I expect to see more of this as companies see their disappointing revenue projections as we approach a common end of FY.
Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction
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Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction
#92TIL that nobody knows what they're doing. Jokes aside, how do you end up having more than 500 excess people than what you need? What is management exactly doing during the time they went from 1 excess person to 500? Did they just hope the "macroeconomic headwinds" would become tailwinds? Didn't they at some point see that they have more people than valuable work, and maybe we should deal with that problem instead of…
If you're running a SaaS that isn't customer-interaction heavy, you can usually get away with dropping about 80% of your technical staff (if, of course, you pick the correct 20%, which is not easy).
Having worked in several startups through the early growth stage, it's just surprising how much you don't get more done with, say, a 500 employee company than a 50 employee company.
There is a ton of room to grow less and maintain more, and it's a real struggle for a business to decide its product is done with major growth and the associated need for a large staff.
Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction
#93TIL that nobody knows what they're doing. Jokes aside, how do you end up having more than 500 excess people than what you need? What is management exactly doing during the time they went from 1 excess person to 500? Did they just hope the "macroeconomic headwinds" would become tailwinds? Didn't they at some point see that they have more people than valuable work, and maybe we should deal with that problem instead of…
Dropbox is public and has actual profits. I think your comment is not accurate. Instead I think the company has plateaued in growth and thus they need to cut back spending otherwise they will have falling profits and no growth - which is worse than just no growth.
Are their targets reasonable? Or are they reaching for fundamentals that don't exist as a storage utility?
(Dropbox customer, pls just sync and store my data reliably)
Edit: Reply was as I expected, thanks bhouston, agree they are potentially at the mature stage
Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction
#94TIL that nobody knows what they're doing. Jokes aside, how do you end up having more than 500 excess people than what you need? What is management exactly doing during the time they went from 1 excess person to 500? Did they just hope the "macroeconomic headwinds" would become tailwinds? Didn't they at some point see that they have more people than valuable work, and maybe we should deal with that problem instead of…
Dropbox is public and has actual profits. I think your comment is not accurate. Instead I think the company has plateaued in growth and thus they need to cut back spending otherwise they will have falling profits and no growth - which is worse than just no growth.
Yeah, I just had a look at dropbox stock. I would have expected permanent cash hemorrhaging, but no they have a P/E of 15.
Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction
#95If you look at its earnings they have appeared to plateau and there isn’t a major offering planned that will change this. I am reminded of Slack which has a similar history of rapid growth followed by a very competitive market and then significant slowing. Maybe Salesforce could acquire Dropbox and bundle it into their offerings or some other similar company?
Slack shot their own selves in the foot iirc. They were miles ahead of any competitor, employees loved it, and then they just started gouging all their whale customers in contract negotiations, to the point that they started looking elsewhere...
If this isn't the full picture, let me know. I was at multiple companies trying to move away from Slack as the cost was not justifiable
Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
The latter. If you can not manage the company correctly and it leads to the job losses of hundreds of people not to mention the millions in salary that was wasted by their poor planning then yes they should be immediately relieved and not allowed to run any other company. They are clearly incompetent. Considering dropbox is not facing some economic recession outside of its control we can only blame the CEO's incompet…
People make mistakes all the time, hopefully it's mistakes they learn from. You can't simply fire someone for being incompetent, unless it's so bad and beyond the pale.
> You can't simply fire someone for being incompetent
Lmao what? Outside of being absolutely skint and unable to make payroll, that's pretty much the only reason to fire someone (I mean other than misconduct, which is also a type of incompetence)
Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction
#97"As CEO, I take full responsibility for this decision" Oh hey another one that takes responsibility by taking on 0 consequences.
Unpopular opinion, but I don't understand this type of comment. It sounds like people want executives to get some kind of punishment or pain as a consequence of laying people off. But what would that even look like? A fine? That would probably make no practical difference, and would discourage them from making changes that need to be made. Fire them? Then you would probably get a worse decision maker in the driver se…
I think a start would be to stop saying the phrase “I take full responsibility for this decision” if you aren’t also publicly taking a pay cut.
There’s no need for a CEO to bring themselves and their feelings into the conversation. It’s this weird attempt at empathy that fails, because the CEO isn’t making any sacrifices.
Just say that there are layoffs. Most rational people who have been in any business for more than a few years recognize them as an unfortunate part of the business cycle.
Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction
#98Spineless executives with their corp speak - they're layoffs.
Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction
#99"As CEO, I take full responsibility for this decision" Oh hey another one that takes responsibility by taking on 0 consequences.
Unpopular opinion, but I don't understand this type of comment. It sounds like people want executives to get some kind of punishment or pain as a consequence of laying people off. But what would that even look like? A fine? That would probably make no practical difference, and would discourage them from making changes that need to be made. Fire them? Then you would probably get a worse decision maker in the driver se…
100% agree, but the opposite is what happens.
Mass layoffs -- unless the company is actually tanking and on its last leg, which isn't the case with any of the tech companies who have been doing this recently -- cause the share price to rise. CEO pay, or at least bonuses, are often tied to the share price.
So a CEO is rewarded instead.
Re: Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction
#100It seems that after the rampant hiring spree in the 2020s, it could benefit some business leaders to implement 'Founder Mode' in their organizations.
Surely that should fix things?