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

751–760 of 1001 posts

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#751

Post by BobbyJo »

bruckie wrote: post #705
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. When you leave, your manager loses 1/N of team productivity. When you get fired, you lose 100% of your income. I bet the manager would be more upset if the entire team quit. But even then, they'd still have their job—for a while, at least.

Yeah, the stakes for the two sides of that transaction are completely different, so equivocating rational responses on either side makes no sense. OP lost me there.

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#752

Post by InkCanon »

beezlebroxxxxxx wrote: post #419
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?

> 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 think a lot of the low hanging fruit in tech has been eaten up, bought up and consolidated, or actually was recognized as much more difficult and expensive than they actually thought. The lea…

The "exhausted low hanging fruit" model IMO has been wrong since the industrial revolution. The fundamental problem is it's based on the heuristic of fixed demand + technology saturating the demand. It's really the opposite - technology is an ever expanding fractal, and the larger the surface area, the more things are needed. For example compilers are having a huge boom now because hardware is increasingly performance demanding and heterogeneous.

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#753

Post by rsync »

tqi wrote: post #364

TBH it feels like Dropbox has a pretty fair earnings multiple at the moment (~4X). Have we reached a point where tech companies have been around long enough that they can / should enter a sort of maintenance mode? It feels like there is a company version of the Peter Principle. Why do they (Dropbox specifically) need to continue to "innovate"? Wouldn't it be better for all parties if they just focused on maintaining…

"Wouldn't it be better for all parties if they just focused on maintaining the best possible version of their core offering at the lowest cost?"

Yes, absolutely.

There is value in new features and functionality but there can be so much more value in a predictable, stable tool that can be depended on and returned to.

There are people who cancelled their first account with us before dropbox existed and have returned, post-covid, to find a familiar tool to be picked right back up again.

This has been immensely valuable to a great many people and we wouldn't dream of ever changing it.

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#754

Post by cjblomqvist »

hankman86 wrote: post #463

The uncomfortable truth is that pretty much any business can cut staff by 20% without impacting overall performance. Provided that you manage to weed out the tail end of the performance bell curve that is. Most of the time, reducing staff is a healthy move for the business and the impacted employees. The company will not only save cost, but strengthen its culture of high performance. And under-achieving employees are…

Du you have sources for this? Now I'm not much better but I actually think there are several studies that show correlation between layoffs and worse than average performance.

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#755

Post by sosodev »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #654
sosodev wrote: post #552

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> Obviously the win is not laying people off. All you are arguing for is that Dropbox should never have hired these people in the first place. Why is that better? At least these people got some years of high pay, experience, networking relationships, etc. Obviously it's disruptive, and it could be a big net negative for people who maybe jumped ship from more stable jobs only to be quickly laid off, but that's not the…

I suppose it's largely a matter of perspective but I would argue that fewer more stable jobs would likely be better for both the companies and employees.

Also, you're missing another obvious argument. Most tech companies that are doing layoffs could afford to keep their employees. Dropbox hasn't done 3 rounds of layoffs because they're on the verge of bankruptcy but rather they're just following the trend and pleasing shareholders or whatever.

So I'm not arguing for less jobs but rather less corporate bullshit.

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#756

Post by Der_Einzige »

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.

People bring up the old naysaying comment about DropBox from some HN user years ago like it was a bad comment.

Maybe people like bad products, and make bad products rich all the time?

You can make a good product and go out of business, sometimes through actually no fault of your own too.

I agree, Dropbox is a feature - and it shouldn't be a product.

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#757

Post by kermatt »

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?

Companies become myopic past a certain stage.

New products take time to mature into revenue generating things.

Cost savings from layoffs are immediate.

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#758

Post by trallnag »

thrownaway561 wrote: post #507
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…

I still hate the fact that people can borrow money against a stock. Stock should be sold, period. That is how the market sets a price for stock, through the volume of it being sold and bought. By allowing people to borrow against a stock, let's them get the money for the stock while still holding it. That artificially increases the stock price and value.

Isn't this also the case with mortgages?

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#759

Post by currymj »

thrownaway561 wrote: post #507
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…

I still hate the fact that people can borrow money against a stock. Stock should be sold, period. That is how the market sets a price for stock, through the volume of it being sold and bought. By allowing people to borrow against a stock, let's them get the money for the stock while still holding it. That artificially increases the stock price and value.

probably whoever makes the loan will hedge, maybe by shorting the stock. or buying puts, but then whoever sells them the puts will hedge by shorting the stock.

if they decide not to hedge, then it must be because they don't think they're exposed to much risk, which basically means they like the stock and would be willing to own it. it feels like it mostly works out.

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#760

Post by steveBK123 »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #743
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…

> it strikes me that more big companies would rather have a one-stop shop full of 80% solutions than pay for 100 different SaaS. Strongly agree (unfortunately I might add, because I'm not a fan of "the big just keep getting bigger). When it comes to data management, tons of companies are really concerned about access controls, policies and DLP (data loss prevention). In my experience setting up these policies and rul…

Case in point - when it came out almost 20 years ago it was ground breaking.

Meanwhile, every single desktop OS, mobile OS and cloud provider basically has had this functionality in some form for maybe 10 years now.

If you are a home user in Google or Apple ecosystem, its all native and seamless. If you are a corporate setup in Microsoft or Google ecosystem, its all native and seamless there as well.

Not clear what the standout features of Dropbox would be now.

Post reply on HN