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

591–600 of 1001 posts

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#591

Post by mrthrowaway999 »

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…

> People often have long term financial commitments they cannot back out of, and not knowing how you'll make rent, if you can afford your child's school fees, or even maybe having to cut back on how much you eat, _is stressful_ and emotionally taxing.

I'm sure people making >200k/year and getting a 4 month severance package will be cutting back on how much they eat.

What you say is true about low or even medium income jobs. But most of the cuts are to tech workers and their managers, ie. people best equipped to manage in this kind of event.

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#592

Post by kirubakaran »

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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_Adjustment_and_Retraini...

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#593

Post by echoangle »

lucianbr wrote: post #574
jrussino wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a slightly different version of this. There are some other replies here to the effect of "people like to have a purpose in life". But surely "helping people share files" or whatever the Dropbox "mission" is can't be that inspiring, right? I mean, the point of starting a company like that is to make those billions. Maybe to do it successfully you need to delude yourself into thinking that mission is really impo…

The instinct to acquire resources does not have a limit. When homo sapiens evolved, such a limit would not have been a useful adaptation. There were no billionaires then. Also it's nice to boss people around, probably for the same reason. You and lots of people say would do something or other. I submit that it's different when you're actually in that position, as opposed to imagining it. Lots of us imagine we're goin…

Some people have made the (good in my opinion) point that this is actually survivorship bias and a lot of people actually do retire and are never heard from again once they have enough money. So people predicting what they would do aren’t necessarily that wrong, it seems that some people actually do that.

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#594

Post by nitwit005 »

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 had a product manager at Salesforce tell me he went around trying to build support for a new reporting product. He was eventually taken aside by some coworker and told they don't build new products at Salesforce, and bought companies instead.

And they did indeed later buy multiple companies, including Tableau, in that space.

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#596

Post by Brystephor »

dixie_land wrote: post #578
wbl wrote: post #564

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Avoid lifestyle creep! I have to say I'm bad at this myself: somehow it all adds up, while each individual expense doesn't look so bad.

Exactly, I feel a lot of my coworkers fell under this trap: if you need cashflow for mortgage on your 4m mansion in (affluent neighborhood), you can't really afford it.

The only mortgages that don't require cashflow are the paid off mortgages. Even if someone has a year of savings, or two years, or three, after that amount is drained, they need cash flow again. So how does one buy a house without being dependent on cash flow?

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#599

Post by mrthrowaway999 »

Goronmon wrote: post #590
miningape wrote: post #569

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Don't people have savings? Don't people see what's happening in the industry and make sure to have 6+ months of savings? Don't people think that putting away a small portion of their immense tech salary would be a healthy thing to do?

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#600

Post by pjmlp »

anon291 wrote: post #526
pjmlp wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that isn't what happens, instead every year a new goal that has to be X % higher is set, and when expectations are not met, the employees are the ones landing on the street for stupid values of X%. The one signing off on X% might even get a bonus for doing that, and enjoy some Bahamas vacations.

In tech sure, but in the market, many companies simply return dividends. Lots of mining stocks, retailers, commodity producers, etc don't experience exponential growth

In this case we're talking about tech sector anyway.
Post reply on HN