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> My pet peeve with README DHH had a funny line around Dropbox's "mission" in his 2019 railsconf video (linked to the direct point in the video): https://youtu

by nickjj 6y ago

> My pet peeve with README DHH had a funny line around Dropbox's "mission" in his 2019 railsconf video (linked to the direct point in the video): https://youtu.be/VBwWbFpkltg?t=2818 https://youtu.be/VBwWbFpkltg?t=2818 Dropbox's official mission as of 2019 was: "We're here to unleash the world's creative energy by designing a more enlightened way of working" And DHH's remark was: "For fuck's sake Dropbox, you host files and make them appear on all of my computers" Funny enough since then they changed their mission to be "Our mission is to design a more enlightened way of working" based on https://www.dropbox.com/about https://www.dropbox.com/about but it still doesn't come close to explaining what they do.

tmotwu 6y ago
Customers don’t infer the purpose of a product from it’s company mission. The audience of a company mission are employees themselves. Dropbox has expanded to more than file syncing over the past decade. It makes sense to have a broad vision of their future, e.g purposeful mission. Imagine Amazon telling employees to stick it to books because thats the business they started off with. Like why should AWS even exist, it’s not what they do! That narrow mindedness wouldn’t have gotten them to where they are today.
- sundarurfriend 6y ago
  Zero people have looked at a mission statement like that and thought "Ah, now I understand the scope and limitations of my company, and will use that to direct my ideas".
- naniwaduni 6y ago
  > Customers don’t infer the purpose of a product from it’s company mission. The audience of a company mission are employees themselves. ok sure then why is it in big red text on a customer-facing page, then?
- mongol 6y ago
  It is a very good point. And the mission points to the future, where the management wants the company moving. It should not describe what it does, but where it is heading.

by nickjj 6y ago

tmotwu 6y ago

Customers don’t infer the purpose of a product from it’s company mission. The audience of a company mission are employees themselves. Dropbox has expanded to more than file syncing over the past decade. It makes sense to have a broad vision of their future, e.g purposeful mission. Imagine Amazon telling employees to stick it to books because thats the business they started off with. Like why should AWS even exist, it’s not what they do! That narrow mindedness wouldn’t have gotten them to where they are today.

sundarurfriend 6y ago
Zero people have looked at a mission statement like that and thought "Ah, now I understand the scope and limitations of my company, and will use that to direct my ideas".
naniwaduni 6y ago
> Customers don’t infer the purpose of a product from it’s company mission. The audience of a company mission are employees themselves. ok sure then why is it in big red text on a customer-facing page, then?
mongol 6y ago
It is a very good point. And the mission points to the future, where the management wants the company moving. It should not describe what it does, but where it is heading.