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Cost cutting at Dropbox and Silicon Valley startups
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- joshmn 10y ago"Save more [because we need another Chrome panda and we value it more than we value your job.]" Seriously that's one dev's salary.
- joeblau 10y agoTheoretically, one dev should be returning more value than the panda.
- gxs 10y agoI suspect it has as much to do with getting the company ready for IPO as much as anything else. Plenty of startups continue on with their "lavish perks". Also, I'm skeptical of the 25k/employee/year estimate. Source: An acquaintance runs a large group over there.
- x0x0 10y agolets assume food (lunch, snacks, coffee, soda, water, carbonated water) runs $25/day. That's high, based on a previous employer, but let's run with it. $25 * 5 * 50 = $6,250 What the hell are they spending $25k/year/employee on? I share your skepticism. Edit: I can't fully tell this story, because I remain anonymous on HN after a prick / top 10 poster here threatened my employer over my opinions on software development. But the partial story is still funny. A former employer had a cool toy in the office. It was something people noticed. There was a techcrunch story with wankers going on about wasted money, extravagant bullshit, the usual. The speculation on cost ranged from $25k to $100k. I had to register to point out that actual cost was well under $1k. How do I know? Friends/coworkers and I built it over the course of a couple evenings with tools borrowed from an employee's father. Parts ran well under $1k on amazon, even including the couple of six packs of beers we drank during construction.
- wpietri 10y agoMaybe they are including things like health care, 401k, etc? With that it wouldn't be hard to cross $25k.
- x0x0 10y agoTrue, but that's a strange definition for perk then.
- ant6n 10y agoThose are benefits. There's an important distinction between benefits and perks, which is something you sometimes have to explain to startups looking to hire when you ask them about benefits.
- wpietri 10y agoI agree that one more commonly calls those benefits. But is there a bright line? It seems to vary a fair bit by country and situation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employee_benefit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employee_benefit Regardless, I'd still guess the $25k number includes both.
- tyingq 10y agoI think they are...they do lump them together on this page: https://www.dropbox.com/jobs/perks https://www.dropbox.com/jobs/perks
- rmtew 10y agoDid you read the article? It mentioned unlimited guests to meals, with an open bar. As well as something like a gym washing service. It's clear in the article that there were more than meals, with these given as specific examples of cuts.
- x0x0 10y agoI did. You'd have to average every employee having a guest for every meal to just double meal costs. Believe that? No? Even then the above math still leaves you well shy of $25k. How much do you think gym laundry costs? The wash & fold near me costs a couple dollars per pound. Your gym shorts, shirt, and socks do not weigh much.
- ChuckMcM 10y agoI found the $25K per employee per year estimate difficult as well. However, having been at Google while things were being 'scaled back' I did get a chance to see how some money was not being well spent. I am constrained from giving exact details however snacks (at least at the time) ended up going through a number of distribution "hands" each adding a bit of mark up which was doubling or tripling the cost to the company. At the scale of their consumption direct connections to manufacturers would have cut a ton of expense out of the snacks. Still, if we assume that the number does not include the wages for 11 paid days off and 2 weeks of vacation, (nominally "perks") 25,000 / 50 weeks is an even 500 a week or $100 a day in consumables. Paying for additional staff for massages etc adds up quickly but its tough to hit those numbers.
- jsnell 10y agoDiscussion from earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11650835 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11650835
- mruniverse 10y agoSo about $480 a week per employee? What kind of perks are they getting? Now for a rant. I know perks are suppose to help make companies attractive to potential employees they are trying to woo and boost morale. But I think it's crazy when I see the perks we get, while at the same time have to go begging for a mobile device to test on.
- rodgerd 10y agoI'd certainly take 480 a week over 480 a week in perks.
- whack 10y agoEveryone says this. Problem is, no one ever talks about how much money they make. So when Dropbox bumps up your salary, you feel slightly happier in isolation, but it doesn't improve the company's visibility in any significant way. Contrast this with perks. When Google starting giving all their employees free food, it only cost them $100/week/employee, but everyone talked about it, and how awesome Google's perks are. The amount of positive PR and word-of-mouth that they got out of it, far dwarfed any efficiency improvements they might have gotten by simply giving their employees a slightly higher salary.
- mrgordon 10y agoThe employees also don't pay taxes on the perks so it costs less than giving you the money to buy the things yourself
- the-dude 10y agoIn the Netherlands, about everything besides coffee is seen as non-monetary compensation and is subject to income tax. Even lunch.
- notmything 10y agoI'm sure the cost of setting up the kitchens (capital expenditure) and the cost of keeping them running (operation expenditure) negate this saving. Are there any published figures?
- martin_bech 10y agoWinter is coming..
- xiphias 10y agoPushing dinner later is just a signal for people that the company doesn't want them to have social lifes. Most cuttings from this list can be OK, but I think dinner time isn't strictly about cost cutting and I am not sure that's a good way to increase productivity either.
- flyt 10y agoTo the contrary, pushing back dinner is a savvy way to serve less meals. Most employees need to get home to family or other obligations. If the food is served at 6PM then many will eat and leave, which negates the benefits of employees staying later. Serving at 7PM means serving only those that can stay later, which is likely a smaller group.
- temp20160423 10y agoFor people who need to get back to family, they won't eat dinner even if it starts being served at 5:30 pm. I agree w/ the person before; moving dinner back is less about saving money and more about saying that you have to earn your dinner by working another hour.
- tamana 10y agoEveryone at office is happy to gran some grub before going home. It relieves pressure on the home cooking effort, especially when the little kids don't eat grown-up food anyway
- xiphias 10y agoI haven't ever brought free food outside in a software company, although I could have (except when going out to the nearby park for lunch with a colleague). I felt it immoral. I feel that the price to pay for the food is to talk with colleagues (team building, even if it's not about work). It could be just disallowed (as a form of cost cutting)
- justlsice 10y agoFragile dropbox...
- ejholmes 10y agoYou know, if you move out of San Francisco and let your employees be remote you can save an insane amount of money on office space, pay employees less and allow them to have a higher quality of life. Tech's insitence on being in one of the most expensive areas is just bizarre when most employees can pick up a laptop and work anywhere there's wifi.
- eva1984 10y agoI think it is not that easy. Meeting will be a huge pain. And the communication is not as easy as you can do in person. Also some ideas/conversations sparks during casual talking, if remote, those small things will be missed.
- arethuza 10y ago"Meeting will be a huge pain" Not sure if that's true - I work in a company that has a very flexible approach to remote working and pretty much every meeting we have has some people remote (or indeed I am remote) and I don't think it makes much difference to the quality of discussions.
- wsinks 10y agoYou work for Cisco?
- eva1984 10y agoI didn't say meeting is impossible, there are a lot of solutions out there. But it is not the same quality as meeting with real person. The images are laggy, and audio is often here and there. And as the person remote, I feel like, it increases the distraction, so the quality of conversion is not the same as you might have if present in the meeting. I just don't buy remote is the remedy to cost-cutting, it brings new drawbacks. Personally, I don't feel the same level of collaboration with my remote 'colleagues' than onsite ones. But it could be personal.
- notmything 10y ago
- Inconel 10y agoThis is obviously extremely off topic but I figure I may as well ask here by the off chance that someone from Dropbox or with contacts there could tell me which foundry was responsible for the chrome panda statue? From the few pics I've seen it looks like nice work. I do some metal sculptural work myself as a hobby and try to follow other artists and foundries for inspiration. I would assume Dropbox used a local source and I'm not familiar with many in the Bay Area. I'm always looking for more to add to my list of shops worth following. Apologies for the off topic question.
- dolguldur 10y agoI assume you know that an economic approach is to make such sculptures from a softer material and then have the chrome applied. Not in your area but some examples: http://www.blach.de/blach-lackierung/chromlack/kunst/ http://www.blach.de/blach-lackierung/chromlack/kunst/
- Inconel 10y agoThank you for the link.
- Grazester 10y agoA Panda. An animal that once thrived but now closer to extinction due to its diminishing habit and slow reproductive cycle. I would never want that as my mascot.