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Dropbox to reduce global workforce by about 16%, or 500 staff
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y agoDropbox has 500 employees?
- j15e 3y ago> In some areas, investments that showed promise before the downturn have more limited potential today. Which areas? Which employment category are they cutting? Hard to tell from the message.
- shortrounddev 3y agoIt feels really shitty to me when companies that are profitable lay people off
- epx 3y ago16% is the new 6%.
- smcl 3y agoNice, round number. I wonder if that was a carefully thought out coincidence, or they fiddled with the numbers a bit until they got the right payroll savings then rounded it to the nearest 100. I suspect the latter - when I see a nice, round number of people being fired it makes me think that they decided "how many people do we need to sacrifice to appease the finance gods" rather than "how many of these roles are really needed to achieve the goals we set ourselves". Anyway, good luck to the former Dropboxers, I hope they land on their feet.
- kentm 3y agoThere’s also a high chance they just rounded the number for the press release and it doesn’t reflect an exact amount.
- justeleblanc 3y agoWhat makes you think that 500 is the actual, exact number? It's probably just an approximation used in that PR piece.
- smt88 3y agoLayoff numbers are imprecise and somewhat arbitrary, so any number that isn't divisible by 10 is probably intentionally chosen to seem less arbitrary.
- globalise83 3y agoYes, I feel especially sorry for fired_employees[498] and fired_employees[499] who were just added to make the round number!
- travisgriggs 3y agoOr maybe happy for employees 501 through 504 who were on the chopping block, but because Round Numbers Are Nice(tm), got to keep their jobs!
- brianwawok 3y agoBut they went from comfortable but low performers, to literally the worst 5 employees in the company.
- hbn 3y ago180 jobs would have been saved if we counted in base 8!
- geodel 3y ago> "how many people do we need to sacrifice to appease the finance gods" Specially important since company was founded and grown to employ thousands of dropboxers without any money from finance gods.
- JediWing 3y agoExactly this. Unless the sum of payroll cut roughly equals the increase of interest payments in their debt load, I call absolute BS on the "challenging market dynamics". They're just following the trend, or listening to the ridiculous demands of investors following the trend.
- PragmaticPulp 3y agoThe article says “about 16%”. I don’t think the number in the article should be taken as an exact count. > it makes me think that they decided "how many people do we need to sacrifice to appease the finance gods" rather than "how many of these roles are really needed to achieve the goals we set ourselves". Any big layoff involves, or is possibly the result of, shifting goals. Company goals change, especially as changing economics makes them more or less possible.
- stefan_ 3y agoWhen one number is given as exact, and the other prefixed with "about", your intuition is that the exact number is not in fact an exact count? That is very odd.
- furyofantares 3y agoBecause it said "about 16%, or 500 employees" - the "about" prefixes both things. I understand how you can read it otherwise, but it is how I read it.
- justeleblanc 3y agoWhat were you expecting? Scientific notation with error margins? "We fired 5×10²±5 employees"?
- mattbrewsbytes 3y agoThere is a threshold of number of employees let go (maybe at location or total, I dunno) where they have to do certain things, called the WARN act. Companies aren't putting out press releases about layoffs because they want to.
- neogodless 3y ago> They wondered if it could be possible to fire 500,000? > I thought from one of the smaller companies no one would notice. > Like one of the cab companies. >> Fire one million. > But 500,000... > One million. Fine, sir. > Sorry to have disturbed you.
- dheera 3y ago> Nice, round number. 500 is also a businessy-salesy round number, compared to 512 which is what an engineer would have considered a round number. Gives some clues as to where the number came from.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ilyt 3y agoRound number (whichever base is rounded off to) also shows it wasn't some company-wide movement to cut some fat but someone come up with the number beforehand and told underlings to make it happen
- dagw 3y agoCome on. I've worked with engineers of all stripes and virtually none of them consider 512 a 'rounder' number than 500.
- dheera 3y agoI've worked with lots of engineers too and virtually none would consider 111110100 rounder than 1000000000.
- Freedom2 3y ago[dead]
- s1artibartfast 3y agoCounterpoint is that there is nothing wrong with a round number and it is perfectly compatible with setting appropriate resource targets for corporate goals. The idea that some sort of complex algorithm should be used indicates a misunderstanding of what business management actually consists of. It is much more social science than engineering.
- cmh89 3y ago>Counterpoint is that there is nothing wrong with a round number and it is perfectly compatible with setting appropriate resource targets for corporate goals. Yes, in this case the corporate goal is to fire 500 people as a sacrifice to the finance gods. If the goal was 'refocus strategy', you'd probably want to actually assess your business and determine who is no longer necessary, and you would doubtfully end up at a nice round number
- s1artibartfast 3y agoI think you are still trying to treat it as an engineering analysis. The question isn't "who is no longer necessary". The question is "do we think we can cut 500 roles (Y/N)" The 2nd question is a reasonable and useful business assessment. The first question is not relevant and has no real answer.
- soared 3y ago1st is optimizing your org, 2nd is a financial decision.
- s1artibartfast 3y agoyeah, and even for the 1st, it isn't a matter of calculation. Every employee in the org will have a different answer to the question and opinion.
- esafak 3y agoThat can't be right. If you think you can cut 500 roles you then have to answer the first question.
- Aeolun 3y agoOf course you decide on a number first. Do you think the CEO has any idea what the names of all their peons are? Much less which ones would be reasonsble to get rid of.
- drstewart 3y ago>I take full ownership of this decision and the path that led us here. There's the free bingo space!
- jvanderbot 3y ago"Though I take full responsibility, unfortunately you bear the full consequences."
- awestroke 3y agoTaking full responsibility seems to mean literally nothing nowadays
- SheinhardtWigCo 3y agoThere's a reason they said "ownership", not "responsibility".
- jq-r 3y agoOh nice catch. A subtle, but big difference.
- JediWing 3y agoYep, truly taking responsibility = returning comp to the company to keep more of these people on.
- speakfreely 3y agoThe whole letter seemed pretty well written and as good as it could be, the severance and benefits are generous, all good except for this part. It reminded me of Gavin Belson laying off the Nucleus team. If you're "taking full ownership" but there's no financial effect on you, what does that mean exactly? You felt sad for a few minutes while you were writing the letter?
- welshwelsh 3y agoIt means they are taking the credit for making a good business decision. When the share prices go up because of the layoffs, he wants to make sure everyone knows that he is responsible for it.
- killingtime74 3y agoFor our industry "impacted" is going to be the word of the year
- droopyEyelids 3y agoThere's something a bit discordant about using the Dropbox font to convey this message. Feels a bit like having an illustrator create a corporate Memphis graphic of a layoff.
- gjsman-1000 3y agoDropbox's art and typography style has always been dystopian and brutalist to me. Though it is just a smidge better now than it was.
- bongobingo1 3y agoI can only imagine some giant long armed blue person dumping a bunch of tiny long armed blue people out of a bin, out of window. There's also a paper-textured fern in the background.
- yieldcrv 3y agoCEO says AI casualties Would anybody else be content with mass layoff messages in JSON format? { severance, healthcare, perks } I’m okay without the explanations or attempt at empathy thats partially designed for other stakeholders like vendors who want to know the company is healthy Just take the media L and move on, I bet there are people that would like them for that approach and attract talent. Its pretty insufferable to be around employees that actually like the “family” coddling talk so if they’re not there to begin with then its a better work environment
- chippiewill 3y agoBig thumbs up for at least mentioning it in the first line rather than burying it. Shameful we can't even expect that little.
- doomleika 3y agoWhile there's "full ownership" meme but at least they make things clear: * How many are going to be fired. * When will employee know they are fired. * Severance package. No amount of thought and prayer are going to help, straight to the point.
- neom 3y ago"As the world moved from physical film to digital photography, or from land lines to wireless communication, or from DVD rentals to streaming, opportunity and disruption went hand-in-hand. Companies that embraced a new reality and took decisive action did well. Companies that held onto the past or tried to have it all did not. These transitions are never easy, but I’m determined to ensure that Dropbox is at the forefront of the AI era, just as we were at the forefront of the shift to mobile and the cloud" Key takeaway, CEO thinks shift to AI is as consequential to his business as the shift from landlines to cell phones Et al.
- Aardwolf 3y agoBecause AI is what you need to store your files... AI is super cool, but at least for storage of my files in the cloud I prefer something "dumb" to be honest
- m0llusk 3y agoHow do you look up all those files, though? Remember that picture from that thing with the guy? Back when all that other stuff was happening?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- crazygringo 3y agoGoogle Drive totally changed the way I locate files. Instead of combing through folders, I just search. AI is going to be extremely useful when I can query my files as a knowledge base directly. Like game-changer useful.
- treis 3y agoThe money is in enterprise and with all of a company's files they're well positioned to do something AIish on them. Not sure there's anything really there but also don't think they have much choice but to jump on the hype train
- passion__desire 3y ago
- mberning 3y agoI guess things like dropbox passwords are going to get even less attention now. That’s a pity because I actually like it and think it has a lot of potential.
- soared 3y ago> In an ideal world, we’d simply shift people from one team to another. And we’ve done that wherever possible. However, our next stage of growth requires a different mix of skill sets, particularly in AI and early-stage product development. We’ve been bringing in great talent in these areas over the last couple years and we'll need even more. Imagine building a company that lets users store files online, seeing chatgpt released, and then laying off 16% of your company to.. use ai to store files better? I really don’t see how new ai capabilities lead to big layoffs and new opportunities for Dropbox.
- reportgunner 3y agoWhat if they make an AI that hallucinates something that looks like your file so they don't have to fetch it for you?
- arberx 3y agoIts bs.
- mattbrewsbytes 3y agoIf every company is doing AI it sort of sounds similar to the ICO/coin phase of crypto hype curve and the every company having a dotcom/ecommerce department of the dot com boom/bust (which is actually the case nowadays). Because AI has more respect in tech circles than crypto did I suspect people aren't calling BS as much. It could very well be that in X years a lot of companies have AI doing bot types of work. It could also be a lot of if..then..ifelse or document search index stuff with "AI" lipstick on it.
- Raed667 3y agoMaybe it is about search ? I could see value in using a chat-like interface with dropbox: > "Give me the budget for the R&D team from 2019"
- never_inline 3y agoI can't see this being their moat though. Google and Microsoft can do much outcompete them with their storage SaaS products.
- avnfish 3y agoI recently migrated from Dropbox to Google One. I find Dropbox's personal pricing really baffling: you get 2 GB for free or have to move all the way up to 2 TB and pay £100 a year. 100GB for £16 via Google is a much more sensible offer.
- baby 3y agoI’m thinking of doing the same, especially as the Dropbox app doesn’t sync on iPhone whereas google photos do. But Ive delayed the migration for years as its too much of a pain
- ramraj07 3y agoI would recommend staying out simply because I trust google less with my primary data store backup than I do Dropbox. Especially with the risk of account locking.
- brianwawok 3y agoThey don't have the scale of customers to profit from £16. Compare how many people in the world use google per day vs dropbox. When you have less scale, you need to charge a bit more for your initial level.
- SkyPuncher 3y agoMy perception is Dropbox is trying to shed personal users to shift to enterprise accounts.
- Jolter 3y agoYes. What are their nag screens about, if not to convince me as a free user to leave?
- great_psy 3y agoShouldn’t those prices be affected by moores law ? I think I remember the tier prices being roughly the same since the service came out. I get that salaries went up which adds to price, but over time it feels like storage price should go towards zero.
- ericmcer 3y agoHave other companies been blaming the potentials of AI as a reason for the layoffs? GPT is impressive but it seems pretty early to cut 15% of your workforce because of it.
- xyst 3y agoWhy is a digital storage company moving into AI? Personally haven’t used them for at least 5-6 years so I am out of the loop there. Seems like a poor excuse to cut people.
- chinathrow 3y agoMaybe they will have a peek at your images/files and train some AI?
- visarga 3y agoI bet it's not to train an AI. That would be a disaster. Just use an AI for retrieval and chat based on your files.
- dehrmann 3y agoSame reason everyone--even iced tea makers--had to have a crypto story several years ago.
- gumballindie 3y agoLoads of data to steal and resell via ai. Time to move on to better suited image hosts or private storage.
- cushychicken 3y ago500/0.16 = 3125 That's a much leaner headcount than what I would expect for a company with as large a market footprint as Dropbox.
- seanalltogether 3y agoAnd yet I can't help but wonder what they need that many people for? The core of dropbox is still file syncing with extra tooling to enhance that. Figma had just over 200 people when they sold to Adobe and that is a pretty complex application.
- paxys 3y agoHaving an enterprise product automatically increases headcount by 5x. Sales reps, account managers, CSMs, solutions engineers, forward deployed engineers, priority support, compliance...
- gimme_treefiddy 3y ago> Having an enterprise product automatically increases headcount by 5x Can you expand on this. Why is this the case. Does it even mean increase in engg headcount, if so why. Can you link to somewhere if possible. Always had this question, and this pattern is very similar in other places. So maybe it works?
- kiratp 3y agoBecause you enterprise customers expect it. They pay large multiples above SMB to get dedicated (human) service
- paxys 3y agoIt does increase engineering headcount because you are expected to add a lot of features to your offering that end users wouldn't necessarily care about, like DLP, eDiscovery, audit logs, SCIM provisioning, admin controls, compliance with a hundred industry regulations (HIPAA, FINRA, SOX), key management, custom retention policies, data residency. The larger increase comes from the fact that large companies aren't using the checkout form on your website to buy the product, but expect a dedicated team to negotiate the contract and help with product rollouts and customization across their company.
- stathibus 3y agoThe AI thing is transparently a fake excuse that will pass the sniff test for their finance department. Also, what were these 500 people doing anyway? Dropbox has basically been the same product for years.
- hn_throwaway_99 3y ago> Dropbox has basically been the same product for years. I'm assuming you're just talking about your personal experience with their consumer product, because this statement is laughably false. Dropbox has made a tons of changes and acquisitions to beef up their enterprise offerings, which is clearly where they've been focused, and where the money is.
- AJRF 3y ago"These transitions are never easy, but I’m determined to ensure that Dropbox is at the forefront of the AI era, just as we were at the forefront of the shift to mobile and the cloud. We’ll need all hands on deck as machine intelligence gives us the tools to reimagine our existing businesses and invent new ones. And I'm committed to doing everything in my power to best position ourselves for the future and unlock our full potential." What has AI got to do with me putting my files in the cloud so I can sync them across my devices?
- LightHugger 3y agoThey will use AI to scan your files so that they can do things with the resulting harvested data.
- samstave 3y agoEXACTLY AI is allowing for massive monitization of what was previously "flat file" style data. Dropbox, as I mentioned, has always 'not been you friend' - now they are just a more powerful 'not your friend'.
- Obscurity4340 3y agoThat's why there's Cryptomator
- pokstad 3y agoProbably advanced Q&A chatbot trained on your company’s documents. Imagine how that could improve onboarding if you can ask AI how things work in your company.
- CharlesW 3y agoDropbox is a place where people put data. AI is built on data. A simple use case is something along the lines of, "Put all of your technical documentation in Folder X, then deploy Folder X as a Generative AI chatbot you can ask questions to".
- thegginthesky 3y ago
- osigurdson 3y ago>> “ We’ve believed for many years that AI will give us new superpowers and completely transform knowledge work” I’ve speculated that this is the rationale behind some of the recent layoffs. Finally we get some confirmation. As a heavy OpenAI user, I think it is a premature optimization.
- cableshaft 3y agoIt didn't read to me that they're laying people off because they think ChatGPT lets them need less employees, which is what most of the fearmongering (which may in time be justified) has been about A.I. From what I read it sounded like they're making a major shift to investment in A.I. technology, and dropping departments in their company that don't align with that new direction (while aggressively hiring in the A.I. field). Companies have shifted focus all the time in the past, and axed departments that no longer align with that vision. Meta's doing that right now with enterprise VR as they're dropping that to focus more on A.I. as well (have to jump on that A.I. bandwagon to please them shareholders, after all, which I don't doubt is half the reason Dropbox is doing this as well). But this isn't exclusive to A.I.
- osigurdson 3y agoSo the new competition landscape will be: OpenAI, DeepMind, whatever Elon comes up with and DropBox AI? Seems like a jump.
- JediWing 3y agoCondolences to the affected Dropboxers. I think the silver lining for all of you is that amidst this turmoil, you're well positioned just by having Dropbox on your resume. As someone laid off 2 weeks ago from a company with much less notoriety, I cringe at the idea of having to now compete with 500 of you. Good luck out there.
- mortenjorck 3y agoSame here. I hate that my thinking has become so zero-sum, but after four months of this, the first thing I think now when I see another high-profile layoff is “great, more name-recognition resumes to consign mine to the trash.”
- Invictus0 3y agoSo much bitterness and resentment around layoffs. Why? It's not personal, it's just business. Everyone got paid great money to do easy work, and the world is still full of opportunity.
- blindriver 3y agoThey gave the employees who were let go the opportunity to clean things up and talk to their coworkers. It's weird how in this age that's considered shocking, but kudos to Dropbox for at least doing it the right way.
- astrea 3y agoCompanies adopting ChatGPT to add some useless chat bot is going to be the next “long island blockchain”.
- furyofantares 3y agoI'm pretty excited for every company to have a better way to search their stuff, if it works out that way.
- skrowl 3y ago[dead]
- MangoCoffee 3y agoDropbox have 3000+ employees according to Google fiance. do you need that many people to run a online file storage service?
- rwmj 3y agoAbout the AI thing (assuming it's true and not merely a convenient excuse for layoffs): Is every company just planning to feed all of their customer data through GPT / OpenAI, or will they build their own AIs? The first choice seems risky, from a business, legal and privacy perspective. The second one would require a large amount of capital and has many other risks.
- yellow_postit 3y agoGiven the rise of foundational models the tuning/adaptation on top is quite a bit cheaper. I imagine foundation models become a bit like cloud provider paas offerings vs rolling your own data centers.
- codedokode 3y agoWhy does Dropbox have so many employees? Isn't it just a small program for synchronizing files? What are all those developers writing?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- hn_throwaway_99 3y agoJust like clockwork, the "I have no idea what this multibillion dollar company actually does now, so let me comment on how they must have way too many employees and how it could be built in a weekend" HN comment is in. I feel like HN should just autogenerate these comments now for stories like this (perhaps with a helpful response explaining what the corporation actually does do and giving some examples of corporate jobs that are a necessity at a certain size).
- wunderland 3y agoLooks like “focusing on AI” is the excuse du jour for short-term cost cutting to keep profits stable if this market downturn lasts a few more years.
- rootusrootus 3y agoAs with other announcements, I'd like to know the job function breakdown. How much of this is sales, marketing, etc. Specifically I want to know how many were software developers.
- jupp0r 3y agoTransparent communications, decent severance package, able to keep devices. 8/10
- lopkeny12ko 3y agoI'm surprised that a company that effectively just provides a cloud-hosted object storage API even had 500 employees to begin with!
- samstave 3y agoI stopped using dropbox once condi rice took the lead... if there isnt a more telling projection of cointelpro as appointing condi fn rice as head of your data harvesting/mining company, the only other person least trustworthy would be the big dick cheney. Ill never use dropbox again, they cannot be trusted.
- arthurofbabylon 3y agoSo hopeful. People are so hopeful that AI will pan out favorably for them, even when their arguments are a stretch. On this thread, there’s the following sentiment… “Dropbox has access to your data so they are well positioned to do some AI stuff on your data.” But also you have your data so you could work with really any party you want, and Dropbox has few advantages by being an existing custodian. Custodian status probably is not the differentiating factor in a race to build AI tools. AI optimism. I just don’t see the argument. I don’t see how it is good for Dropbox, or the enthusiastic pundits, or even me! (I use the tools, too, but my income and quality of life have not skyrocketed.) My suspicion is that things like Dropbox laying off 16% becoming part of the AI optimism narrative – and AI optimism in general – has little to do with the prospects of AI and much to do with the reactive patterns of opinionated storytellers. Specifically, I think people enthusiastic about AI prospects are enthusiastic because it is the one empowering (encouraging) response they can take… not because it is warranted. That’s not criticism, just an exploration, and I’m well-aware that I could be wrong. This is a layoff announcement. We shouldn’t expect any AI realism from it.
- dhammack 3y agoOn the broader point though, there certainly are some companies that have access to unique datasets that they can take advantage of. Meta and Google come to mind as obvious ones, probably Microsoft too. Apple I'm less sure given their privacy stance. Any others?
- vlz 3y ago> But also you have your data so you could work with really any party you want As a private individual, yes. However if you are a company you might not be legally able to send your data to just any party or it might be a hassle to set up. If you have a contract with Dropbox already…
- CoastalCoder 3y agoAnyone know why the ~15% number keeps showing up in recent layoffs? The startup I was at recently laid of 15%. I'm pretty sure it wasn't for (public) optics, because the layoff didn't get any press coverage. And based on the startup's business, I very much doubt the layoff was triggered by ChatGPT's success. My best guess would be behind-the-scenes VC strategizing, but this is happening even with publicly traded companies like DropBox.
- chrisco255 3y agoIt's like a safe sounding number that cuts back on expenses but doesn't spook your existing employees and investors. Besides, you can always do another 15% in six months if need be. If you say, "we're laying off 70% effective immediately" it will sound like the ship is going down.
- CoastalCoder 3y agoIt's a plausible theory. Is there evidence that this is the specific reasoning that companies are using?
- xboxnolifes 3y agoWell, if the market hurts 15%, needing companies to find a 15%, wouldn't you expect layoffs to be around 15%, which would be similar for most companies?
- RigelKentaurus 3y agoWhat I'm really shocked by is that Dropbox had 3000 employees! I'd have guessed the number to be between 500-1000. It's not that they come up with new products/features at a fast pace. What do 3000 people do there?
- andreabergia 3y ago> You'll also have some time TODAY AND TOMORROW to wrap up and say goodbye to colleagues. As an European, I don't think I will ever get used to the fact that in the US people can be told "go home, you're fired" like that, effective immediately.
- paxys 3y agoThey will likely remain on the payroll for many months. Tech company of that stature give very generous severance packages.
- MikeTheRocker 3y agoThe asymmetry between employee and employer is especially troubling to me. The socially expected forewarning for quitting a job is 2 weeks notice. In contrast, it's common for employers to terminate effective immediately. I get that it's technically not a requirement to provide notice when leaving, and this is a direct consequence of at-will employment, but it sure sucks.
- dudzik 3y agoAs a fellow European, I used to feel that way. Having lived in Canada for a while now, I prefer short notice periods. It means that I can be more flexible in pursuing opportunities. Businesses also tend to be more risk-seeking because the downside of hiring someone is lower. That benefits me as an employee because it is much easier to get hired. I’ve been laid off, so I also felt the negative consequences. The key for me was building an emergency fund. Granted, if a person is in an employer's market, the short notice system is terrible.
- Aeolun 3y agoUgh, cant he just come out and say he feels the company is better off without them? Why does it always need to be a difficult decision. Literally every company is doing the same right now. It seems like the decision was quite simple.
- wittekm 3y agoDrew Houston needs to step down. The company has been aimless for a decade. The 'collaborative workspace' was an obviously bad idea that they sunk years of company-wide resources on (ask me how I know!)
- mtmail 3y agoBased on a older comment from wittekm "I was at Dropbox from 2015-2020"
- jmartens 3y agoHow the F does a document storage company pivot to AI? The rush to AI is starting to look like an episode of Silicon Valley.
- james-revisoai 3y agoTo be fair, documents context with things like semantic search could be the upcoming bottleneck for a lot of industry applications. Even though a hundred+ QA products doing this (Chat with your files vibes etc) haven't had much success, they are ignoring the fact that trust is key to document storage, and that we haven't mastered correct context/snippet amalgamation yet - for example, one may want to include both statements that have high cosine similarity, and also statements with clashing natural language inference similarity (contractionary sentences). This gives the context window the statements needed to correctly reason and use logic from different parts of the document. Small things like order (e.g. grouping snippets from different documents together in per-document batches, and also ordering by page number the statements within each document) matter greatly.
- CostcoFanboy 3y agoIt's a wonder they survived for so long considering how many good alternatives there are and how many issues they've had with security.
- vcryan 3y agoIt surprises me that Dropbox has more than 500 employees at all... that's a lot of people for a product that does one thing well that hasn't substantially changed in years... To be clear: I'm a fan. Just sincerely don't know the benefit of what could be a very targeted and strategic company in having so much staff.
- iamjake648 3y agoI'm curious the size of the companies you've worked in, and what sort of support, legal, finance, etc requirements they've had. Companies aren't just made up of engineers. I see this same comment on every single one of these layoff threads and they always seem to be a bit disconnected.
- vcryan 3y agoFailed startups lol
- peoplearepeople 3y ago> particularly in AI What? This is a file storage service.
- jtlienwis 3y agoI dropped Dropbox when they put KindaSleezy Rice on their board.
- jdeibele 3y agoOver time I've switched from Dropbox to Google Drive to iCloud as my primary way of storing files I want backed up and/or able to be shared. Replacing the Dropbox client with Maestral https://maestral.app https://maestral.app meant a much happier system with a lighter application running. Also no prompts for the SD card to be uploaded. When Dropbox limited an account to 3 devices, it made sense to use Google Drive more. Google kept changing the naming and functionality of its client. The final blow, though, is the way that they insist on showing a screen of files instead of the folders that were carefully created. A lot of people don't use folders very much or at all and that's definitely the trend. But it means that all the work somebody does in organizing their files is thrown out the window. Google Drive seems like it's more and more forcing people into having a Google Account even if they use a hotmail or yahoo email address. iCloud with a family subscription means that a family of 5 can have all of their devices and files backed up for $10/month. BackBlaze for laptops and desktops is $7/month these days so $10/month seems like a reasonable deal. Dropbox decided that the business world was their market and that's reasonable. For individuals, there still seems to be a market for file serving with no ads, good security and easy access for people regardless of their email domain. Say sharing photos from a family trip or the soccer games your kid played in.
- htrp 3y agohttps://jobs.dropbox.com/listing/4987352 https://jobs.dropbox.com/listing/4987352 >Role Description We are looking for a technical leader to help shape the Machine Learning agenda for Dropbox’s new initiatives. This will involve developing high impact ML solutions that touch hundreds of millions of people and a lot of data. From images to documents in every language, using the full range of Machine Learning techniques from deep learning, interacting with modern LLMs (natural language), computer vision, etc. and executing everywhere from mobile devices to large clusters on our back-end infrastructure. They pretty much don't know what they don't know and are looking for someone to build it for them. If I had to hazard a guess at the strategy, they are looking to build an in-house multi-modal model to power enterprise search.
- didip 3y agoBummer, I always enjoyed reading about their engineering culture. Seems like a nice place to work. Hopefully they'll figure this out and rebound from their predicament.
- grimmx 3y agoI'd love pay Dropbox money and let them keep their workforce hired. I've used their free service for years, and WANT to sign up for a plan and pay them something, but their paid plan options are silly, I have 4GB for free, their starting paid plan is 2TB for $12CND... that's a big leap and way more storage than I need. I'd be happy with 100GB plan, or a 500GB (1/4 the size of their starting 2000GB plan), for $3 would be more storage than I need, and a much more enticing reason to sign up. I've brought this up before to their support team. But I guess they aren't interested in small fish accounts and only want 2TB whales signing up.
- peanuty1 3y agoThis is why I use Google Drive which comes with 15GB of free storage. Even OneDrive has 5GB of free storage.