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Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

blog.dropbox.com

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Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#831

Post by majani »

wbl wrote: post #564
njtransit wrote: post #561

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A somewhat sensible take, but the issue isn’t just healthcare. A lot of your life is based off of long-term, fixed cost cash flow. E.g. you can’t pay less on your mortgage just because you got fired. Even with savings, getting laid off is highly disruptive, and, if done as part of a broader downturn in the market, you may never recover the required cash flow to enable your lifestyle.

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.

One thing I've come to realize is that the larger your social circle, the more prone you are to comparisons and hence lifestyle creep. You can see this where the careers that involve a lot of socializing (sales, entertainment, law, finance etc) are known for having flashy people. And the careers that you can do as a loner (programming, quant, researcher etc) are known for having miserly folk

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#832

Post by madhacker »

Phil_Latio wrote: post #285
madhacker wrote: post #142

[flagged]

So what? If they didn't hire fast, those 20% wouldn't had the job(s) in the first place. Stupidity worked in their favor. Same at Twitter. Edit: I guess that's basically what you are saying. The other comments confuse me!

People take issue with the CEO's lack of skin in the game. It's akin to saying this hurts me more than it hurts you while not making any real sacrifices. But the core of this issue runs deeper, it's endemic throughout corporate America and enabled by America culture which places no public shame for the lack of integrity or honor by those at the top.

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#833

Post by jltsiren »

InkCanon wrote: post #752
beezlebroxxxxxx wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 performanc…

It's easy to find new uses for technology. The hard part is turning the new idea into a commercially viable product. And it's even harder to find a business model that doesn't destroy the product in the long term.

The whole is often more than the sum of its parts. A company is not just a bunch of people, but it's also the company culture and the established ways of doing things. It's common that a company can't make something work, but the same people in another company could, because they can organize their labor in a different way.

Software development is often an investment. Hiring a developer is often an investment. Most companies eventually reach the point, where the rate of investment slows down and the company chooses to return the profits to the shareholders. When the company no longer believes that it can invest the money more profitably than the shareholders could, it's rational to lay off people working in R&D and use the profits for dividends or buybacks.

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#834

Post by elric »

jamil7 wrote: post #159
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?

It might be 500 middle managers which you can't do much with.

It's not. And that's not a very nice take on something that's affecting 500 people (and their families).

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#835

Post by majani »

ericmcer wrote: post #376
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?

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…

What you are talking of is only possible in companies where the founder didn't take VC investment. Once you take VC money, you get on the treadmill of infinite growth to satisfy investors. That makes companies do strange things in pursuit of this impossible goal. Like hiring for the sake of showing growth in headcount, hiring people to branch into unrelated verticals, hiring people with big resumes just to say you have them on the team etc

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#836

Post by elric »

jayd16 wrote: post #482
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?

What's the alternative? Busy work and shrinking equity value until things turn around or I get a much more abrupt layoff? I think I prefer the severance, the full disclosure, the opportunity to find another job and the possibility to keep teams together at a new thing.

It may well be that there is no alternative. Maybe Dropbox did try everything, maybe tried to let those 500 people work on producing different products or on finding other sources of income, I don't know. And I get that it's important for a business to keep itself afloat. But it's a recurring phenomenon in larger tech companies that I find puzzling.

Many of the answers in this thread have been perfectly reasonable. And I'm probably kidding myself when I think that "if I were that CEO, I'd do things differently".

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#837

Post by disqard »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #687
my_berner wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we'd all collectively blow our minds if a CEO said "I take full responsibility for the bad decisions and overhiring, so I'm resigning"

Would the CEO resigning or getting laid off, make your situation any better if you were one of those laid off? Feels like a weird hill to die on, and more like a crabs in the bucket mentality that doesn't change anything in the grand scheme of things. In the end I'm still unemployed and whatever happens to my ex-CEO doesn't change my situation one bit. As I grew older and experienced my share of layoffs, I stopped ca…

That's a really positive attitude, to not fixate on retribution -- kudos to you!

I'd like to point out that there are other possible outcomes, like (say) the CEO and entire C-suite cutting their salary to $1 for a year (it's not like this will render any of them homeless).

IMHO, that would actually constitute "taking full responsibility", as opposed to parroting words that don't connect to the reality of the situation.

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#838

Post by disqard »

SoftTalker wrote: post #548
Clent wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Claims to take full responsibility but since he has not resigned he has not taken any responsibility he has just said the words.

That's not what it means. As CEO, it's his responsibility to make/approve the decision to do the layoffs, or not. The buck stops with him. That's all that it means. It doesn't mean he's liable for any hardships.

I'm more with GP.

If "responsibility" only constitutes "I pull the trigger, and I don't care what happens as a result", then that is a fairly weak kind of leadership -- ostensibly not very different from a child doing whatever they want in a consequence-free manner.

I want to believe that "responsibility" not only constitutes "I can make things happen", but that "I am willing to Make Things Right if my actions cause things to go sideways".

If I'm wrong, then we live in a world where "taking responsibility" means "using power", and "I take full responsibility" means "yes, I used my power to do that" and that's Not Good Enough to call such people "Leaders".

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#839

Post by quitit »

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 feel like leadership and vision are lacking at DropBox, so they don't have any good ideas of what to do with the staff they've got. They should be exploring new opportunities which leverage the skillset of their existing employees, this would diversify them from the effects of OneDrive and GDrive.

For example with AI alone we've seen an incredible number of new file services dedicated to just serving models, and DropBox has totally ignored that need.

Instead they regularly add bitsy, poorly implemented, "us too" features to DropBox which adds friction to common workflows - then provide no way to customise these features away for people who do not want them.

Perhaps to them they see this as evolving the product and keeping it relevant, but their approach doesn't address why Google and Microsoft are eating their lunch, nor does it take their eggs out of one basket.

Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction

#840

Post by [deleted] »

stoniejohnson wrote: post #809
stoniejohnson wrote: post #620

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were high in 2013.

Revisited this, and while it was tongue-in-cheek, it feels a bit ungrateful. A lot of tech roles are intellectually stimulating and have a wage in the upper distribution of salaries. I think we have a very nice situation going for us.

[deleted]
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