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Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction
- galactus 2y ago[flagged]
- onlyrealcuzzo 2y agoHe makes $1.5M. That's like 2 L7 jobs at Facebook. How much do you think he should make? $100k? He's worth $2B because he co-founded the company and the value of the company has sky-rocketed. Not because he paid himself $2B of corporate profits. $1.5M for a CEO is actually not much - because why get paid that much when you're already worth $2B? The median for a Fortune 500 is $17M.
- TechDebtDevin 2y agoI don't think people care about the CEO's compensation, I think its just getting old seeing these companies treat hours of labor as KPIs and not what labor actually is, people. Mom and Pop businesses have to be careful when hiring because if they have to do layoffs they will be penalized by the office of unemployment insurance, and could make their rates soar to the point where they won't be able to hire again when things change. These consequences prevent mom and pop businesses and other mid size businesses from playing fast and loose with the people's livelihoods they provide. These tech companies budget in the severance, never even deal with the regulatory agencies that are meant to prevent this type of fast and loose hiring. I think companies like Dropbox and others need some sort of regulatory oversight in regards to how they hire and fire (if they are going to keep this pattern of hire and fire every cycle).
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- nextworddev 2y agoStack ranking is back masquerading as (bi) annual layoffs
- threetonesun 2y agoIt's more fun now though, because instead of being tied to individual performance, you need to make sure you're on a product team that is going to survive the cuts.
- nextworddev 2y agoThat was actually the norm prior to 2010. Tech was never supposed to be a stable career due to inherent innovation risk
- grepfru_it 2y agoAlso prior to 2010 you wouldn’t be a senior engineer after 3 years of experience making $180k/yr. The staff and principal engineering roles paying <$100k are still super safe jobs
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- lifeisgood99 2y ago"As CEO, I take full responsibility for this decision" Oh hey another one that takes responsibility by taking on 0 consequences.
- whyenot 2y agoWhoa whoa whoa, he’s only taking responsibility for the decision.
- mv4 2y ago... and the circumstances that led to it!
- draw_down 2y ago[dead]
- Brosper 2y agoI mean yeaaa... it's just work. In big corporation. What do you expect from them? He will get bonus for "savings".
- throwCursive 2y agoResign? That's the obvious answer right?
- geodel 2y agoI take full responsibility for completing task assigned to me. So resign?
- throwCursive 2y agoYes! He failed.
- mv4 2y agoRemember Gavin Belson? "But make no mistake. Though they're the ones leaving, it is I who must remain and bear the heavy burden of their failure."
- jimberlage 2y agoHonestly, this doesn't strike me as a bad layoff announcement, with one caveat. I’m writing to let you all know that after careful consideration, we've decided to reduce our global workforce by approximately 20% or 528 Dropboxers. Should be replaced with I’m writing to let you all know that after careful consideration, we've decided to reduce our global workforce by approximately 20% or 528 people. You should never use your pet names for employees in a layoff announcement. It makes an otherwise serious announcement seem tone-deaf.
- giraffe_lady 2y agoDon't want to remind other workers that they share something with these workers. Solidarity can be contagious.
- mv4 2y agoIt is my observation that most unicorn execs become tone-deaf and out of touch very quickly. Something about human nature.
- Buttons840 2y agoIt's to remind them they are beloved "Dropboxers", and are part of the family... before terminating them.
- hunter2_ 2y agoI've never been a big fan of any such language, regardless of layoff context. Do enough people prefer it that it's actually a net win for business by way of improved morale or whatever? I wonder if it's been seriously studied. Then again, I'm also of the mind that email addresses (or whatever other contact methods) ought to belong to functional areas/positions rather than to people (other than for person-specific topics such as time off, personal development, etc.) so turnover doesn't lead to questions of where to send questions/requests. I assume this is an unusually inhumane outlook!
- aprilthird2021 2y ago
- paulcole 2y agoI’m 22 and work on a 3-person team so it’s hard for me to imagine why a company would more than 4 or 5 total employees.
- giraffe_lady 2y agoDon't worry your imagination will develop over time.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- colesantiago 2y ago> I’m 22 and work on a 3-person team so it’s hard for me to imagine why a company would more than 4 or 5 total employees. You're not wrong. I've seen companies with less than 10 employees make around $9M ARR within the first 3 years, and some with around 50-100 employees that can't even reach 100K ARR. The smaller your startup the more faster you can go, Dropbox's main issue is that they haven't implemented Founder Mode yet. I am willing to bet that that there are jobs in Dropbox that doesn't need to exist.
- GrumpyNl 2y agoLooks to me, they started to over engineer their product, just for a storage platform, you dont need 2500 people.
- surajrmal 2y agoSoftware is complicated. If you keep writing new functionality, maintaining it slows down your ability to write more new functionality. Eventually if you want to ship more new features and not wait an extraordinary amount of time to do so you need more people. This doesn't scale super well so your headcount grows non linearly. Companies develop a lot of bespoke features used by a handful of their customers. It might not be obvious to the average person what all of those features are. Additionally just scaling software to continue running with more customers using the product is not a trivial task as well. Adding more servers or making servers beefier only works until it doesn't.
- skwee357 2y agoBeing sorry - check Takes full responsibility - check Layoffs are still there
- yieldcrv 2y agohow would you like the next CEO to handle it, for reference?
- wahnfrieden 2y agoConversion to worker coop
- CoolGuySteve 2y agoI would like for there to be a next CEO
- bravetraveler 2y agoWith the resources that would otherwise be given to the excised one, is a good start
- giraffe_lady 2y ago[flagged]
- realusername 2y agoA 20% layoff means either the market changed very very quickly or something went terribly wrong in the company strategy. Here it's the second scenario and I'd expect the CEO to be on shaky grounds after such bad results. There needs to be more explanation on where the CEO screwed up that badly and the consequences for the management.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- mrguyorama 2y agoAt the very very least, they should be explaining how Dropbox is suddenly a 20% smaller company, because either that means the market has contracted by 20%, or Dropbox has shit the bed as a competitive entity in said market. Both options should directly imply that the CEO should earn less. Either you're running a smaller, simpler company, or you sucked at your job. Eat the loss.
- BoredPositron 2y agoTook the responsibility right to his bank account.
- atlintots 2y ago[flagged]
- momojo 2y agoRequest: Any tech-recruiters on here who can validate this? I spent a single month in June job hunting (mid-level SWE, DE roles) and it was terrible. Hundreds of applicants per position. It felt like being a fresh-grad again. But that's just my anecdata
- coldpie 2y agoNo luck from your connections at previous jobs? That's always the best way in.
- cruffle_duffle 2y agoWhen I was looking none of that helped at all. People in my network would refer me to all kinds of jobs posted online but basically once submitted you'd still be ghosted. I'm not even sure those were real jobs because to this day they have the same listing posted.
- Der_Einzige 2y agoLearn AI, unironically
- Brosper 2y agoAnybody from Poland will be layed off?
- Drunkfoowl 2y ago[dead]
- mytailorisrich 2y ago> We continue to see softening demand and macro headwinds in our core business In plain English it means sales are crashing with no change forecast in the immediate future.
- electriclove 2y agoCompany isn’t doing so great and future doesn’t look so great and people cost a lot of money so they are letting folks go who aren’t as valuable. This makes sense.
- airstrike 2y agoWhat doesn't make sense is hiring so many people to begin with. The writing has been on the wall about Dropbox for quite a while now
- electriclove 2y agoAgreed! So many of these companies hired needlessly over the recent years.
- blitzar 2y agoIt wasnt needless, they didnt want to miss out. They are not sure what they didnt want to miss out on, but they knew for sure that they didnt want to be the only one not doing it.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- josefritzishere 2y agoDropbox makes over 600 M per quarter and about $2.53B per year. They dont need to do layoffs. This is a choice to desctroy jobs to temporarily enrich shareholders to the detriment of the company itself. Classic short-term decision making. https://stockanalysis.com/stocks/dbx/revenue/ https://stockanalysis.com/stocks/dbx/revenue/
- randomdata 2y agoFinancially, perhaps not, but maybe the product is now done? I mean, what more can you really add to the service at this point? There is still work to do with maintenance, support, etc. but that doesn't require the same level of employment as when you are still building.
- brk 2y agoHow is it to the detriment of the company? I've been a dropbox subscriber I think since they launched. Over the years they've added some nice features here and there, but I feel like at this point they could scale all the way back to server admins and sustaining engineering and be perfectly fine. This is another case of I can't imaging what all of those people actually DO day to day.
- absoluteunit1 2y agoThe severance package is great! I don’t think I would be upset (unless I was extremely passionate about a project I was working on)
- BossingAround 2y agoReally? 16 weeks of salary, or 4 months of pay. In my country, you get 3 months of pay as standard when you're fired from your job. Doesn't seem that great to me to be honest.
- ahstilde 2y agoIt sounds like it's 25% better than what you get in your country?
- triceratops 2y ago33%
- klausa 2y ago“25% better than legally required minimum” is not generally considered “great” in many circumstances.
- nsxwolf 2y agoComparison is the thief of joy. In the US, any amount is... infinity %? Undefined %? better than the legally required minimum of 0.
- BossingAround 2y agoPersonally, I'd consider this nothing to write home about. It's OK. Not great, not terrible. If we're laying off 20% of the company, I'd expect the package to be somewhere in the 6-12 months range. To me, that would seem more fair, considering they are completely restructuring the whole company.
- _sword 2y agoMakes sense and was only a matter of time considering it has essentially no revenue growth to date this year and Non-GAAP margins in the low-to-mid 30's %. With near-0% revenue growth, investors will expect a SaaS company to post 40%+ margins.
- timcavel 2y ago[dead]
- teeray 2y agoResponsibility would be the CEO also taking 4:1 odds on retaining his job.
- recroad 2y agoTIL 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 hiring another team to place even more bets? Actually, I know why. It's because they have too much money and when you have too much cash, you start splurging without thinking and then one day the chickens come home to roost. Honestly, I would not hire a single manager from these big companies because they operate in an environment where they're playing with monopoly money and don't know what reality is. There's something to be said about spending within your limits and not splurging on the next shiny object. Way back when it was called cost control and operating within a budget. All that management theory seems to have been lost in the age of cash injections and valuations based on everything except retained earnings.
- bhouston 2y agoDropbox 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.
- toomuchtodo 2y agoAre 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
- bhouston 2y agoIf you don’t have growth you have to treat this as a PE firm would. You cut spending to a minimum while ensuring you keep your customers, thus maximizing profit to assets ratio. A lot of companies do not have growth but are great money machines. It may be that this is the mature stage for Dropbox.
- daft_pink 2y agoi wish they would focus on what the users wants instead of making their client more and more invasive, and when I complain about it just explaining that they have a lot of privacy controls and I shouldn’t worry about their invasive client. i would love to use dropbox over icloud, but I just want a drive that works and a way to turn off all their weird features.
- vkazanov 2y agothis is a good deal, better than most retention packages out there. But why is every ceo feels obligated to use this kind of meaningless corpo speak in these emails? "Macro Headwinds", "full responsibility"?
- rchaud 2y agoPR-speak is the same everywhere. The audience for this is Wall St, not the general public.
- dylan604 2y agoGotta prevent panic in stockholders is the main priority of a CEO in publicly traded companies. They only concern themselves with the well being of their employees as much as how it affects the stock price.
- ThrowawayR2 2y agoBecause they risk getting punished by angry shareholders and risk lawsuits and risk losing customers if they deviate from the corporate speak to say anything substantial.
- bhouston 2y agoIf 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?
- aprilthird2021 2y agoSlack 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
- mschuster91 2y agoMS Teams was a large contributor as well to the downfall of Slack. It automates decently with the stuff most companies already have (AD, O365, and most importantly all that compliance bullshit), and nowadays it can even do landline telephony, providing enterprises with a way to reduce their exposure to Cisco crap on top of it. In the end, Microsoft is IMHO once again abusing its stronghold on the market. Just the enterprise-compliance-integration stuff is more than enough to cause any medium or large company to move off of Slack or its competitors (e.g. Mattermost).
- umeshunni 2y agoWhat are they moving to, though? I can't imagine that Teams is any better.
- Spooky23 2y agoTeams is close enough, especially given its cost. Slack displayed alot of hubris and didn’t pivot. Their goal should have been Microsoft or Google acquisition.
- 2y ago
- trmanb 2y agoCrowded space, macro headwinds and too much middle management. It was difficult to foresee in 2020, but regarding the macro headwinds (elephant in the room) perhaps some billionaires should adjust their donation patterns: https://www.forbes.com/sites/michelatindera/2021/02/17/here-are-the-billionaires-who-donated-to-joe-bidens-2020-presidential-campaign/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/michelatindera/2021/02/17/here-...
- magicalhippo 2y agoWe’ve heard from many of you that our organizational structure has become overly complex, with excess layers of management slowing us down. So we're making more significant cuts in areas where we're over-invested or underperforming while designing a flatter, more efficient team structure overall. So a lot of middle management getting let go then?
- umeshunni 2y agoThat's been the trend at many companies recently. Cut a middle layer and consolidate.
- insane_dreamer 2y ago[flagged]
- kiba 2y agoIt's like how in the US we lament how the government can't afford to take proper care of its citizens (you know, basic things like universal healthcare, education, etc.) while spending $750B a year on the military. It's not the government can't afford, it's that we aren't willing to allocate. The US is an incredibly wealthy country after all. We can unlock even more wealth if there's political will to fix how we do urban planning. Also, we have military commitments around the world that underpins the global order. Decades of underinvestment in our defense industrial base and unneeded military adventures had led us to be woefully underprepared for our current security environment.
- insane_dreamer 2y agoThat last paragraph could have been taken directly out of the defense contractor lobbyist handbook. Congratulations. Seriously -- we don't have military commitments to "underpin the global order". We have military commitments to "protect our political and economic interests" -- and who do those benefit? The American people? Nah, not really. But the American people are the ones footing the bill for it, choosing to reduce our own quality of life in order to exert power over other nations (and invade them at will).
- kiba 2y agoSeriously -- we don't have military commitments to "underpin the global order". We have military commitments to "protect our political and economic interests" -- and who do those benefit? The American people? Nah, not really. But the American people are the ones footing the bill for it, choosing to reduce our own quality of life in order to exert power over other nations (and invade them at will). Of course, it's our political and economic interests. We're a hegemony. This is not controversial. Unless you want China and Russia, the other two nations on the permanent security council, deciding what goes. That would be not for the benefit of the American people, but for their benefit. Beside, it's not like there's a lack of spending in healthcare. Our healthcare spending is very high. According to wikipedia, it's something like nearly 18% of GDP.[1] Universal healthcare will probably reduce how much money we spend on healthcare and making it affordable for everyone while improving health outcome. It's a false dichotomy between military spending and our domestic needs, and the government is always in charge. You should read about the last supper and the peace dividend. The government downsized spending after the cold war and now we have a less robust defense industrial base. Some form of downsizing is inevitable especially if we want to reap the peace dividend but it's clear that we had gone too far in the way we downsized. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_finance_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_finance_in_the_Uni...
- GenerWork 2y agoPer Google, Dropbox had a net profit margin of 17% last quarter. Are they really hurting that badly that they have to lay off 20% of the company?
- throwaway2037 2y agoFor a software services company, that margin is pretty low.
- tschellenbach 2y agoGoogle rule of 40
- GenerWork 2y agoI did, and found that it's supposed to apply to early stage startups. Dropbox isn't an early stage startup anymore. At what point will investors have to be content with lower returns that are still in double digits and better than the vast majority of companies?
- elric 2y agoI'm always a bit confused by profitable companies with (presumably) large reserves laying off lots of people. I get that they want to remain profitable. But sure 500ish people could be put to some use? A new product, a new market, a spinoff. Whatever? Are you telling me that no one in such a big, wealthy company of clever engineers has any use for a bunch of talented people?
- jamil7 2y agoIt might be 500 middle managers which you can't do much with.
- dylan604 2y agoBut which people: the sales/marketing, the developers that actually make the product, across the board? At some point, development gets to a stable and solid product, so revenue increases come from staffing up sales/marketing. So does that mean you can reduce the devs to try and increase new users or that you've overstaffed the sales/marketing? Maybe there's just too damn many middle managers? Will the cutting be a surgical blade or a broad axe?
- siliconc0w 2y agoI'm a libertarian in most things but I still don't like layoffs from profitable companies. Like it's probably not good for our society that people have to up end their life every few years and probably move to find a new job. Both my parents stayed in the same job for their careers and it meant they could stay in the same place, have kids, build ties to the community, etc. Seems important if you want to not die out as a society.
- switch007 2y agoI expect to see more of this as companies see their disappointing revenue projections as we approach a common end of FY.
- GiorgioG 2y agoSpineless executives with their corp speak - they're layoffs.
- colesantiago 2y agoIt 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?
- madhacker 2y ago[flagged]
- Phil_Latio 2y agoSo what? If they didn't hire fast, those 20% wouldn't had the job(s) in the first place. Stupidity worked in their favor. Same at Twitter. Edit: I guess that's basically what you are saying. The other comments confuse me!
- madhacker 2y agoPeople take issue with the CEO's lack of skin in the game. It's akin to saying this hurts me more than it hurts you while not making any real sacrifices. But the core of this issue runs deeper, it's endemic throughout corporate America and enabled by America culture which places no public shame for the lack of integrity or honor by those at the top.
- IshKebab 2y agoKind of crazy that Dropbox has 2600 employees no? What do they all do? Isn't Dropbox finished? I guess there's a very small number maintaining the core Dropbox stuff and most of them are working on speculative projects to increase revenue (e.g. this Dash thing they mentioned)?
- jeffbee 2y ago> Kind of crazy that Dropbox has 2600 employees No, the HN consensus is they are massive geniuses for moving out of AWS. Nobody here ever accounts for the extra datacenter, hardware platform, hardware ops, infrastructure ops, etc.
- nemo44x 2y agoThis is a stack ranking layoff. They will fill the roles with new roles to teams they believe are more vital to achieving company goals. Pretty much every tech company has operated this way the last couple years. They’ve fired 10-20% and have replaced all those heads pretty much across the board.
- digitalsushi 2y agoand then after the first full clock cycle, middle managers are hiring people to fire them, to keep their core dev team intact so that it can solve problems that take longer than 90 days
- golly_ned 2y agoThis is a great severance plan. 1. 4 months pay + 1 week per year of tenure. 2. Receive Q4 vests. 3. Upcoming approved leaves paid in cash. 4. Year-end bonuses paid. 5. Keep company devices.
- insane_dreamer 2y agoYou know what's better than a great severance plan? Keeping your job.
- onlyrealcuzzo 2y agoNot necessarily. If you're actually good at your job, you typically end up with an even better job: https://hbr.org/2018/10/research-when-getting-fired-is-good-for-your-career https://hbr.org/2018/10/research-when-getting-fired-is-good-...
- MeetingsBrowser 2y agoThe linked article is specific to executives and kind of confirms what most are complaining about here. > a 10-year study of over 2,600 leaders showed almost half (45%) suffered at least one major career blow-up — like getting fired, messing up a major deal, or blowing an acquisition. Despite that, 78% of these executives eventually made it to the CEO role. An executive can make a series of awful decisions and still advance in their career.
- onlyrealcuzzo 2y agoMost employees can as well - IFF you move to different companies.
- MeetingsBrowser 2y agoI think its tough to argue that getting laid off is a net-benefit for your career most of the time.
- coding123 2y agoShould companies reduce salaries instead?
- kraig911 2y agoDropbox my one critique is can you please make it affordable again. I just can't justify the cost as there are cheaper services out there. I don't care about PDF signing etc. I fear OneDrive/Google Drive are eating you lunch because it's a hard sell to be competitive against them price wise.
- mock-possum 2y agoI stopped using them when they refused to work with valid windows paths - to wit, files and folders with emoji in their names. Now I pay for google drive instead.
- NKosmatos 2y agoExactly!!! I stopped being a customer when they lost touch with their customer base. They decided to become something else, adjust plans however they thought, introduced useless featured and all these while riding the money train. I feel sorry for those being laid off, it’s not immediately/directly their fault. It’s the management and the product responsible that should take the blame.
- Destiner 2y agoyou're not a target customer anymore. they need $$$ from enterprise, everything else is a distraction.
- HEmanZ 2y agoOneDrive/Google can afford to take a loss on you, they are effectively selling you storage at a loss. Dropbox can not do this.
- sk11001 2y agoSteve Jobs was right - Dropbox is a feature, not a product.
- karaterobot 2y agoIt's been a product for 17 years.
- andygcook 2y agoFor context, Drew Houston's total compensation for the year in 2023 was $1.5M: > According to our data, Dropbox, Inc. ... paid its CEO total annual compensation worth US$1.5m over the year to December 2023. That's a notable increase of 34% on last year via https://finance.yahoo.com/news/heres-why-dropbox-inc-nasdaq-100904768.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/heres-why-dropbox-inc-nasdaq-... Even if Drew took minimum wage, that would save ~15 jobs assuming $100K all-in comp (which seems low to me for a tech salary). 500 employees is more like $50M/year, and probably more. Of course, Drew Houston's net worth is ~$2B and he could technically loan Dropbox Inc money personally to save the jobs, my guess is a lot of his net worth is actually Dropbox stock that he would have to liquidate and would affect the stock price materially. He would also need to follow insider trading laws too and can't just up and sell vast amounts of stock on a whim. Most executives are on pre-approved schedules to sell any stock to avoid triggering insider trading. The severance package Dropbox is offering is pretty good - 16 weeks of pay + an additional week for each year of tenure, impacted employees get their Q4 equity vest & prorated bonuses, everyone keeps company devices, an offer for extra time + help for people on visas, and job placement help for everyone. Dropbox is a public company that is profitable, but not really growing through their flagship product. No growth is more or less bad on Wall Street. They also haven't really had a major hit since their initial file-sharing product and missed some shots they probably should have hit (mainly vs. Notion with Dropbox Paper, Mailbox acquisition, etc). With many systems moving away from "files" and to "cloud objects" like Figma, Notion, etc, their workhorse product might be going away over time too. They need the time and focus to find that next S-growth curve. Layoffs suck and no one wants to do it, but sometimes it's needed to save the ship.
- gcr 2y agoThe severance packages suck. COBRA is the single largest expense for departing employees. Industry standard is to offer 18 months, not 6. Many job searches take longer than 6 months, so employees will be left high and dry right when they need it most.
- nop_slide 2y ago> COBRA is the single largest expense for departing employees. Industry standard is to offer 18 months, not 6. Are we in the same industry, where are you based? I got 2 months when I was laid off last year. I also know many tech people who got just 1 month.
- wg0 2y agoNot sure if it is relevant but after firing 500 people, the stock price is almost up by 2 dollars between 29th and and 30th October. Next - we have to raise our prices. Probably lazy money invested for gains takes its toll on the rest of the society.
- lotsofpulp 2y agoYou are welcome to start a business that competes with Apple/Alphabet/Microsoft/Amazon, and see if you can survive without raising prices or making bets that may not succeed and cause you to fire people.
- lucasyvas 2y ago> As CEO, I take full responsibility for this decision and the circumstances that led to it, and I’m truly sorry to those impacted by this change. Ah yes, there it is. Maybe roll yourself into the 20% at least.
- yalogin 2y agoI don’t know how but over time all the “new fangled” tech companies have the same approach to hiring. They just keep growing headcount as its own workstream. Google started it I think, their HR just interviews and grabs the talent without a need. Matching employees to a role that already got hired to a company is just insane. That is the reason why I never interview with anyone that wants to do a generic hire. These HR folks are purely assessed on how many they hire and so they keep hiring. This just makes me respect the old school processes that apple and nvidia follow that much more. They are the best run companies in tech
- Sivart13 2y agoOnce you're a big enough company hiring needs to be its own workstream just to keep up with attrition.
- bloqs 2y agoThis happens because of the culture of "if you dont spend your budget it gets cut"
- andyjohnson0 2y ago> "As CEO, I take full responsibility for this decision and the circumstances that led to it, and I’m truly sorry to those impacted by this change." As with other CEOs who say such things in similar situations - does this "responsibility" amount to anything? Like loss of salary or options or seniority. Or is this just empty words? I appreciate that this action is probably necessary to safeguard the business but, as someone who has been at the sharp end of a number of redundancies, I wish leaders would be honest: "We tried stuff but it didn't work. I was and am in charge, and I'm staying. We're making you redundant because we need the money more than we need you." Obviously no leader would say such a thing. But the people affected (and thas not just those being made redundant) deserve honesty, not platitudes.
- matchbok 2y agoMost people understand that companies need to adjust in size. There’s nothing moral about it.
- andyjohnson0 2y ago(Your comment was dead but I vouched for it because I want to explain why youve failed to appreciate an important distinction.) tldr: the redundancy is not the announcement I think people (and I include myself) do understand that companies need to adjust their workforce. I think that decision is not wholly moral in nature. But it does have a moral component - and Dropbox seems to appreciate that somewhat in the assistance they're providing the people who are leaving. But what isn't moral is an individual announcing publicly that they take responsibility for acts that cause trauma to others (however constrained that decision was) while in reality that responsibility-taking involves no consequences at all the individual. None. In the large train station in the city where I live, the automated voice announcements "apologise" for train cancellations. I'd argue that this is as empty and insulting as this CEO's email - because no responsibility has in fact been taken. The CEOs words and the announcement software are as morally empty as eachother.
- racl101 2y agoIf You Want To Tell People the Truth, You’d Better Make Them Laugh or They’ll [unalive] You -- Some famous person's quote that I paraphrased.
- jmclnx 2y ago>As CEO, I take full responsibility for this decision and the circumstances that led to it, and I’m truly sorry to those impacted by this change. But I will be glad to see that my salary and bonus increased a bit this year :)
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- tinyhouse 2y agoIt's clear they are preparing for an acquisition. They are profitable with great gross margins and cash in the bank. With 20% workforce reduction they are going to be very attractive to the salesforce of the world.
- whalesalad 2y agoI'm surprised that a company like Dropbox needs so many employees. ~500 being 20% implies the total workforce is 2500 people. HOW?! I feel like the product could do just fine with 100 employees.
- baudpunk 2y agoKind of surprising to me, because I think I've tried every large competitor in the space, and have found there to be a gulf between the Dropbox UX and everyone else. I'm more than willing to pay their premium price. I was hoping Proton Drive would compete, but I felt like I was beta testing an inferior product. I guess Wu Tang was right.
- racl101 2y agoAnecdotal: I know a lot of people who use Dropbox, I don't know even one person who pays it. They pay for iCloud, probably cause it makes the iPhone experience even more convenient, but not Dropbox. I also don't pay for it.
- baudpunk 2y agoYeah, that makes sense. If I wasn't a PC user, I'd probably be utilizing iCloud as well.
- UnreachableCode 2y agoWhere do the Wu Tang come in here? And yeah, I do not pay for Dropbox either. I've got something like 17gb from pestering people for sign ups XD
- turnsout 2y agoAnecdotally, having been in client services, I saw Dropbox use plummet on both the client and agency side once the pandemic hit. People switched from syncing files to working directly on the same document in the cloud (e.g. Microsoft Word -> Google Docs, Keynote -> Google Slides, Sketch -> Figma) In 2024, I wouldn't invest in any company that's based on "Files"
- bbcbby 2y agoI don't understand why people are still using dropbox. pcloud is one time payment and much less expensive. Why would people still use dropbox?
- pc86 2y agorsync is free why would anyone use anything /s
- jchw 2y agoLifetime licenses for cloud services is the worst deal imaginable. Even if you're not getting billed, you still cost the service money to continue using it. It's basically the same as a freemium model, except when you get rug pulled later, you're also out the money you paid on a "lifetime" license. Plenty of examples of how long "lifetime" licenses really last in the modern era. See TeamViewer for example.
- maxehmookau 2y ago> As CEO, I take full responsibility for this decision CEOs need to not say this, unless they're quitting too.
- tqi 2y agoTBH it feels like Dropbox has a pretty fair earnings multiple at the moment (~4X). Have we reached a point where tech companies have been around long enough that they can / should enter a sort of maintenance mode? It feels like there is a company version of the Peter Principle. Why do they (Dropbox specifically) need to continue to "innovate"? Wouldn't it be better for all parties if they just focused on maintaining the best possible version of their core offering at the lowest cost? Maybe Dash (or whatever) will work but most likely it won't, and investing in that initiative puts their whole business at risk.
- jordanb 2y agoAlternately we have entered a phase where layoffs have metastasized as a thing to do so much that executives are being asked about it. "We've noticed you haven't done any layoffs yet, can you explain that?"
- dsnr 2y ago> enter a sort of maintenance mode There exists such a mode: it's called dividend distribution. But currently DBX and many other tech companies aren't paying any dividends to stock holders. So if it's not growing and not paying dividends, what is the company doing?
- bravetraveler 2y agoProviding goods/services. Perhaps the qualifier "being publicly traded" will help
- bink 2y agoI think the question is more for investors. If the company isn't growing and isn't paying a dividend, why would I buy shares?
- bravetraveler 2y agoI bring attention the qualifier; if it's not performing and likely won't be, why is it traded? A company that is relatively stable and holds no grand world-domination-to-feed-shareholder plans is still nice
- steveBK123 2y agoVery generous severance packages and companies/laders should be commended for this. If it's a one-and-done big cut with generous packages to save the company, then good on them. Somehow overhiring and maintaining said headcount long enough to need to do a 20% cut is probably less commendable, but not exactly an outlier there in the current climate. I've always wondered about all these standalone "point solution" companies and how durable the model is. In the current climate of reduce M&A, and cost consciousness there is no one to sell to. And as the big platforms - AWS, Azure, GCP continue to grow.. it strikes me that more big companies would rather have a one-stop shop full of 80% solutions than pay for 100 different SaaS.
- alpb 2y agoThey've been doing 20% layoffs two years in a row now.
- steveBK123 2y agoYeah that's "run for the exits" territory to me. Especially considering they are already below pre-COVID staff levels it appears.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- TechDebtDevin 2y agoSeverence is only so they can dodge regulatory scrutiny. They are not doing it out of the goodness of their hearts and was a line-item in the burden category for those employees when they were hired.
- seneca 2y agoThere's really no pleasing some people. Companies make cuts and don't give generous packages, they're evil. They give a package and it's just so they can dodge scrutiny. This kind of no-win complaining is tiresome.
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 2y agoAh that sucks, I wanted to work for them a while back
- meindnoch 2y agoThis is the first wave of the LLM layoffs.
- onion2k 2y agoThat's quite unlikely. If Dropbox could save a decent amount of their engineering effort using LLMs with 20% less people, then they could also increase their engineering effort by a decent amount using LLMs and keeping the same workforce. Assuming the team aren't completely useless, being able to go faster would be significantly more valuable than any cost saving made here.
- krogus 2y agoI dont know… i felt like the eng facing llm work at my company was distracting and not useful. I can only see Dropbox and others obsessing over LLMs as clinging to relevancy. At the end of the day we will just get a chat bot and a handful of niche projects AI investments paid off for
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- hankman86 2y agoThe uncomfortable truth is that pretty much any business can cut staff by 20% without impacting overall performance. Provided that you manage to weed out the tail end of the performance bell curve that is. Most of the time, reducing staff is a healthy move for the business and the impacted employees. The company will not only save cost, but strengthen its culture of high performance. And under-achieving employees are often fundamentally unhappy in their role. While the short term impact of being made redundant can cause some distress, these people can still use the occasion to reset their careers. So all in all, no reason for grief.
- formerlurker 2y agoSo, reduce people to numbers and accept the suicides?
- hn_throwaway_99 2y agoPerhaps the better lesson is that tying your self-worth to your corporate employment is a really, really bad idea. I realize that's difficult in today's performative world, where an quick perusal of LinkedIn shows loads of people that are "passionate" about banking compliance or insurance claims or whatever. Many companies have also have fostered this false idea that companies are a "family". That is always false. The best companies are more like a team, and when things start to go south, sometimes people on that team are cut. Ironically, I think the professions where people really are passionate and see it as a "dream job" (think professional sports teams, actors, musicians, artists, etc.) generally have a much healthier view of their employment in the first place because they realize how tenuous it is to begin with. Point being, if you're considering suicide if you lose your job, you should be in therapy long, long before it gets to that point. One final note: before I get the pushback of "that's all nice to say until you have no income and are living on the streets!", let's get real for a moment. First, I have a ton of sympathy for people who are laid off - it sucks and can be very destabilizing. But lets also get real - people were laid off from Dropbox with a very generous severance package and they are in a highly paid industry to begin with. None of these people are going to starve, and nearly all of them will be able to eventually find employment (if perhaps not at the same exact high salary as Dropbox). Any mental health issues folks have after getting laid off is nearly always the result of tying one's self-worth to one's job, and that's the link that should be broken.
- AdmiralAsshat 2y agoRemember how there used to be a blog (or maybe it was a Tumblr, I forget) that documented every "Our incredible journey" post that inevitably announced the start-up's closure? I think we need another one for "An update from <company>", as this has seemingly become the standard subject to use when you're announcing layoffs or data breaches. I saw an identical headline earlier today from Sony announcing a studio closure: https://sonyinteractive.com/en/news/blog/an-update-from-playstation-studios/ https://sonyinteractive.com/en/news/blog/an-update-from-play...
- carabiner 2y agoThis guy takes "full responsibility," even.
- Quothling 2y agoWhen a CEO takes full responsibility for these things it doesn't mean that they submit themselves to the punishment that internet users might want. It's the CEO telling their impacted employees that, no matter how well you did as an employee, you would still have been impacted. It's the CEO showing you empathy for the hurt they cause you for having failed to steer the company in a viable direction. These messages are obviously never going to be well received, but at least people can find comfort in the fact that it's because Dropbox is shifting direction and strategy and not because they were bad employees. Stuff like this happens in business. Maybe you've focused on private sales and want to shift to enterprise sales or fund investments at which point your company no longer needs it's sales and marketing departments because the company mission will be radically different. Changing course is a CEO taking responsibility for the company. It is what it is.
- bigstrat2003 2y ago> It's the CEO showing you empathy for the hurt they cause you for having failed to steer the company in a viable direction. There is no empathy whatsoever involved when someone says "I take responsibility" and then faces zero consequences. It's just a slap in the face.
- azemetre 2y agoSomething weird I noticed about Dropbox: I cancelled my paid account two years ago. I had 5 terabytes of storage being used (mostly shitty concert vids and food pics). Everyday they email me telling me I’m over my limit. They always “threaten” to delete the data but it’s been two years since I cancelled. My Qs are: why are they hoarding my data for so long? Why would they want to do this? How cheap is storage for them to want to do this? How likely is it that they have sold my data to train various LLMs with?
- flappyeagle 2y agoYou can just delete your data dude. No one is forcing you to keep it there. They’re generally not going to do something destructive because of unpaid bills. It’s nice of them
- azemetre 2y agoBut why do I have to log into Dropbox to do this? I haven't logged into the site in 2 years and don't plan on it. I just find it odd that they keep threatening to delete my data but from where I'm standing it looks like they will keep my data indefinitely. I'm not forcing them to do anything. I terminated my service and they're still keeping my data. Seems like shitty consumer rights that they'll just keep the data regardless of what I do. That's what I'm trying to figure out, if others have similar stories.
- s1artibartfast 2y ago>Seems like shitty consumer rights that they'll just keep the data regardless of what I do. But they aren't keeping it regardless of what you do. You can ask them to delete it and they will. The power is in your hands and you are refusing to use it.
- azemetre 2y agoThey are absolutely keeping it regardless of what I do, I cancelled two years ago (next month it'll be three years) and they send me daily emails about how they will threaten to delete the data when they have no intention of doing so. You don't find that misleading and poor for consumers? Companies shouldn't have carte blanche to do whatever they want. Especially when I terminated a service years ago.
- stego-tech 2y agoIncredibly disappointing, but not surprising. Dropbox is no longer in its growth phase, and needs to settle into maintenance mode - enjoying a steady stream of revenue while continuously optimizing expenses, with a bit set aside for R&D to try and find the next big growth opportunity. Severance packages look really good, with the caveat that these figures really should be _the default_ in Corporate America at this point, like our EU peers. I just wish the language in the announcement reflected this reality. Instead, it feels like a lot of desperation measures from current tech companies: overly optimistic to the point of naively dismissing or ignoring reality, and believing that if we just keep building then we’ll continue to grow forever.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- tschellenbach 2y agoThe same forces that enable high tech salaries, also make layoffs more likely. - The market for talent is competitive. So companies bid up to the absolute max they can - The market for managers is also competitive. Creating dynamics that lead to larger teams and raises for team members - Companies allow things like remote work, which is a perk, but also has a lot of abuse in terms of how much work gets done The end result is that if companies are spending their max, if there's a shock to the market/system etc they have to cut. You'd see this less if there was more padding/ less competitive pressure/lower salaries. I think that's fine and the system is working as intended. People should be freed up to move to other roles where they can be productive. Your manager doesn't get upset when you leave, bit weird how people feel so differently when they get fired. The issue is not that you're getting fired. The issue is that healthcare is attached to employment, that makes zero sense. There should also be some reasonable government provided safety net so people can reskill/learn and move to other fields.
- njtransit 2y agoA somewhat sensible take, but the issue isn’t just healthcare. A lot of your life is based off of long-term, fixed cost cash flow. E.g. you can’t pay less on your mortgage just because you got fired. Even with savings, getting laid off is highly disruptive, and, if done as part of a broader downturn in the market, you may never recover the required cash flow to enable your lifestyle.
- wbl 2y agoAvoid lifestyle creep! I have to say I'm bad at this myself: somehow it all adds up, while each individual expense doesn't look so bad.
- dixie_land 2y agoExactly, I feel a lot of my coworkers fell under this trap: if you need cashflow for mortgage on your 4m mansion in (affluent neighborhood), you can't really afford it.
- sidcool 2y agoSad news. But the message is crafted well. Crisp and no overly emotional.
- noisy_boy 2y agoI asked ChatGPT to make it brutal: --- Listen up: 20% of you—528 people—are out. This isn’t a discussion. I’m pulling the plug on your roles. That’s it. Why? Because we’re not making enough money to keep this bloated mess afloat. We’ve been weighed down by too many damn layers, too much bureaucracy, and soft sales. We’re not here to carry dead weight. If your department wasn’t delivering, you’re gone. We’re only keeping what’s absolutely necessary to survive. What’s next This is a brutal market, and we’re not interested in getting left behind while our competitors rake it in. We’re cutting back hard and doubling down on what we think might actually make us cash. This is a no-BS, keep-up-or-get-out game now. You’ll hear more about our plans for 2025 soon. What you get if we’re cutting you loose Here’s what you can expect, take it or leave it: Severance: 16 weeks’ pay, plus an extra week for every year you put in here. If you’re international, you’ll get what’s legally required. No more, no less. Equity: We’ll throw you your Q4 vest. Bonus payout: If you were on a bonus plan, you’ll get a prorated payout based on what we predict you would’ve gotten. Leave payouts: If you had any paid leave left, you’ll get a check for it. Visa holders: We’re giving you a bit more time and a consult for your next steps. After that, you’re on your own. Healthcare US folks: Six more months of COBRA. Canada folks: One month of healthcare. All of you: You can still use Modern Health for therapy. You might need it. Devices Keep whatever company devices you’ve got. We’re not taking them back. Job placement You’ll get some career coaching and placement help, but after that, it’s up to you. What’s happening next We’ll give the rest of the details later today. If you’ve got questions, there’s a Town Hall later this week. For those who got cut: thanks for your work. ---
- mrthrowaway999 2y agoI'm sad to see so much venom in these comments. HN of old would have tried to delve into the details and find something to learn from this.
- staunton 2y agoLet's keep trying. What learning opportunities do you see in the details here?
- mrthrowaway999 2y agoJust off the top of my head: every engineer should have 6+ months of savings. Market isn't great but our salaries can help build those savings easy. If I had more time, I would love to understand the fss market better and also what impact ai is having there. I don't see a Q3 earnings report from Dropbox, but as others have pointed out in other comments, Dropbox seems to have been doing fine financially.
- alephnerd 2y ago> Dropbox seems to have been doing fine financially Not really. The issue is Dropbox's core product is heavily commodified (Cloud File Store for Enterprise and Consumers). Dropbox's EBIDTA is much lower than peers in the Software industry making it a much less attractive investment - even public companies need to attract investment. Furthermore, Dropbox has missed out on multiple trends that it had the right ingredients to execute on, such as DLP, DSPM, AI Search, AI-leveraged Business Tooling, etc. It's not that Dropbox didn't try building these teams - they did and I know plenty of people who were hired to work or lead these initiatives - but tech is competitive and they got outcompeted. At some point they have to initiate layoffs in order to retool internally and concentrate on the BUs that actually generate outsized revenue along with strategic bets that can help make Dropbox more enticing. > every engineer should have 6+ months of savings. Market isn't great but our salaries can help build those savings easy Pretty much. Layoffs have always a thing in the tech industry. And compared to previous cycles (early 2000s, 2008-2013), the current job market is fairly standard for mid-career. I think this tech downturn is just the first one that a lot of 2011-22 grads went through and it makes them feel like it's the end of the world. Keep saving, keep upskilling, and keep networking - these are what save you when we all (inevitably) get laid off.
- butz 2y agoAny easy to migrate to alternative to Dropbox? I don't mind paying, but Linux support and light sync client is a must. And I don't need more than 1GB storage.
- kyleee 2y agoNextcloud if you don’t mind a mediocre piece of PHP software. It syncs files well for me, but a lot of the other apps are clunky and perpetually half finished (calendar, photos, etc.) but with some elbow grease I find it usable.
- stonethrowaway 2y agoNext time someone says “gee I’m glad we aren’t anything like Reddit!” I’ll have the replies in this thread to point them to. Keep ‘em coming fellas.
- latexr 2y agoComparing HN to Reddit is specifically covered by the guidelines, with several links. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html > Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=926703 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=926703 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=633099 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=633099 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=582513 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=582513 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=289254 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=289254 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=253657 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=253657 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=66057 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=66057 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=60767 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=60767 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13852 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13852
- AlexeyBelov 2y agoYou're replying to a 3 months old troll account anyway. They won't bother to read it and they don't care to participate in good faith.
- jedberg 2y ago> Impacted employees will be eligible to keep company devices (phones, tablets, laptops, and peripherals) for personal use. It's not often you see this. Netflix used to do this if your equipment wasn't brand new, and with any phone[1]. And the very first startup I worked for let me buy my laptop, desktop, monitor, and cell phone for $50. But you don't see it too often. [1] There was a "joke" at Netflix that if your manager told you that you should upgrade your phone, it meant you were gonna get let go soon, because sometimes people really did get let go just weeks after getting a new phone, and they got to keep the phone.
- ghaff 2y agoAt a former employer I (voluntarily) left. I ended up spending a good couple hours driving my 7-year old laptop which I rarely used to a FedEx dropoff and I'm sure it was promptly recycles. But I wanted make sure all the loose ends were tied up.
- johnnyanmac 2y agoon the opposite side, I had some nearby management literally come to my house 30 minutes after my layoff to collect my equipement. I didn't even have time to process the layoff; I had to disconnect my entire setup, lug it downstairs, and have it ready to lug into someone's truck faster than I could order a pizza.
- ghaff 2y agoThat's just petty and one would think nearby management would have better things to do. Whether or not people "should" a lot of folks have their personal and work stuff pretty intermixed and need time to disentangle and may not even have a personal laptop. I guess there could be an element of not wanting to give ex-employees time to copy off work info but still (and, if they're that worried, they should be able to just do a remote wipe)... I've always tried to make a point of keeping an off-work copy of anything I want to keep and isn't confidential.
- madhacker 2y agoLack of accountability and personal responsibility is made possible by tolerance for corporate impunity, which thrives in America.
- _giorgio_ 2y agoEveryone is making fun of them, but can you suggest me something that: works both in Windows and Ubuntu?
- cratermoon 2y agoBest I can say is, at least they didn't throw out a bogus return-to-office mandate to get people to quit.