I mean the other option would have been to keep these staff and leverage them to drive innovative solutions with your product or possibly close open feature requests and bug submissions. I mean, these 500 people could have worked towards new initiatives to grow the business as they are keenly aware of the drop box business already and would be able to execute quickly on new initiatives. There are so many interesting places that drop box could expand into and they are instead choosing to layoff staff that could get them there.
As usual, it’s only ever about maximizing shareholder value in the short term.
I went through a round of layoffs at my last company. They laid off around 15% and then went hiring, people who just had their teams cut in half and their workload doubled and had to say goodbye to colleagues with years of experience were then told to do 3-4 interviews a week to hire new talent.
It was all just a yank of the choke chain. Management wanted labor to know that they could replace you. Our most senior people burned out and I left after staying longer than I really should have to try to help out my teammates.
Layoffs like this are about obedience and control and showing the investors that you are willing to break people to return them a healthy profit.
I dunno, maybe its time for Dropbox to just slowly decline and eventually exit? I don’t see what they could possibly pivot into that isnt already covered by Google, Microsoft, Proton, etc. They had years of first mover advantage they could have pivoted off, but thats long behind them.
That said, if thats their plan, then the C suite needs to have their pay cut to the bone as well. CEOs get the big bucks because they make the big decisions to grow the company. If they arent growing, they should be the first cut.
But, no, I’m keeping my bonus.
But, he hasn’t taken any responsibility for the years of scamming new customers with bait and switch schemes. They haven’t even changed their deceptive sales tactics. They are still a shitty, deceptive mega-corp that thrives on theft and lies.
If you are looking for an alternative to a mega-corp for secure, sharable online storage, I have used sync.com for a few years now and am very happy with them.
Funny story, those guys lost ALL my data a few years ago.
These services are so sketchy. Google Drive was telling me everything was synced for months, yet was syncing nothing. I was on a paid plan. There was no customer support. I think I tried everyone at some point. They all suck. Sync hasn’t fucked me over yet, but I will not be surprised when it happens.
The dropbox guys or the sync guys?
Sync.
After paying $720/yr, then $840, then being told it would be over $900 this year, I wasn’t really happy about the cost of using Dropbox. But it’s been rock solid for many years and was heavily integrated into my company’s workflow, so I smiled and bent over.
Until they took away the unlimited storage. I was using 31TB, and they wanted to put me at 15TB with no option to upgrade even if I wanted to.
I already had an on-site NAS, so I bought another for $3k (with drives) and asked a family member in another state to house it. I’m using Resilio to sync everything. It’s been backing up for a couple of months and probably has a couple more to go. So far I’m happy with the decision.
I have to imagine I’m not the only one making this move. Even if they fix the problem, I’m not going back. It’s far cheaper to keep a customer than to win a new one. Hopefully they learn their lesson.
Narrator: They won’t.
Is this for personal or professional? I have a small server (few TB) and I’m amazed the immense amounts of data some people hoard for fun. I always thought it was mad to keep movies, until I tried to get the original lion king on my native language and decent quality and it took me days to find. Won’t delete that one
It’s both. My company is nearly twenty years old and I have an archive of everything I have ever done. … And a plex library.
He’s scheduled a ball busting public ball kicking as punishment. He takes full accountability.
“Full accountability”, as in, they’re still fired, he still have his big paycheck and assorted bonuses, and the more general “fuck them” attitude will remain.
That’s not accountability, that’s shitting on people and smiling about it.
He’s taking full accountability by giving himself a larger raise.
Okay, then you be the sole worker then if you want this ‘responsibility’. See how far you get.
think they mean he took the full accounts
He gotta protect his bonus
That is the opposite of taking accountability though…?
Yes, but only if you don’t speak C-Suite.
I’m sure it’ll be their best quarter/year of all time but the cut would be because they didn’t meet prediction levels, because if you’re not exceptional you’re dead weight these days 🙄
I looked out of curiosity, they’re actually not doing well, revenue shrinking quarterly. Seems like other players are eating their lunch. Makes sense really, 10-15 years ago Dropbox was innovative but now? There’s like 25 other cloud drive providers. Dropbox isn’t really offering anything unique now, they’re just a commodity, and they can’t meet the package deal pricing of competitors (like Google drive being included with Google Apps, or iCloud Drive being included with Apple One).
It’s not sustainable. Hooboy we’re in for some interesting times.
So brave!
“This hurts me more than it hurts you”
CEO Drew Houston will remain in his job.
So not full accountability.
“full accountability” means moving those 500 workers’ salaries into his paycheck.
How very noble of him.
Don’t forget the bonus for cutting costs!
