6 ms·

TechCrunch Tours Dropbox Offices

172 points by jkincaid 16y ago

dmix 16y ago
I swear it's the Jason's goal to create as many awkward situations while filming these Techcrunch office tours. He walks into people, unsuccessfully tries walking backwards while talking, missed fist pound etc. It's amusing.
- jkincaid 16y ago
  That's just me :)
  - Dboy 16y ago
    Keep being awesome! :)
- avner 16y ago
  well, I'm guessing they did pick the most imposing dropboxer in the office to give the tour so Jason continued the tradition. :D
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
ilamont 16y ago
Would have been more interesting to see the Dropbox data center, and get some insights into how they operate and scale it.
- grahamr 16y ago
  I believe they use Amazon S3 for all storage.
  - frisco 16y ago
    In fact, they're supposedly the single largest user of S3 by data stored.
- ronnix 16y ago
  If Dropbox is still hosted on EC2 and S3, I guess there's not much hardware to see. :) There are rumours they're moving away from Amazon, however: http://www.quora.com/Why-is-Dropbox-moving-away-from-EC2 http://www.quora.com/Why-is-Dropbox-moving-away-from-EC2 Anyone has insights on this?
guynamedloren 16y ago
This was just... awkward. Don't get me wrong - it's very interesting to see what it's like inside the office of an up-and-coming startup, but it just wasn't what I expected. When I think of startups (or hackers in general) I think of some geeky guys with a dose of rebelliousness - especially Y-Combinator startups. I think of guys who want something more than Big Co has to offer. Guys that are passionate, driven, and motivated. From the video, this isn't the vibe I picked up at all. The employees just seemed weird, for lack of a better word. Maybe they were acting for the camera, but nobody seemed to be doing any real work, and everybody seemed okay with that. From the artwork to office layout, the company culture almost appeared forced and unnatural. Am I alone in thinking this? FWIW, I haven't watched any other "TC Cribs" videos, so I don't want to generalize. Maybe it's just Dropbox. I'm checking out other videos now. (I may get downvoted for my slightly negative view here, but it is my opinion and I'm sticking with it)
- jkincaid 16y ago
  Of course it's unnatural. There's people walking around with big cameras and I'm sticking a microphone in their face. We could show people coding with their head down, but that would be pretty dull. So we get some shots showing people doing actual work, and then explore some of the things that make the office unique, and what they do to blow off steam.
  - guynamedloren 16y ago
    Hi Jason, I appreciate the response. You're right that a video of people coding with their head down would be pretty dull, but that's not exactly what I was getting at. Digging deeper than that, nobody you interacted with showed any enthusiasm or charisma. In my mind (and maybe I'm overly optimistic/idealistic), startups are generally the most enjoyable and satisfying jobs out there - and it's not because of arcade games in the office. Undoubtedly it's nice (and practically essential) to have outlets for releasing stress, but the satisfaction comes from doing real, valuable work, and I guess I just expected some of the passion and enthusiasm to come through in the personalities of the employees. I'm not saying they don't love what they do - I'm just saying I didn't see it, which is slightly disappointing. At any rate, I appreciate the perspective of the videos and look forward to seeing more.
staunch 16y ago
I think showing people's workspaces in some real detail would be fun. Everyone loves a cool setup. I don't know a developer that doesn't judge a company in part by how they equip their programmers.
- jkincaid 16y ago
  That's a good idea — I'll start asking about the standard setup.
  - wyclif 16y ago
    Yes, I agree. I was more interested in Drew's setup than the sign taped to the wall (but I get why you did that).
TomOfTTB 16y ago
Wow. I don't mean this as negative towards Dropbox at all but I never thought I'd see that level of decadence again. I mean, the Phelan Building (where they're located) is massively expensive (its a 105 year old historic landmark). Custom art on the wall, band rooms, arcade games, free food and all the amenities. Again no slight intended. If they have the money they might as well enjoy it (I did when I was young and in the same situation). But for a company that had its first release what about 2 years ago they're living large. The 90s are back after all.
- rdouble 16y ago
  Is it really massively expensive? When I left SF all those old buildings off Market were the cheapest options in The City. Also, you could usually take over the lease for cheap from some other startup wipeout.
  - TomOfTTB 16y ago
    I guess expensive is relative but last I checked it was about $1,100 for a 300sq ft office (and they clearly have a lot more than 300sq ft). That was a few years ago when I had a friend who moved his offices out of there because the location wasn't worth the cost to him.
    - samtp 16y ago
      Thats extremely cheap (about $3/sq foot). From what I've seen, $20/sq foot is closer to normal.
      - rafaelc 16y ago
        I'm at a startup in SF - we saw nice places for about $2.5/sqft
    - davidu 16y ago
      What does it cost in terms of talent and time for every block away from BART and the Underground you decide to locate your office? It's a more expensive than an extra $5K or $10K a month in rent, that's for sure.
anhtran 16y ago
haha, I like the end.
fundible 16y ago
the red-black tree reference is amazing
- JabavuAdams 16y ago
  Yes, that was cute. I love how it seemed to be lost on the interviewer and editors. That makes it so much better.
bane 16y ago
Great tour video. Lots of fun. But if I were one of the investors, I'd probably be pretty PO'd to see how my money was being spent. Not since the dotcom boom have I seen that kind of place. Startups seem to want to run kinda lean these days, so they can be more agile. (That's not to say that the folks shouldn't be well equipped, which it looks like they are, but custom artwork and a DDR machine?) And clearly too much floor space for their size. It'd be a far better use of their funds to operate a smaller office, then move when they outgrew it. It could be worse, the whole place could be full of $900 Aeron chairs. Oh wait, it was.
- davidu 16y ago
  The amount of money that it costs to outfit an office comfortably is minuscule to real recruiting costs. How about paying $20,000 for a recruiter to find a world-class engineer and get them to leave Google to join your never-been-heard-about startup? How about paying $50,000 to a recruiter to conduct a VP of Sales search and run the process for you? Aeron chairs, cool pictures and desks all make an office more enjoyable, and are cheap by comparison.
  - bane 16y ago
    Not to completely dispute what you've said, since I agree with it for the most part. But my takeaway from the video certainly did not leave me with the impression that the team there was somehow so short on time that they couldn't just do their recruiting themselves (not to mention the tons of free publicity dropbox already gets acting as a useful recruitment tool). In fact, quite the contrary. I'd be PO'd to find that these guys dropped $50k recruiting a sales VP also. I'd imagine that that custom stone conference table probably ran around $50k (they ain't cheap). I'd probably even be able to make a safe bet that just the "stuff" in their conference room cost somewhere between $100k to $200k. Everything in the video just didn't give me the impression of being good ways to spend money. I think the number of people in this thread who are acting kinda creeped out about their office lends me some support. If anything the DB guys should be heads down figuring out their next product. It won't take much for Microsoft or Apple to just build something like this into their next rev of their OSs or in some patch and simply put them out of business. They have a great product and a good revenue stream, time to start figuring out the next step. If that step is to sell the company? I certainly wouldn't want to think that I'm buying all this crap along with the corporate assets for my purchase price. All that said, I'm really just bitching, if they are paying the bills and have cash left over for this stuff, more power to them. It really does look like a cool office and it's a fantastically cool company with a brilliant product. Their continued success is something to be praised, that's for sure.
Keyframe 16y ago
Why do they need so many people? Customer support?
- ivankirigin 16y ago
  Dropbox has lots of engineers and needs a lot more: http://dropbox.com/jobs http://dropbox.com/jobs The support team is pretty solid though. They have a hard job and do it well.
  - Keyframe 16y ago
    I had no idea.. thanks!
- robryan 16y ago
  It seems that often people underestimate the amount of engineers a company requires as it grows, I saw similar statements in a Twitter thread a few days back.
subpixel 16y ago
TechCrunch as HGTV just doesn't do much for me.
- lurchpop 16y ago
  yeah. i wasn't buying the MTV Cribs editing style either. Inauthentic.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
xeodox 16y ago
Awesome office. Dropbox is doing better than ever! I wonder why they just went 1.0 though--they've been around forever.
jonpaul 16y ago
What I want to know is how these engineers at these startups avoid visual distractions? It seems to me that a lot startups create environments like this. It's clear that Dropbox has the money for cubes/offices. Is it a cultural thing? What gives?
- ivankirigin 16y ago
  Open works spaces are far better for collaboration. People avoid distraction with huge monitors that take up a lot of their field of view and headphones. Such offices are actually very quiet.
  - mkramlich 16y ago
    somewhat agree, except: collaboration == distraction
  - JabavuAdams 16y ago
    Nah. This is dogma.
spoiledtechie 16y ago
I really dislike the fact they as the average developer doesn't get anything like this at all. Its pretty upsetting that companies that are major software companies spend massive amounts of money on their devs, but those companies that aren't fully software could give two craps about their devs. Its just disappointing that I have to work for the latter.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
ahrens 16y ago
As a guy with ADD, i would never be able to work at a place like that! I mean do actual work. I would just be too distracted by all the fun things to do. I think many more developers are the same? Well, cool office though. I am a dropbox user myself and love the service!
- JabavuAdams 16y ago
  Yes. I've worked in some bad open-concept setups where the mean-time-between-distractions (MTBD) was sometimes 5 min or so. Awful. Um. Did you just sit your sweaty ass on the corner of my desk so you can lean over and chat to the dude sitting next to me? WTF? Programming (and games programming, especially) seems to attract a lot of ADHD types.
JacobIrwin 16y ago
I dig the collaborative workspace. Ever seen the office atmosphere of those companies that design consumer products? That is what Dropbox's space reminds me of. The best part is that Drew isn't enclosed in some corner office. He sits in the open with his team. Big thumbs up.
tobych 16y ago
Employees in the US work some of the world's longest hours. And yet there these folks are in their office, playing games. Is that typical? I don't get it. Why stay in the office playing games when you could go home? I guess this is the sort of question that, as a generally-self-employed 41-year-old father of a preschooler I'm in no position to figure out. That video weirded me out.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- JabavuAdams 16y ago
  It's fun for a while -- like a continuation of school / residence. Also, it can give you the technical chops, contacts, and pedigree to eventually become a generally-self-employed 41-year-old father who works fewer hours.
alphadog 16y ago
That startup looks real lean. </sarcasm>
profitbaron 16y ago
It still amuses me how the view is always mentioned before entering the startups office space. Although I have to say that Dropbox's 'Crib' is my favourite TC Crib so far.
jhuckestein 16y ago
IMO the recent trend of showing off pimped out startup offices is highly indicative of a bubble. Our startup operates out of a crummy little room, and that's how we like it
- kayoone 16y ago
  why bubble ? Afaik dropbox is highly profitable so what keeps them from having a fancy office to make the work experience better for them and most importantly their employees ?
  - jhuckestein 16y ago
    Is the same true for Scribd? (last office on TC Cribs) What about all the other startups that are setting up offices in lofts around SOMA?
nickpp 16y ago
Anybody else watched the whole thing hoping to see people actually working? And how they worked? And where they worked? Desks, computers, OSs, software, hardware, meeting rooms, etc. No such luck. Instead, that looked like the tour of a kindergarten: here we dance, here we play, here we sing, here we eat, and the view is great.
- jasonlotito 16y ago
  There are numerous sites that already cater to that sort of thing. LifeHacker and the Unclutterer's Workspace Flickr pools are rather large. Usesthis goes into greater detail about specific setups. While I find that stuff interesting, that's not the show they are doing. It's MTV Cribs for startups. And that really didn't exist before this.

172 points by jkincaid 16y ago

dmix 16y ago

I swear it's the Jason's goal to create as many awkward situations while filming these Techcrunch office tours. He walks into people, unsuccessfully tries walking backwards while talking, missed fist pound etc. It's amusing.

jkincaid 16y ago
That's just me :)
- Dboy 16y ago
  Keep being awesome! :)
avner 16y ago
well, I'm guessing they did pick the most imposing dropboxer in the office to give the tour so Jason continued the tradition. :D
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]

ilamont 16y ago

Would have been more interesting to see the Dropbox data center, and get some insights into how they operate and scale it.

grahamr 16y ago
I believe they use Amazon S3 for all storage.
- frisco 16y ago
  In fact, they're supposedly the single largest user of S3 by data stored.
ronnix 16y ago
If Dropbox is still hosted on EC2 and S3, I guess there's not much hardware to see. :) There are rumours they're moving away from Amazon, however: http://www.quora.com/Why-is-Dropbox-moving-away-from-EC2 http://www.quora.com/Why-is-Dropbox-moving-away-from-EC2 Anyone has insights on this?

guynamedloren 16y ago

This was just... awkward. Don't get me wrong - it's very interesting to see what it's like inside the office of an up-and-coming startup, but it just wasn't what I expected. When I think of startups (or hackers in general) I think of some geeky guys with a dose of rebelliousness - especially Y-Combinator startups. I think of guys who want something more than Big Co has to offer. Guys that are passionate, driven, and motivated. From the video, this isn't the vibe I picked up at all. The employees just seemed weird, for lack of a better word. Maybe they were acting for the camera, but nobody seemed to be doing any real work, and everybody seemed okay with that. From the artwork to office layout, the company culture almost appeared forced and unnatural. Am I alone in thinking this? FWIW, I haven't watched any other "TC Cribs" videos, so I don't want to generalize. Maybe it's just Dropbox. I'm checking out other videos now. (I may get downvoted for my slightly negative view here, but it is my opinion and I'm sticking with it)

jkincaid 16y ago
Of course it's unnatural. There's people walking around with big cameras and I'm sticking a microphone in their face. We could show people coding with their head down, but that would be pretty dull. So we get some shots showing people doing actual work, and then explore some of the things that make the office unique, and what they do to blow off steam.
- guynamedloren 16y ago
  Hi Jason, I appreciate the response. You're right that a video of people coding with their head down would be pretty dull, but that's not exactly what I was getting at. Digging deeper than that, nobody you interacted with showed any enthusiasm or charisma. In my mind (and maybe I'm overly optimistic/idealistic), startups are generally the most enjoyable and satisfying jobs out there - and it's not because of arcade games in the office. Undoubtedly it's nice (and practically essential) to have outlets for releasing stress, but the satisfaction comes from doing real, valuable work, and I guess I just expected some of the passion and enthusiasm to come through in the personalities of the employees. I'm not saying they don't love what they do - I'm just saying I didn't see it, which is slightly disappointing. At any rate, I appreciate the perspective of the videos and look forward to seeing more.

staunch 16y ago

I think showing people's workspaces in some real detail would be fun. Everyone loves a cool setup. I don't know a developer that doesn't judge a company in part by how they equip their programmers.

jkincaid 16y ago
That's a good idea — I'll start asking about the standard setup.
- wyclif 16y ago
  Yes, I agree. I was more interested in Drew's setup than the sign taped to the wall (but I get why you did that).

TomOfTTB 16y ago

Wow. I don't mean this as negative towards Dropbox at all but I never thought I'd see that level of decadence again. I mean, the Phelan Building (where they're located) is massively expensive (its a 105 year old historic landmark). Custom art on the wall, band rooms, arcade games, free food and all the amenities. Again no slight intended. If they have the money they might as well enjoy it (I did when I was young and in the same situation). But for a company that had its first release what about 2 years ago they're living large. The 90s are back after all.

rdouble 16y ago
Is it really massively expensive? When I left SF all those old buildings off Market were the cheapest options in The City. Also, you could usually take over the lease for cheap from some other startup wipeout.
- TomOfTTB 16y ago
  I guess expensive is relative but last I checked it was about $1,100 for a 300sq ft office (and they clearly have a lot more than 300sq ft). That was a few years ago when I had a friend who moved his offices out of there because the location wasn't worth the cost to him.
  - samtp 16y ago
    Thats extremely cheap (about $3/sq foot). From what I've seen, $20/sq foot is closer to normal.
    - rafaelc 16y ago
      I'm at a startup in SF - we saw nice places for about $2.5/sqft
  - davidu 16y ago
    What does it cost in terms of talent and time for every block away from BART and the Underground you decide to locate your office? It's a more expensive than an extra $5K or $10K a month in rent, that's for sure.

anhtran 16y ago

haha, I like the end.

fundible 16y ago

the red-black tree reference is amazing

JabavuAdams 16y ago
Yes, that was cute. I love how it seemed to be lost on the interviewer and editors. That makes it so much better.

bane 16y ago

Great tour video. Lots of fun. But if I were one of the investors, I'd probably be pretty PO'd to see how my money was being spent. Not since the dotcom boom have I seen that kind of place. Startups seem to want to run kinda lean these days, so they can be more agile. (That's not to say that the folks shouldn't be well equipped, which it looks like they are, but custom artwork and a DDR machine?) And clearly too much floor space for their size. It'd be a far better use of their funds to operate a smaller office, then move when they outgrew it. It could be worse, the whole place could be full of $900 Aeron chairs. Oh wait, it was.

davidu 16y ago
The amount of money that it costs to outfit an office comfortably is minuscule to real recruiting costs. How about paying $20,000 for a recruiter to find a world-class engineer and get them to leave Google to join your never-been-heard-about startup? How about paying $50,000 to a recruiter to conduct a VP of Sales search and run the process for you? Aeron chairs, cool pictures and desks all make an office more enjoyable, and are cheap by comparison.
- bane 16y ago
  Not to completely dispute what you've said, since I agree with it for the most part. But my takeaway from the video certainly did not leave me with the impression that the team there was somehow so short on time that they couldn't just do their recruiting themselves (not to mention the tons of free publicity dropbox already gets acting as a useful recruitment tool). In fact, quite the contrary. I'd be PO'd to find that these guys dropped $50k recruiting a sales VP also. I'd imagine that that custom stone conference table probably ran around $50k (they ain't cheap). I'd probably even be able to make a safe bet that just the "stuff" in their conference room cost somewhere between $100k to $200k. Everything in the video just didn't give me the impression of being good ways to spend money. I think the number of people in this thread who are acting kinda creeped out about their office lends me some support. If anything the DB guys should be heads down figuring out their next product. It won't take much for Microsoft or Apple to just build something like this into their next rev of their OSs or in some patch and simply put them out of business. They have a great product and a good revenue stream, time to start figuring out the next step. If that step is to sell the company? I certainly wouldn't want to think that I'm buying all this crap along with the corporate assets for my purchase price. All that said, I'm really just bitching, if they are paying the bills and have cash left over for this stuff, more power to them. It really does look like a cool office and it's a fantastically cool company with a brilliant product. Their continued success is something to be praised, that's for sure.

Keyframe 16y ago

Why do they need so many people? Customer support?

ivankirigin 16y ago
Dropbox has lots of engineers and needs a lot more: http://dropbox.com/jobs http://dropbox.com/jobs The support team is pretty solid though. They have a hard job and do it well.
- Keyframe 16y ago
  I had no idea.. thanks!
robryan 16y ago
It seems that often people underestimate the amount of engineers a company requires as it grows, I saw similar statements in a Twitter thread a few days back.

subpixel 16y ago

TechCrunch as HGTV just doesn't do much for me.

lurchpop 16y ago
yeah. i wasn't buying the MTV Cribs editing style either. Inauthentic.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

xeodox 16y ago

Awesome office. Dropbox is doing better than ever! I wonder why they just went 1.0 though--they've been around forever.

jonpaul 16y ago

What I want to know is how these engineers at these startups avoid visual distractions? It seems to me that a lot startups create environments like this. It's clear that Dropbox has the money for cubes/offices. Is it a cultural thing? What gives?

ivankirigin 16y ago
Open works spaces are far better for collaboration. People avoid distraction with huge monitors that take up a lot of their field of view and headphones. Such offices are actually very quiet.
- mkramlich 16y ago
  somewhat agree, except: collaboration == distraction
- JabavuAdams 16y ago
  Nah. This is dogma.

spoiledtechie 16y ago

I really dislike the fact they as the average developer doesn't get anything like this at all. Its pretty upsetting that companies that are major software companies spend massive amounts of money on their devs, but those companies that aren't fully software could give two craps about their devs. Its just disappointing that I have to work for the latter.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

ahrens 16y ago

As a guy with ADD, i would never be able to work at a place like that! I mean do actual work. I would just be too distracted by all the fun things to do. I think many more developers are the same? Well, cool office though. I am a dropbox user myself and love the service!

JabavuAdams 16y ago
Yes. I've worked in some bad open-concept setups where the mean-time-between-distractions (MTBD) was sometimes 5 min or so. Awful. Um. Did you just sit your sweaty ass on the corner of my desk so you can lean over and chat to the dude sitting next to me? WTF? Programming (and games programming, especially) seems to attract a lot of ADHD types.

JacobIrwin 16y ago

I dig the collaborative workspace. Ever seen the office atmosphere of those companies that design consumer products? That is what Dropbox's space reminds me of. The best part is that Drew isn't enclosed in some corner office. He sits in the open with his team. Big thumbs up.

tobych 16y ago

Employees in the US work some of the world's longest hours. And yet there these folks are in their office, playing games. Is that typical? I don't get it. Why stay in the office playing games when you could go home? I guess this is the sort of question that, as a generally-self-employed 41-year-old father of a preschooler I'm in no position to figure out. That video weirded me out.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
JabavuAdams 16y ago
It's fun for a while -- like a continuation of school / residence. Also, it can give you the technical chops, contacts, and pedigree to eventually become a generally-self-employed 41-year-old father who works fewer hours.

alphadog 16y ago

That startup looks real lean. </sarcasm>

profitbaron 16y ago

It still amuses me how the view is always mentioned before entering the startups office space. Although I have to say that Dropbox's 'Crib' is my favourite TC Crib so far.

jhuckestein 16y ago

IMO the recent trend of showing off pimped out startup offices is highly indicative of a bubble. Our startup operates out of a crummy little room, and that's how we like it

kayoone 16y ago
why bubble ? Afaik dropbox is highly profitable so what keeps them from having a fancy office to make the work experience better for them and most importantly their employees ?
- jhuckestein 16y ago
  Is the same true for Scribd? (last office on TC Cribs) What about all the other startups that are setting up offices in lofts around SOMA?

nickpp 16y ago

Anybody else watched the whole thing hoping to see people actually working? And how they worked? And where they worked? Desks, computers, OSs, software, hardware, meeting rooms, etc. No such luck. Instead, that looked like the tour of a kindergarten: here we dance, here we play, here we sing, here we eat, and the view is great.

jasonlotito 16y ago
There are numerous sites that already cater to that sort of thing. LifeHacker and the Unclutterer's Workspace Flickr pools are rather large. Usesthis goes into greater detail about specific setups. While I find that stuff interesting, that's not the show they are doing. It's MTV Cribs for startups. And that really didn't exist before this.