Correct!" People tend to underestimate how difficult it is to build successful products, even if you've already knocked one out of the park.

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#587

Post by benbayard »

spit2wind wrote: post #553
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.

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.

California has the WARN act which I believe requires notice of 50 days, which people usually use to give severance. In the USA when someone is told they will be fired, usually we do not keep them on staff so severance is the usual middle ground.

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#588

Post by pclmulqdq »

bastardoperator wrote: post #456
pclmulqdq wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This often does happen along with layoffs when a company is in real trouble. A problem of silicon valley culture is that you basically can't fire anyone for underperformance, so you need to have these sorts of layoffs as a prophylactic measure to cull the heard. So that means you get a cycle of "overhiring" followed by "layoffs" and that is working exactly as intended.

California is at will, you can fire anyone for anything or even nothing. I'm yet to see poor performing executives take themselves out before they take out the people that actually create value. You don't need to have layoffs, you need better leaders, and they're the last ones to get culled, usually running off with bonuses for under-performance and lousy work.

Legally yes, culturally no.

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#589

Post by geodel »

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #466

Remember how there used to be a blog (or maybe it was a Tumblr, I forget) that documented every "Our incredible journey" post that inevitably announced the start-up's closure? I think we need another one for "An update from ", as this has seemingly become the standard subject to use when you're announcing layoffs or data breaches. I saw an identical headline earlier today from Sony announcing a studio closure: https:…

Indeed. "An update.." is a trend in lot of enterprises nowadays, probably taking cue from SV companies.

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#590

Post by Goronmon »

miningape wrote: post #569
tschellenbach wrote: post #551

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 r…

> Your manager doesn't get upset when you leave, bit weird how people feel so differently when they get fired. Really? You think its weird that someone leaving impacts that person more than their manager, team, or company? A manager doesn't care that you leave because he still gets to bring home a salary, all they have to do is hire another person and maybe cut back on scope for a little while. When someone is layed…

A manager doesn't care that you leave because he still gets to bring home a salary, all they have to do is hire another person and maybe cut back on scope for a little while.

Yeah, I'm curious how someone can have an opinions on workplaces and workers and not seem to have personal experience with the subject, especially in a community like this.

Do they just come from a wealthy family so the stance is "Getting fired isn't a big deal, just ask your dad to cover expenses until your next job."?

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