12 ms·

Dropbox is quickly unseating Facebook, who unseated Google before it, as the premier bigco employer. These kinds of talent shifts tend to accelerate as the com

by far33d 13y ago

Dropbox is quickly unseating Facebook, who unseated Google before it, as the premier bigco employer. These kinds of talent shifts tend to accelerate as the company becomes more successful. Remember when google was giving $1m offers to keep engineers from going to Facebook pre-IPO? Anecdotally, it looks like this is true for top college grads as well.

rdl 13y ago
Yeah -- I think a lot if it is "based in SF" and "hasn't IPO'd yet, but is big enough that IPO or destruction is the only likely outcome."
- textminer 13y ago
  Why is that not Twitter?
  - benologist 13y ago
    Because Twitter's peaked in every interesting way.
  - rdl 13y ago
    Dropbox seems to be growing faster (maybe mattermark knows for sure), and I think Dropbox intentionally hires technically-overqualified people (like Google and Facebook did) as a way to attract other competent people. My perception, which may not be accurate, is that Twitter doesn't do that. From the Twitter employees I've spoken to, it's also not a place people who could otherwise work at Facebook or early-Google would want to work -- it got late-Google political before becoming wildly profitable. It went from really shitty infrastructure to somewhat less so to somewhat less so, vs. starting from crap and doing amazing work to make it work well (Facebook), or technical excellence from day one (Google). OTOH, Twitter is way "cooler" than Dropbox, in terms of having political impact, standing up for users vs. the US Government, used by "cool" (non-tech) people, etc.
    - PStamatiou 13y ago
      > My perception, which may not be accurate, is that Twitter doesn't do that. Twitter employee here: Always surprised at the amount of ridiculously talented people I work with. :)
      - Jare 13y ago
        You do realize that almost everyone in tech companies says, thinks and believes the same thing, right?
        seiji 13y ago
        When you're in such a situation, a lot of people don't realize how strange and self-involved it sounds to say things like that. To me, it feels like "We have the best people! You don't work here, so you must not be very good. Therefore, I'm better than you." That's obviously not what they mean, but it strikes chords of jealousy and social exclusion when shouted in a public square. Twitter has always been known for their Super Ego Employees though. Work 12 hours a day, go home, run twelve miles, cook a gourmet dinner, have three dates (sleep with two of them), check email before bed, sleep for four hours, then start over the next day. (with oversharing online humblebrags every step of the way, obviously)
    - threeseed 13y ago
      I don't know much about Twitter internally but from the outside they seem to have a pretty impressive stack. I personally love their Scala, Storm, Bootstrap, Twmemproxy, Cascading work. http://twitter.github.io http://twitter.github.io
  - prostoalex 13y ago
    Because two years ago Twitter raised at $8 bil valuation http://allthingsd.com/20110801/twitter-confirms-funding-with-dst/ http://allthingsd.com/20110801/twitter-confirms-funding-with... and private market transactions have valued them in the neighborhood of $10 bil, which might have impacted the FMV for new hires. If you're joining the company today, there better be significant growth story to justify 4x-5x growth from $10 bil baseline. If it's just 2x-3x, heck, joining GOOG, YHOO or AAPL might yield the same results if you timed it right.
magicalist 13y ago
So much of this impression is shaped by the narrative that the techblogs are choosing to cover on any particular week. In reality, all these companies have some level of attrition, and people leave one job for another for new challenges. Dropbox has 315 employees[1]. That constraint alone means that the number of slots to fill will be very small. (I also personally wouldn't really label Dropbox as "bigco" label like Google and Facebook, if only because you can still fit everyone in one medium-large room. I guess it's not a startup anymore, but I don't think anyone would consider it a lumbering corporate behemoth). [1] https://www.dropbox.com/about https://www.dropbox.com/about
threeseed 13y ago
Of all the internet companies Dropbox looks the most precarious to me. The fact is that the core product kind of sucks. It is slow to upload, very CPU intensive and incredibly slow to receive new features. And its focus on API data syncing as a growth area seems fraught with danger given iCloud and likely similar services from Microsoft, Ubuntu, Google etc. It also has no stickiness associated to it. I could easily transition to a competitor's product with no loss of data or productivity. And if it wasn't the best of a pretty sad bunch then I would have years ago.
- lmartel 13y ago
  I disagree that their core product sucks. The negatives you mentioned aren't noticeable to 99% of end users; what is noticeable is that dropbox works exactly the way a product like dropbox should work. I'd agree that Dropbox looks precarious but I'd argue it's for the opposite reason: they got the product right the first time and they don't seem like they have anywhere to go from here.
  - aroch 13y ago
    > The negatives you mentioned aren't noticeable to 99% of end users I wouldn't say that...Anyone with a laptop has probably noticed that they're battery life seems shorter for some reason, they may not know its Dropbox but it is. Further, anyone who has used Dropbox knows about the slow upload and download rates (especially noticeable if you have a semi-decent internet connection). >they got the product right the first time and they don't seem like they have anywhere to go from here If you ignore the fact that you can have endless syncing caused by files made on one FS and synced to another (EncFS > NTFS seems to be most troublesome). Or the fact that the dropox system daemon scans the whole FS instead of just the dropbox folder(s). Or that it doesn't run well in multi-user environments. Or that it's easily broken if permissions are changed in a shared file/folder and you wind up with thousands of (conflicted copy) dupes for no good reason.
- rmrfrmrf 13y ago
  Dropbox is an amazing product. What are you even talking about? The points you brought up are completely irrelevant to the cloud storage market. New features? Areas for growth? Who the fuck cares?
johnchristopher 13y ago
As a user I am under the impression - and I do insist that it is a subjective, unsubstantiated point of view - that the moment those companies went on their first talent shopping spree they stopped innovating in significant ways. Am I the only one to feel that way ?

by far33d 13y ago

rdl 13y ago

Yeah -- I think a lot if it is "based in SF" and "hasn't IPO'd yet, but is big enough that IPO or destruction is the only likely outcome."

textminer 13y ago
Why is that not Twitter?
- benologist 13y ago
  Because Twitter's peaked in every interesting way.
- rdl 13y ago
  Dropbox seems to be growing faster (maybe mattermark knows for sure), and I think Dropbox intentionally hires technically-overqualified people (like Google and Facebook did) as a way to attract other competent people. My perception, which may not be accurate, is that Twitter doesn't do that. From the Twitter employees I've spoken to, it's also not a place people who could otherwise work at Facebook or early-Google would want to work -- it got late-Google political before becoming wildly profitable. It went from really shitty infrastructure to somewhat less so to somewhat less so, vs. starting from crap and doing amazing work to make it work well (Facebook), or technical excellence from day one (Google). OTOH, Twitter is way "cooler" than Dropbox, in terms of having political impact, standing up for users vs. the US Government, used by "cool" (non-tech) people, etc.
  - PStamatiou 13y ago
    > My perception, which may not be accurate, is that Twitter doesn't do that. Twitter employee here: Always surprised at the amount of ridiculously talented people I work with. :)
    - Jare 13y ago
      You do realize that almost everyone in tech companies says, thinks and believes the same thing, right?
      - seiji 13y ago
        When you're in such a situation, a lot of people don't realize how strange and self-involved it sounds to say things like that. To me, it feels like "We have the best people! You don't work here, so you must not be very good. Therefore, I'm better than you." That's obviously not what they mean, but it strikes chords of jealousy and social exclusion when shouted in a public square. Twitter has always been known for their Super Ego Employees though. Work 12 hours a day, go home, run twelve miles, cook a gourmet dinner, have three dates (sleep with two of them), check email before bed, sleep for four hours, then start over the next day. (with oversharing online humblebrags every step of the way, obviously)
  - threeseed 13y ago
    I don't know much about Twitter internally but from the outside they seem to have a pretty impressive stack. I personally love their Scala, Storm, Bootstrap, Twmemproxy, Cascading work. http://twitter.github.io http://twitter.github.io
- prostoalex 13y ago
  Because two years ago Twitter raised at $8 bil valuation http://allthingsd.com/20110801/twitter-confirms-funding-with-dst/ http://allthingsd.com/20110801/twitter-confirms-funding-with... and private market transactions have valued them in the neighborhood of $10 bil, which might have impacted the FMV for new hires. If you're joining the company today, there better be significant growth story to justify 4x-5x growth from $10 bil baseline. If it's just 2x-3x, heck, joining GOOG, YHOO or AAPL might yield the same results if you timed it right.

magicalist 13y ago

So much of this impression is shaped by the narrative that the techblogs are choosing to cover on any particular week. In reality, all these companies have some level of attrition, and people leave one job for another for new challenges. Dropbox has 315 employees[1]. That constraint alone means that the number of slots to fill will be very small. (I also personally wouldn't really label Dropbox as "bigco" label like Google and Facebook, if only because you can still fit everyone in one medium-large room. I guess it's not a startup anymore, but I don't think anyone would consider it a lumbering corporate behemoth). [1] https://www.dropbox.com/about https://www.dropbox.com/about

threeseed 13y ago

Of all the internet companies Dropbox looks the most precarious to me. The fact is that the core product kind of sucks. It is slow to upload, very CPU intensive and incredibly slow to receive new features. And its focus on API data syncing as a growth area seems fraught with danger given iCloud and likely similar services from Microsoft, Ubuntu, Google etc. It also has no stickiness associated to it. I could easily transition to a competitor's product with no loss of data or productivity. And if it wasn't the best of a pretty sad bunch then I would have years ago.

lmartel 13y ago
I disagree that their core product sucks. The negatives you mentioned aren't noticeable to 99% of end users; what is noticeable is that dropbox works exactly the way a product like dropbox should work. I'd agree that Dropbox looks precarious but I'd argue it's for the opposite reason: they got the product right the first time and they don't seem like they have anywhere to go from here.
- aroch 13y ago
  > The negatives you mentioned aren't noticeable to 99% of end users I wouldn't say that...Anyone with a laptop has probably noticed that they're battery life seems shorter for some reason, they may not know its Dropbox but it is. Further, anyone who has used Dropbox knows about the slow upload and download rates (especially noticeable if you have a semi-decent internet connection). >they got the product right the first time and they don't seem like they have anywhere to go from here If you ignore the fact that you can have endless syncing caused by files made on one FS and synced to another (EncFS > NTFS seems to be most troublesome). Or the fact that the dropox system daemon scans the whole FS instead of just the dropbox folder(s). Or that it doesn't run well in multi-user environments. Or that it's easily broken if permissions are changed in a shared file/folder and you wind up with thousands of (conflicted copy) dupes for no good reason.
rmrfrmrf 13y ago
Dropbox is an amazing product. What are you even talking about? The points you brought up are completely irrelevant to the cloud storage market. New features? Areas for growth? Who the fuck cares?

johnchristopher 13y ago

As a user I am under the impression - and I do insist that it is a subjective, unsubstantiated point of view - that the moment those companies went on their first talent shopping spree they stopped innovating in significant ways. Am I the only one to feel that way ?