[HN Gopher] Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction
___________________________________________________________________
Dropbox announces 20% global workforce reduction
Author : mfiguiere
Score : 446 points
Date : 2024-10-30 13:42 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.dropbox.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.dropbox.com)
| lifeisgood99 wrote:
| "As CEO, I take full responsibility for this decision" Oh hey
| another one that takes responsibility by taking on 0
| consequences.
| whyenot wrote:
| Whoa whoa whoa, he's only taking responsibility for the
| _decision_.
| mv4 wrote:
| ... and the circumstances that led to it!
| Brosper wrote:
| I mean yeaaa... it's just work. In big corporation. What do you
| expect from them? He will get bonus for "savings".
| throwCursive wrote:
| Resign? That's the obvious answer right?
| geodel wrote:
| _I take full responsibility for completing task assigned to
| me_. So resign?
| throwCursive wrote:
| Yes! He failed.
| mv4 wrote:
| Remember 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."
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| There was so much that was disgustingly spot on in that show.
| hylaride wrote:
| Was that the same scene where he said "Their failure is my
| fault...for trusting them."?
|
| I just about had to change my underwear after that scene.
| mv4 wrote:
| The setup leading to that phrase... brilliant.
| shepherdjerred wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u48vYSLvKNQ
|
| same vibe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiKuxfcSrEU
| mv4 wrote:
| so accurate it's scary
| mattmaroon wrote:
| What consequences would you like CEOs to take on when they have
| to do layoffs?
| malfist wrote:
| Resignation. If they made a big enough blunder to need to lay
| off 20% of their staff, they're not capable of leading the
| company.
|
| Why do we think they'd do any better next time if there are
| no consequences to their poor leadership?
| eob wrote:
| Have you ever managed a complex, dynamic, changing system
| and found that the optimal size based on current conditions
| was 20% less than it was at some prior time?
|
| I can think of all sorts examples.
| izacus wrote:
| Why can't the CEO share the fate of laid off employees?
| They did nothing wrong either.
| Eric_WVGG wrote:
| maybe antiquated, but seppuku is considered honorable
| shitlord wrote:
| By that logic, Mark Zuckerberg is a poor leader and should
| resign. I think most investors would disagree with that
| assessment.
| cbzbc wrote:
| Maybe he should, Meta's main product has peaked in their
| biggest markets, and his last massive bet went nowhere.
| He may not be the right person to lead the company at
| this point.
| mattmaroon wrote:
| Why is it a blunder? Do you think only poor CEOs face
| downturns or overhire?
|
| And if a company hires too many people for a few years and
| then right-sizes, isn't that better for the economy overall
| than if they simply stayed small the whole time? They still
| paid salaries for those years and added to the overall
| level of employment.
|
| Do you want a system where CEOs are hesitant to hire? Or
| where they're afraid to right-size the workforce and
| instead run the whole company out of business?
|
| There's literally zero logic to your position, just
| feelings and Monday morning quarterbacking.
| qeternity wrote:
| Genuine question: what do people want from a CEO in this
| situation?
|
| What consequences do you want the CEO to face? A token
| reduction in pay? Being fired?
| elric wrote:
| Step down. Forfeit stock/options/golden parachute.
| cma256 wrote:
| The latter. If you can not manage the company correctly and
| it leads to the job losses of hundreds of people not to
| mention the millions in salary that was wasted by their poor
| planning then yes they should be immediately relieved and not
| allowed to run any other company. They are clearly
| incompetent.
|
| Considering dropbox is not facing some economic recession
| outside of its control we can only blame the CEO's
| incompetence.
| pizzathyme wrote:
| Most big tech companies did mass layoffs in the past few
| years. They are now fully recovered and posting record
| profits this week all with the same leadership. You are
| saying they are incompetent and someone else could have
| navigated this better?
| triceratops wrote:
| Those profits could've been even higher if they hadn't
| overhired, then paid out massive sums in severance.
| qeternity wrote:
| A company's profits will, without exception, be lower if
| they never take any risks.
| klausa wrote:
| Yes, they could have just not fired the people and have
| ridden the AI wave all the same.
|
| Do you genuinely believe that the record profits are due
| to the layoffs, and not just because we just lucked out
| to enter a new bubble?
| kiba wrote:
| People make mistakes all the time, hopefully it's mistakes
| they learn from. You can't simply fire someone for being
| incompetent, unless it's so bad and beyond the pale.
| triceratops wrote:
| > You can't simply fire someone for being incompetent
|
| Lmao what? Outside of being absolutely skint and unable
| to make payroll, that's pretty much the only reason to
| fire someone (I mean other than misconduct, which is also
| a type of incompetence)
| l33t7332273 wrote:
| The other reason to fire them is that their services are
| no linger needed (ie a layoff)
| qeternity wrote:
| I don't really get why layoffs mean that the company was
| not managed correctly.
|
| Let's say you believe you have an opportunity that will
| double the value of the company, with a 30% probability, or
| cost the company 10% of it's value. This means it has an
| expected value of +21%. This is pretty good, and exactly
| the sort of thing shareholders want from their management.
| So you increase headcount and pursue the opportunity.
|
| In the 70% scenario when that doesn't work, you have to
| downsize. Failure is not just possible, it's probable. That
| doesn't mean that the CEO mismanaged...they may have, I
| don't know the Dropbox details. But in the scenario where
| they haven't mismanaged, what do you want? Do you want
| companies to never take these risks in the first place?
| cma256 wrote:
| > I don't really get why layoffs mean that the company
| was not managed correctly.
|
| Probably the part where they very directly attributed the
| layoff to mismanagement.
|
| > We've heard from many of you that our organizational
| structure has become overly complex, with excess layers
| of management slowing us down.
|
| > [We're] designing a flatter, more efficient team
| structure overall.
| Draiken wrote:
| When they hire as part of the push for that 30% chance,
| are they telling them that they have a 70% chance of
| being laid-off if the bet doesn't pay out?
|
| If it's "just a bet" and not mismanagement, then we
| should tell people that, shouldn't we?
|
| The reality is that these bets are only bets for the
| people getting hired/laid off, and they don't even know
| they are betting in the first place. Even worse because
| we're not talking about simply losing money here. Losing
| a job is many times a life changing event in real
| people's lives. It's not like someone betting on a stock.
|
| That's why there should be consequences for the ones
| making those decisions. They get the most rewards, but
| none of the punishment. How's that fair in any shape or
| form?
| l33t7332273 wrote:
| What if managing the company correctly requires hundreds of
| people losing their jobs?
|
| I understand the anger in this scenario as employees, but I
| don't think doing layoffs means leadership is clearly
| incompetent. Running a company is hard.
|
| Doing layoffs definitely says something about the company's
| values and current standing, but I don't think it
| necessarily means the CEO is bad.
| cma256 wrote:
| > What if managing the company correctly requires
| hundreds of people losing their jobs?
|
| It occurs to me that there is no failure of performance a
| CEO can produce and be held responsible for. Are these
| CEOs really so irreplaceable that when they bet
| incorrectly they can't be replaced?
|
| 20% of employees have been fired. The CEO directly cited
| mismanagement as the cause. And yet, its impossible to
| fire him because "its a learning experience" or "think of
| the upside!".
|
| A CEO being fired does not mean the company falls into
| the abyss. The company still exists and can hire a new
| CEO. I'm certain there are plenty of fools more than
| willing to risk the livelihoods of 20% of Dropbox's staff
| in exchange for a mansion in Miami.
| l33t7332273 wrote:
| > Are these CEOs really so irreplaceable that when they
| bet incorrectly they can't be replaced?
|
| That's the thing though, another comment nailed this
| perfectly. If they made a +EV decision to hire more
| people, but the preverbal roulette wheel landed on 00,
| maybe it's not a bad bet that they should be fired for.
| cma256 wrote:
| It needs to be repeated until its acknowledged: "risk
| management" wasn't the reason given for the layoffs.
|
| The explicit reason given was "economic headwinds" and
| bad organizational structure. If in your role as CEO you
| have left the company in a poor position to handle
| normal, cyclical slowdowns then you are a failure. If in
| your role as CEO you have produced an org chart which
| burns money and slows progress then you are a failure.
| You should be replaced. Period.
| recroad wrote:
| Yes, fired. Just like a head coach of a sports team.
| mrsilencedogood wrote:
| It's always amazed me how much leeway and clemency
| leadership gets. I worked at a company that was always
| fairly intentional about their performance review process
| being a meat grinder, and they also did something that
| didn't look nearly dissimilar enough to good ole microsoft
| forced curve / stack ranking.
|
| So if you were an IC and were on a project that failed (or
| even just didn't succeed enough), God help you. Many folks
| just quit when they saw a project going sideways, or tried
| to escape/transfer. Alternatively, people would report
| green statuses and hope someone else fell over first so
| they wouldn't be the root-cause.
|
| Obviously this caused many problems. It was very hard to
| execute projects with lots of people or teams, and/or that
| took a long (>3mo) time. It came to a head when finally a
| major initiative missed another deadline "just barely" and
| it finally tripped circuit breakers and someone went in and
| did a full Inquisition. Yeah no the project was f'd and
| they basically just gave up ("pivoted") to an adjacent
| goal. Their official diagnosis/RCA was "people were too
| scared to report red, so everyone prettied up their status
| reports a bit, and that was compounded by each roll-up
| status report also prettying up the status.
|
| Literally no leadership changes happened as a result of
| this. Then I got laid off. (Unrelated, just the big layoffs
| of 22. I was not directly involved in this, I was in big
| data and this was all happening in the main product infra
| stuff).
|
| So yeah. Your project fails? Bye. But your f'd up
| performance grinder culture causes literally hundreds of
| people to behave so out-of-alignment with the actual
| company goals? Nah man stick around for 2 more years and
| leave at your leisure over some other petty squabble.
| jimbokun wrote:
| So head count can only ever go up in a company, never down,
| regardless of circumstances?
| hiddencost wrote:
| 50% pay cut
|
| putting an employee elected representative on the board
|
| negotiating the layoffs and severance with employees (e.g.,
| giving folks the opportunity to voluntarily take layoffs to
| reduce the number of involuntary layoffs).
| Jleagle wrote:
| How about not getting a bonus? Last year he got around $1M in
| bonuses.
| triceratops wrote:
| Meaningful reduction in pay, especially stock.
|
| If they overhired so much the CEO has wasted a ton of
| shareholder money. Pay for performance, right? Perform
| poorly, you should expect less pay.
| pizzathyme wrote:
| I ask this myself. What is the point of both doing layoffs,
| and then also firing the CEO? That next person will probably
| be worse, won't have the learnings of the layoffs, and would
| probably increase chances of layoffs happening again.
| cma256 wrote:
| I expect interns to learn and CEOs to lead. If your
| decisions lead to mass layoffs then you need to lead the
| way to the unemployment line.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| The same consequences that a person lower down the ranks
| would have.
|
| For example, if I lead a team that fails, the team will be
| disbanded and I will be either fired or demoted. (obviously
| if there are external factors I/we might be reprieved )
|
| If the CEO leads an aggressive strategy that doesn't playout,
| they rarely get fired and certainly don't get demoted.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| At a minimum, don't say "I'm taking responsibility" when you
| aren't facing any consequences whatsoever. If an executive
| wants to talk like that, they best put skin in the game.
| Otherwise, shut up.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| He should be fired.
|
| If the company miscalculated, or mismanaged, to the degree
| that it suddenly has to cut 20% of its workforce in order to
| survive (or give shareholders what they want), then yeah,
| that's a pretty big mistake, and your head should be the
| first one to roll.
|
| I bet you'd have a lot fewer CEOs calling for mass layoffs.
| coldpie wrote:
| They should face the same consequences as the people they are
| firing. Lose their health insurance (or pay COBRA), have a
| few months' worth of expenses in the bank, have to find a new
| job, that kind of thing.
|
| I suspect you wouldn't see these comments if CEO pay was on
| the same order of magnitude as the people who actually work
| at the companies they run. Watching someone treat your
| livelihood like a toy, while also being rewarded with more
| money than any person will ever need, is a bit grating.
| surgical_fire wrote:
| Something like this, maybe?
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/2024/02/13/nintendo-ceo-once-halved-
| sal...
|
| I mean, this is _actually_ taking responsibility for your
| decisions as CEO.
| pizzathyme wrote:
| Unpopular opinion, but I don't understand this type of comment.
| It sounds like people want executives to get some kind of
| punishment or pain as a consequence of laying people off.
|
| But what would that even look like? A fine? That would probably
| make no practical difference, and would discourage them from
| making changes that need to be made. Fire them? Then you would
| probably get a worse decision maker in the driver seat going
| forward, who also didn't learn from experience of going through
| layoffs.
|
| Layoffs are awful. They affect lives and families deeply. But
| all businesses don't go up and to the right forever. Reductions
| are a necessary part of running competitive companies.
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| Why can't the executive taking responsibility also take a pay
| cut and tighten their belt the way they expect the company to
| and the people who they've fired do?
| ziddoap wrote:
| They say "I take responsibility" and then.. don't take any
| responsibility. It's insult on injury.
|
| How big of a bonus will this CEO get this year? Last year?
| foobarian wrote:
| Why do people understand this phrase "taking
| responsibility" as some kind of admitting of fault? Maybe
| I'm missing something, but it seems neutral and could even
| be referring to positive future outcomes for the company.
| fwip wrote:
| Because the context is that 20% of their employees are
| now unemployed. The tone of the letter is also "this is a
| hard but necessary choice" and not "this is great news
| for dropbox!"
|
| > 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.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| Because that's what it means to take responsibility.
| You're saying "I did this, and to the extent that it's a
| bad thing you can blame me".
| yojo wrote:
| I think Houston being a cofounder means the financial
| picture looks different. Last year he made $1.5M in total
| comp. Which is a lot in absolute terms, but cutting his pay
| to zero would only allow keeping ~6 of those laid off.
| OTOH, he owns 25% of a $9B company. His salary is a
| rounding error compared to the performance of the stock.
|
| Not to be an apologist, but I bet Drew really does feel
| responsible. He's not professional management, and he
| always acted like Dropbox was his kid, at least from what I
| saw working there. I'm sure this feels shitty to him,
| though it's obviously worse for the people laid off.
| fwip wrote:
| True - it means he could transfer, say, a billion dollars
| worth of stock to the affected employees and still be a
| billionaire. If he actually felt all that bad about it,
| of course.
| black_puppydog wrote:
| yeah, taking a personal financial hit on this would go some
| way to at least pretend to actually have tried preventing it.
| Not sure about this particular CEO's salary, but I wouldn't
| be surprised if you couldn't finance a few engineers'
| salaries by cutting the CEO's, without it even hurting very
| much.
|
| Not saying it's enough, not saying that's the only way, but I
| find it peculiar that this seems to be unthinkable.
| Shank wrote:
| > But what would that even look like?
|
| > Iwata ran the Kyoto, Japan-based video game company
| [Nintendo] from 2002 until his death in 2015. To avoid
| layoffs, Iwata took a 50% pay cut to help pay for employee
| salaries, saying a fully-staffed Nintendo would have a better
| chance of rebounding. [0]
|
| [0]: https://www.cnbc.com/2024/02/13/nintendo-ceo-once-
| halved-sal...
| pizzathyme wrote:
| This is probably the best answer in terms of what people
| want to see, that would also still give the company the
| best leadership going forward.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| If the CEO taking a paycut materially reduces the size of
| what would otherwise be a large layoff on the basis if
| reduced cost savings, the CEO was way overpaid to start
| with. (And it probably doesn't change the number of
| people the firm can usefully employ under changed
| conditions, even if it provides cost savings, because the
| latter is based on whether employing them makes more
| money than it costs, to which external cost savings are
| probably mostly irrelevant.)
| voisin wrote:
| By taking that pay cut, how many employees could Nintendo
| keep that would otherwise have been fired? 5? 20? Certainly
| not in the hundreds or thousands. This just seems like
| virtue signalling.
|
| Edit: to expand on my point re virtue signalling: the
| article states the CEO took a salary cut, not total
| compensation (and it doesn't elaborate on the value of the
| cut). Salary is a small fraction of CEO total compensation
| - the bulk of which is stock based, and even in the event
| that stock grants were also cut, the CEO surely already had
| significant stock. Cutting a relatively small component of
| compensation in order to boost the stock price which
| disproportionately adds to the CEO's personal wealth seems
| like virtue signalling to me. If the CEO said "shareholders
| be damned, morale and culture are all that matters in the
| long run, no layoffs etc etc" that would seem more
| meaningful.
| jryan49 wrote:
| I feel like this would be the few times where virtue
| signaling is probably a benefit. It can make all the
| people in the company feel like the leader is on their
| side, and maybe make the employees less resentful and be
| more productive.
| schnebbau wrote:
| It shows the rest of the staff that you actually are
| taking responsibility.
| superxpro12 wrote:
| Optics matter. When a CEO approves mass layoffs, and ALSO
| approves a 60% salary increase, I can only conclude that
| the CEO is nothing but self-interested. Rewarding
| yourself for firing a statistically significant
| percentage of your company SHOULD indicate failure, not
| success.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| It may signal virtue, but it has direct, practical,
| beneficial impacts on the company. I don't see why that
| would be virtue signaling.
|
| What would someone need to do in order to avoid being
| reduced to a virtue signaller?
| veggieroll wrote:
| 5 or 20 workers (and their families) who don't get jerked
| around for stuff way outside their control is an absolute
| win.
|
| Right now, there is no actual downside for executives.
| Just less upside. Did they earn XX Million this year or
| XXX Million. Some tangible downside would be nice.
|
| I mean, heck, why aren't they fired? And really, it's
| more then middle management where that'd make a huge
| difference. If bad performance led to actual shakeups in
| the entrenched middle management, we might actually see
| business practices change rather than continue on through
| the established fiefdoms and petty corporate politics.
| matsemann wrote:
| Taking a massive pay cut isn't "virtue", it's a direct
| and measurable sacrifice. Just because you don't agree
| with the position or outcome doesn't make it "virtue",
| I'd wish people stop using that word for things they
| disagree with.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| In this specific case, don't we exactly want the CEO to
| signal virtue to the company and employees ?
| Klonoar wrote:
| Virtue signaling actually works, people wouldn't do it
| otherwise. ;P
| Etheryte wrote:
| In 2021, the average S&P 500 CEO made 324 times what
| their company's average worker made [0]. The widest gap
| was at Amazon, with Bezos making over six thousand times
| as much as the average worker at his company. The report
| is from a few years ago, since then the gap has increased
| further. So yes, many companies could trivially retain
| hundreds if not thousands of workers simply by cutting
| the CEO's pay.
|
| [0] https://www.businessinsider.com/these-20-companies-
| have-bigg...
| tjpnz wrote:
| It should be added that layoffs are not commonplace in
| Japan. What you'll see instead are bonus cuts and salary
| reductions (at most 20 percent). To do US style layoffs you
| would need to show that the affected department was
| directly involved in a line of business the company has
| abandoned. If this isn't the case the employees stand a
| good chance of successfully suing the company in court. And
| then there's the reputational damage which would be
| considerable in a country where lifetime employment is
| valued.
|
| In other words this kind of behavior wouldn't be viewed as
| all that surprising locally.
| netsharc wrote:
| Probably: just leave out the full-of-shit sentence...
|
| There's an Indonesian joke based on the word "responsibility"
| which is "tanggung jawab". "Tanggung" in this context means
| to carry the consequences, and "jawab" is to answer. One can
| say to a friend "We have to share this responsibility. I'll
| do the answering, and you'll do the carrying of the
| consequences."
| evoke4908 wrote:
| A CEO should not be rewarded for recordbreaking layoffs with
| recordbreaking pay raises.
| growse wrote:
| It's simply pointing out that "I take full responsibility" is
| empty, meaningless rhetoric and serves no real purpose.
|
| It's often offensively insincere.
| triceratops wrote:
| > Fire them? Then you would probably get a worse decision
| maker in the driver seat going forward
|
| Why?
|
| > who also didn't learn from experience of going through
| layoffs
|
| That's actually a valid point. We don't commonly fire normal
| employees for mistakes. The counterargument is CEOs aren't
| normal employees.
| vundercind wrote:
| Yeah I'm not sure people with compensation well into the
| millions get to go "haha, sorry, still figuring this out!"
|
| Cool, can we pay you intern wages then?
|
| [EDIT] To make this a bit more substantive: I think this is
| a sign both that we need to stop with this whole
| professional-managerial-class horse-shit, promote people
| who know how to do the actual work of the business, and
| reduce exec wages because the job's simply _not all that
| damn special_ and the comp shouldn 't be so high that only
| godlike-perfect performance could possibly justify it,
| because in truth nobody's _that_ good at it.
|
| Step one of this would be reducing M&A activity (hellooooo
| antitrust enforcement) and reigning in the power of
| finance, since letting Wall Street suits put their HBS frat
| brothers in charge of everything is at the heart of why
| this stuff's how it is.
| _dark_matter_ wrote:
| Preach! The job is straightforward - lot of these
| decisions they make are very clearly articulated by LLMs.
| We need more businesses, more competition, not bigger
| businesses.
| marcelsalathe wrote:
| Agreed. But just say that. No need to pretend taking
| responsibility, which is defined as facing consequences when
| things go bad.
|
| "As CEO, I'm truly sorry to those impacted. But I strongly
| believe that this change is what is needed now to make sure
| Dropbox can thrive in the future."
| pizzathyme wrote:
| Makes sense. "I take responsibility" conveys that they will
| also suffer consequences, which isn't true.
|
| "I'm the sole person who made this decision" is probably
| closer what they are trying to say.
| tacticalturtle wrote:
| I think a start would be to stop saying the phrase "I take
| full responsibility for this decision" if you aren't also
| publicly taking a pay cut.
|
| There's no need for a CEO to bring themselves and their
| feelings into the conversation. It's this weird attempt at
| empathy that fails, because the CEO isn't making any
| sacrifices.
|
| Just say that there are layoffs. Most rational people who
| have been in any business for more than a few years recognize
| them as an unfortunate part of the business cycle.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| 100% agree, but the opposite is what happens.
|
| Mass layoffs -- unless the company is actually tanking and on
| its last leg, which isn't the case with any of the tech
| companies who have been doing this recently -- cause the
| share price to rise. CEO pay, or at least bonuses, are often
| tied to the share price.
|
| So a CEO is rewarded instead.
| vundercind wrote:
| To put salt in the wound, my understanding is the research
| on elective layoffs (ones that aren't forced by
| circumstances) indicates the outcomes are mixed at best,
| leaning negative.
|
| So all this crap is just cargo-culting our current
| management paradigm, and/or execs cooperating to suppress
| wages and weaken labor, which had gotten a bit too uppity
| after Covid (that's one thing waves of layoffs like this
| _do_ accomplish).
| vundercind wrote:
| I think it's an outlet for general frustration with the
| justification for high executive compensation (and returns on
| capital, for that matter) often being "they have much more
| responsibility and risk" when the actual downside is
| typically nonexistent, and _even if_ there are consequences,
| the outcome is something like "LOL still richer than any ten
| of you combined will ever be", i.e. the "risk" is all fake.
| randomdata wrote:
| _> "they have much more responsibility and risk"_
|
| Perhaps you've misinterpreted that statement? It is the
| _board_ that takes on greater risk with executives as
| compared to other employees. The executives are given the
| keys to the kingdom, which means only an exceedingly small
| group of trusted individuals can be considered for the job.
| By the transitive properties of supply and demand, when
| supply is limited, price goes up.
| galactus wrote:
| The thing is, high executives have become a self-
| perpetuating class entrenched in corporate boards, this
| is the reason CEOs comoensation keeps skyrocketing, not
| supply and demand. And this entrenchment obviously also
| stifles accountability.
| randomdata wrote:
| How does this self-perpetuating entrenchment not become a
| factor in what establishes the supply and demand, instead
| managing to exist as something off to the side?
| mv4 wrote:
| Yes, sometimes reductions are necessary. However, layoffs
| isn't the only way to reduce variable costs.
| lr4444lr wrote:
| > It sounds like people want executives to get some kind of
| punishment or pain as a consequence of laying people off.
|
| No - as a consequence of poorly planning cost controls. It's
| not that the people don't need to be laid off for the health
| of the company, but that the executives who made the bad
| decisions don't get the boot along with them, in favor of
| more cautious or frugal leaders.
| lm28469 wrote:
| > But what would that even look like? A fine? That would
| probably make no practical difference, and would discourage
| them from making changes that need to be made. Fire them?
| Then you would probably get a worse decision maker in the
| driver seat going forward, who also didn't learn from
| experience of going through layoffs.
|
| Well they're the one asking to "take responsibility" here,
| the fact that they claim responsibility yet nothing happens
| is exactly why people don't like this phrasing.
|
| Also who the fuck else can be responsible anyways ? The cook
| ? The guy who mops the fucking floor ?
| Eric_WVGG wrote:
| Yeah that opinion is unpopular because it's deeply stupid.
|
| "you would probably get a worse decision maker in the driver
| seat going forward, who also didn't learn from experience of
| going through layoffs" or you would maybe get a better
| decision maker who didn't have to layoff -- or hire
| unnecessary -- workers in the first place? Ridiculous
| speculation.
|
| Responsibility without consequences just means failing
| upward. That's why we have a gilded executive class of people
| who are barely qualified to run a local Taco Bell franchise.
| fullshark wrote:
| The point is words mean nothing from the C-suite, and are
| just tools to accomplish whatever labor/public relation goals
| they have.
| a0123 wrote:
| "Unpopular opinion", sure, how brave of you.
|
| Simple: they sure love to talk a big game about
| responsibilities and taking responsibilities. Until it's time
| to actually do it. For the good of the company of course (if
| the company is in such dire straits, as the most highly paid
| employee - and probably not the hardest working one - why
| don't you take a big pay cut? For the good of the company of
| course).
|
| That's what people don't take well.
|
| It's amazing this still has to be explained.
| zo1 wrote:
| It's the grey goo of manager-speak. It rides both sides, but
| never truly picks one.
|
| The other two options: blame employees(someone not you), or
| take some form of punishment as an individual.
|
| I too do it sometimes, and I feel bad each time. I at least
| tell people what it is and that it's just the reality of the
| situation. I'm not gonna commit career suicide and jeopardize
| my family's livelihood but I also won't blame them. So I
| follow the meaningless middle road where the status quo
| mostly stays and we all at least learn from it.
| fwip wrote:
| Ah, you're only going to endanger the livelihood of your
| employees' families, most of whom have substantially less
| wealth than you. I bet the rest of your employees don't
| really care that you "feel bad."
|
| At least they learned not to trust you, though.
| hshshshshsh wrote:
| You can make money by either reducing head count or coming up
| with plans that involves generating more money with existing
| workforce.
|
| Obviously you as a CEO failed at doing second.
|
| Now question is do you fire yourself and try to get a better
| CEO or you choose to fire 20% and generate more profits.
|
| If it's up to the workforce they probably choose to fire CEO.
| But if it's upto the CEO he choose to fire the 20%.
| rurp wrote:
| Taking a hit on their giant salary seems completely
| reasonable to me. Having skin in the game makes people
| perform better in all sorts of cases, and I don't see why a
| CEO would be different.
|
| Do you also object to sales reps or athletes making less
| money after a long period of performing poorly?
| consteval wrote:
| > It sounds like people want executives to get some kind of
| punishment or pain as a consequence of laying people off
|
| Um... yeah. Yeah, that's pretty much exactly what I want.
|
| I used to work at a Dairy Queen. One dude there had been
| working there for a couple years. Unfortunately, one shift
| his drawer came up a dollar short. Our cutoff was 5 cents - a
| nickel - over or under. He was immediately terminated, of
| course.
|
| He cost the company one dollar. A Dairy Queen cashier making
| minimum wage is held to a higher standard of accountability.
| mrthrowaway999 wrote:
| People come in two flavors: conflict theorists and mistake
| theorists.
|
| Conflict theorists think that every event is a result of
| power struggler. So if someone gets hurt, someone must be
| punished for that.
|
| Mistake theorists think that the world is complex and
| sometimes bad stuff happens because most people operate with
| good intentions most of the time. Often, that means no
| punishment needs to be metted out.
|
| To mistake theorists, conflict theorists look like
| ideological blood thirsty savages. To conflict theorists,
| mistake theorists look like enemy troops.
|
| This is a gross oversimplification but it always shocks me to
| see how much more conflict theorists there are on hn now than
| before. So many comments here blaming the CEO or capitalism,
| most of which are going off extremely scant information.
| flappyeagle wrote:
| Your right. He should commit ritualistic suicide by slashing
| his belly with a short sword.
| whamlastxmas wrote:
| While still titling it "A message from Drew"
| game_the0ry wrote:
| Word. If CEOs were to actually take responsibility, they would
| fire themselves.
| nextworddev wrote:
| Stack ranking is back masquerading as (bi) annual layoffs
| threetonesun wrote:
| It'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 wrote:
| That was actually the norm prior to 2010. Tech was never
| supposed to be a stable career due to inherent innovation
| risk
| grepfru_it wrote:
| Also 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
| jimberlage wrote:
| Honestly, 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 wrote:
| Don't want to remind other workers that they share something
| with these workers. Solidarity can be contagious.
| mv4 wrote:
| It is my observation that most unicorn execs become tone-deaf
| and out of touch very quickly. Something about human nature.
| Buttons840 wrote:
| It's to remind them they are beloved "Dropboxers", and are part
| of the family... before terminating them.
| hunter2_ wrote:
| I'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 wrote:
| From an organizational psychology perspective I'm sure it
| tests well that's why they do it
| malfist wrote:
| So beloved that they're willing to sacrifice them on the
| alter of stock price
| qsi wrote:
| I agree it's actually a well crafted layoff announcement. I
| wouldn't even faulting for using Dropboxers. If layoffs have to
| happen there are much worse ways of announcing and implementing
| them than this. Still very unpleasant if you're affected...
| (been there...)
| brk wrote:
| The employee pet name shit is just really tired at this point.
| It's as bad as the job postings still looking for Rock Stars or
| Ninjas or whatever.
|
| They're not Dropboxers, they're not associates, they are
| employees. Pretending otherwise is foolish on both sides.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Dropbox was where I first encountered the infantilization of
| the workplace, with animated emojis all over your biannual
| performance review. It was a shock, having come from a real
| company run by adults. Now everyone thinks this is normal, at
| least at companies that use Slack where 40% of the traffic is
| animated emojis.
| spinmax wrote:
| Exactly how I felt working at Google with their "open
| concepts". Thankfully I am back at the University of
| Washington in a cubicle now, away from the yuppy babies.
| God knows where people get these ridiculous ideas.
| paulcole wrote:
| 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.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| Don't worry your imagination will develop over time.
| colesantiago wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| Looks to me, they started to over engineer their product,
| just for a storage platform, you dont need 2500 people.
| surajrmal wrote:
| Software 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 wrote:
| Being sorry - check
|
| Takes full responsibility - check
|
| Layoffs are still there
| yieldcrv wrote:
| how would you like the next CEO to handle it, for reference?
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Conversion to worker coop
| CoolGuySteve wrote:
| I would like for there to be a next CEO
| bravetraveler wrote:
| With the resources that would otherwise be given to the
| excised one, is a good start
| realusername wrote:
| A 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.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| At 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.
| stevenAthompson wrote:
| They aren't 20% smaller, they stopped growing. Some of
| those positions existed to help them continue with
| growth, which now isn't happening.
|
| They reached market saturation, which isn't the same
| thing as failing.
| skwee357 wrote:
| These words mean nothing really. I expect the next CEO to not
| use meaningless phrases. How does "taking responsibility"
| works in his case? What does it even mean other than PR
| fluff?
| foobarian wrote:
| I mean he's just stating what his job is. CEO is
| responsible by definition. He's saying "Hey all this is my
| job."
| skwee357 wrote:
| No, responsibility is not a word. Responsibility is an
| action.
|
| If I'm on-call, I'm responsible to carry my laptop with
| me and be available immediately to fix critical issues. I
| don't just say "I take responsibility of being on-call",
| and the leave my laptop at home, get drunk and fall
| asleep in a bar for the weekend. That's called being
| irresponsible.
| foobarian wrote:
| I see. But that's still like doing your job. I do my job
| for being on-call by having my laptop with me and phone
| on, etc. If do my job badly I get fired.
|
| So this CEO is saying, "if I do my job poorly I
| understand I could get fired."
|
| But, did he/she do their job poorly? That's the thing I
| can't figure out quite yet. It seems it was bad for the
| laid off people, but maybe not for Dropbox?
| dylan604 wrote:
| why would you expect the next CEO to not use weasel words?
| it's like they all go to the same "mom school". they all go
| to the same tailor to make teflon suits so nothing sticks
| to them, and they all learn the same "rain in spain falls
| on the plain" dreck.
| layer8 wrote:
| It means he's saying people should be mad at him instead of
| at someone else. It seems to be working.
| randomdata wrote:
| By letting a lower rung employee take the responsibly. This
| is giving CEOs a bad name and is only one step away from the
| board taking the heat.
| glimshe wrote:
| If he was responsible for the conditions that led to the
| layoff, he could also resign.
| empath75 wrote:
| Layoffs happen even in well run companies.
| GiorgioG wrote:
| Actually they don't. Well run companies have cash
| reserves and expect to have periods of ups and downs.
| They don't pray to the alter of the next quarterly
| report.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| > Actually they don't
|
| then they probably should
|
| not saying I should go work for McKinsey, just noticing
| that unnecessary payments are likely happening. companies
| don't exist to employ people. employees exist to help
| companies. just make everyone a decent shareholder with
| decent liquidity and move on when the employee isn't
| necessary.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| They do it to suppress wages, not only because of
| economic instability. It's worked - wages are down across
| industry. Wage suppression is one of the responsibilities
| of a well run business (the CEO together with HR hires
| consultant help for this or they hire a benefits and
| wages role, and it's referred to as market positioning)
| reverius42 wrote:
| It's pretty cynical to say that wage suppression is one
| of the responsibilities of a CEO. But perhaps not off the
| mark.
|
| If only we had the equivalent on the other side to
| balance the equation. Some kind of a group of individual
| employees, who work together to counter wage suppression
| efforts.
| ziddoap wrote:
| Well run companies laying off 20% of the global staff?
|
| None come to my mind, do you have any examples?
| blitzar wrote:
| > Well run companies laying off 20% of the global staff?
|
| Well run companies laying off 20% of the global staff a
| year after laying off 20% of the global staff?
| dylan604 wrote:
| well run companies do not hire more employees than they
| can afford
| BossingAround wrote:
| How about describing what exactly taking full responsibility
| means for them in that particular situation?
|
| Saying e.g. what is the impact on the situation for those
| responsible might be nice - no bonuses for next year? A plan
| in place so that this doesn't happen again? Stepping down as
| a CEO?
|
| I mean, if I take responsibility for e.g. wrong tax filing, I
| pay the fine penalty, and/or go to jail.
|
| Saying "I take responsibility" some kind of failure while
| having no consequences for said failure is not taking
| responsibility.
| stonemetal12 wrote:
| Stop saying "take responsibility" if they aren't actually.
|
| If you knock a girl up and you "take responsibility" it means
| you getting married.
|
| If you are in a car wreck and you "take responsibility" it
| means you are paying for repairs.
|
| If you commit a crime and "take responsibility" you are going
| to jail.
|
| So if a CEO is "taking responsibility" it should be something
| like that second case, dollars from their own pocket to the
| effected party.
| YetAnotherNick wrote:
| GP asked what should CEO say instead. Not what should they
| not say.
| timeon wrote:
| Absence is also part of the content.
| geodel wrote:
| LOL, CEOs job is to keep company up and running and in good
| graces of wall street. And he is taking responsibility of
| doing that.
|
| Layoffs are terrible but acting like petulant child and
| lashing out at CEO won't do much.
|
| CEOs responsibilities are defined by shareholders and
| relevant laws applicable, not by rank and file employees.
| talldayo wrote:
| > but acting like petulant child and lashing out at CEO
| won't do much.
|
| I don't think anyone is attacking the CEO with the
| expectation that he's got his iPad in-hand, reading every
| comment through his tears. What we _are_ saying is that
| corporate doublespeak is unbelievably fucking grating
| when it doesn 't correlate whatsoever with tangible
| change at the company. This kind of repeat behavior is
| what makes people (justifiably) laugh when CEOs walk out
| onstage.
|
| Like when Tim Cook steps out on and insults us all
| perennially with his "best iPhone yet" comment. Like,
| _duh_ , of-fucking-course it is! Why don't you tell me
| something I don't know, show me some form of change in
| your posture or the way you provide your products and
| services to me. Don't just advertise to me - convince me
| that you're not steering the company in a direction that
| sucks for everyone but the CEO.
| qwerpy wrote:
| > Tim Cook steps out on and insults us all perennially
| with his "best iPhone yet" comment
|
| I loved this sentence and the sentiment behind it.
| Nowadays whenever I get the urge to upgrade my old iPhone
| 13, I go and rewatch old recordings from 2021 of Tim Cook
| gushing about how the phone I already have is such a huge
| leap forward for humanity and why everything that came
| before it is garbage.
|
| Applying this to CEOs and layoffs, every time you join a
| new job and start to drink the company kool-aid about how
| you're part of this wonderful family, go and reread that
| CEO talking about how he took personal responsibility for
| throwing hundreds of his "family" out on the street right
| before the holidays.
| apwell23 wrote:
| GP is attacking annoying bullshit language. Not the CEO.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Have you considered that not everyone shares your opinion
| and that this could explain the difference between reality
| and your expectations.
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| CEOs are responsible to the board of directors and
| shareholders. The BoD and shareholders are who choose and
| remove CEOs and you can bet both are considerably
| displeased when the company isn't as profitable as they
| expect.
| coldpie wrote:
| They should make whole those affected, as best as possible.
| The CEO, who is the responsible party by their own
| declaration, should distribute their personal wealth to those
| affected until all parties have approximately the same amount
| of wealth.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| Take a pay cut. Return last year's mega bonus.
| Clent wrote:
| Claims to take full responsibility but since he has not
| resigned he has not taken any responsibility he has just said
| the words.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| That's not what it means.
|
| As CEO, it's his responsibility to make/approve the decision
| to do the layoffs, or not. The buck stops with him. That's
| all that it means. It doesn't mean he's liable for any
| hardships.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Exactly, it doesnt mean that the CEO is submitting
| themselves to whatever _consequences_ internet users deem
| appropriate.
| reverius42 wrote:
| If that was what responsibility meant, then by definition
| any CEO is fulfilling their responsibility.
|
| The moral meaning of responsibility here means that the CEO
| takes responsibility for the lives and livelihoods of those
| affected -- which does feel a bit hollow when the CEO
| presumably is not only not affected negatively, but
| probably will be rewarded for increasing shareholder value.
| disqard wrote:
| I'm more with GP.
|
| If "responsibility" only constitutes "I pull the trigger,
| and I don't care what happens as a result", then that is a
| fairly weak kind of leadership -- ostensibly not very
| different from a child doing whatever they want in a
| consequence-free manner.
|
| I want to believe that "responsibility" not only
| constitutes "I can make things happen", but that "I am
| willing to Make Things Right if my actions cause things to
| go sideways".
|
| If I'm wrong, then we live in a world where "taking
| responsibility" means "using power", and "I take full
| responsibility" means "yes, I used my power to do that" and
| that's Not Good Enough to call such people "Leaders".
| TomK32 wrote:
| Avoided the "20% more space at Dropbox" headline - check
| layer8 wrote:
| I was hoping for a 20% price reduction.
| my_berner wrote:
| I think we'd all collectively blow our minds if a CEO said "I
| take full responsibility for the bad decisions and overhiring,
| so I'm resigning"
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| Would the CEO resigning or getting laid off, make your
| situation any better if you were one of those laid off?
|
| Feels like a weird hill to die on, and more like a crabs in
| the bucket mentality that doesn't change anything in the
| grand scheme of things. In the end I'm still unemployed and
| whatever happens to my ex-CEO doesn't change my situation one
| bit.
|
| As I grew older and experienced my share of layoffs, I
| stopped caring about what happens to those responsible for me
| getting laid off, as my energy is better spent on improving
| my situation and my life instead of ruminating how Krama
| vengeance would make me feel better.
| smetj wrote:
| > Would the CEO resigning or getting laid off, make your
| situation any better if you were one of those laid off?
|
| No, of course not. But he is the leader, and he guided the
| company to a point where certain areas became "over-
| invested or under-performing." In other words, he didn't do
| a good job. So, it should be him stepping down. Nobody ever
| said being a CEO would be easy.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> and he guided the company to a point where certain
| areas became "over-invested or under-performing."_
|
| And now he's fixing it by cutting those under-performing
| areas.
|
| _> So, it should be him stepping down._
|
| Why? How would that help the company get better? Do you
| think competent CEOs are like cogs that you can pick a
| new one from the stack of LinkedIn applications whenever
| the old one makes a mistake, and then slot him in the
| existing machine and everything will magically work
| better?
|
| _> Nobody ever said being a CEO would be easy._
|
| Exactly. That's why you don't rush to replace the devil
| you know with the devil you don't.
| disqard wrote:
| That's a really positive attitude, to not fixate on
| retribution -- kudos to you!
|
| I'd like to point out that there are other possible
| outcomes, like (say) the CEO and entire C-suite cutting
| their salary to $1 for a year (it's not like this will
| render any of them homeless).
|
| IMHO, that would actually constitute "taking full
| responsibility", as opposed to parroting words that don't
| connect to the reality of the situation.
| 42lux wrote:
| Took the responsibility right to his bank account.
| Brosper wrote:
| Anybody from Poland will be layed off?
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| > _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 wrote:
| Company 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 wrote:
| What 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 wrote:
| Agreed! So many of these companies hired needlessly over the
| recent years.
| blitzar wrote:
| It 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.
| josefritzishere wrote:
| Dropbox 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/
| randomdata wrote:
| Financially, 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 wrote:
| How 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 wrote:
| The 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 wrote:
| Really? 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 wrote:
| It sounds like it's 25% better than what you get in your
| country?
| triceratops wrote:
| 33%
| klausa wrote:
| "25% better than legally required minimum" is not generally
| considered "great" in many circumstances.
| nsxwolf wrote:
| Comparison is the thief of joy. In the US, any amount
| is... infinity %? Undefined %? better than the legally
| required minimum of 0.
| BossingAround wrote:
| Personally, 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.
| geodel wrote:
| Yeah, nothing to write home about until they pay
| inflation adjust salary till retirement age of 67 for all
| laid off employees.
| pembrook wrote:
| I'd rather take having a tech industry at all and the
| 2-4X bigger US salaries (and 30% lower average taxes)
| than having my fellow citizens shoulder the burden of
| giving me 6-12 months of daycare.
|
| In the US luckily the job market is still quite dynamic
| (and extremely tight by historical standards) so only in
| an extreme scenario would someone with Dropbox on their
| resume need 12 months to find another job.
|
| They might have to take a pay cut from a 99th percentile
| salary to a 96th percentile salary though. Rough, I know.
| nsxwolf wrote:
| In the US, the minimum required is usually zero. The most I
| ever got was 4 weeks.
| lesuorac wrote:
| The minimum needed in the US for this situation is 60
| calendar days [1]. Hence the 16 weeks.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_Adjustment_and_Retrain
| i...
| nsxwolf wrote:
| The WARN Act doesn't mandate severance payments AFAIK.
| rsanek wrote:
| I think perhaps that's why poster used "for this
| situation" -- if a company doesn't want to have to
| provide advance notice, their only option with WARN is to
| do it with this kind of severance payment. Not sure if it
| was intended but that's a pretty cool outcome of the law.
| _gabe_ wrote:
| 16 x 7 = 112 days, I'm not sure I understand your
| comment? Even if it was business days only, 5 x 16 = 80
| which is still above the minimum needed.
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| In big tech in the US, 4 months is usually enough to find
| another similar job in the industry. Also in the US for mass
| layoffs at big firms, the minimum is effectively 2 months
| because you are required by law to give 2 months notice to
| workers about such layoffs, 2 months severance is a way to
| not have to give such notice.
| harimau777 wrote:
| In this market, 4 months definitely isn't enough to find a
| similar job.
| Epa095 wrote:
| But are you not expected to work those 3 months? 4 months of
| pay without work is decent, but not amazing.
| prmoustache wrote:
| > But are you not expected to work those 3 months?
|
| When you are leaving on your own term yes.
|
| When you are laid off you are technically still an employee
| for those 3 months but nowadays many companies will just
| tell you to not show up for security reason.
| ramraj07 wrote:
| US salaries are quite a lot more; lifestyle creep is a thing
| but at least for developers they get paid a lot more than the
| average worker in the US than say in the Europe. Factoring
| that, 4 months is amazing.
| opjjf wrote:
| Do you earn SF salaries in your country?
| cbzbc wrote:
| They probably don't have SF housing costs in their country.
| yellow_lead wrote:
| I dunno. It may take 1-2 months to prepare for Leetcode style
| interviews, and this can be pretty mentally exhausting. Every
| time you fail to solve a leetcode question, it feeds your
| imposter syndrome, which is probably even worse due to getting
| fired.
| FredPret wrote:
| If leetcode wasn't hard enough to make a good programmer fail
| now and then, there would be no point to it.
| neilv wrote:
| If Leetcode didn't provide discrimination defense and neg
| the candidate shortly before offer, there would be no point
| to it.
| pembrook wrote:
| Wow, that's horrible. And you might even have to stay at a 4
| star instead of a 5 star resort in Bali when you take a
| vacation during your severance, job market is tough.
|
| Even worse, you might have to miss one contribution to your
| FATfire investment account to deal with the extra risk.
| Compounded, that missed contribution might mean you'll have
| to retire at 46 instead of 45.
|
| How dare these companies treat these people this way. They
| took the massive risk of working for an already-successful
| company at $250K/yr with a $200K stock package, and now fat
| cat Drew Houston dares to leave them with just an abnormally
| large severance after they are no longer needed.
| iaw wrote:
| I don't think your tone aligns with the community
| guidelines[1]. Please consider not being snarky and
| sarcastic but actually responding to the merit of what
| people say here.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| pembrook wrote:
| As a fellow tech worker, I genuinely believe all the
| things I mentioned are upsetting. It's happened to me
| before!
|
| I realized though that I was probably going to be okay,
| and what I actually needed was some perspective.
|
| Sometimes the contrast of "sarcasm" is the only way to
| shake you out of your bubble and give you that
| perspective.
| VirusNewbie wrote:
| Sarcasm is bad. It would have been fine to say "I think
| there is a social contract of it being acceptable to lay
| off workers making 400k".
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| With all due respect, that sounds like a personal shortcoming
| to me. One can (and should) not take interviews personally.
| One also can (and should) be able to acquit oneself well at
| an interview even without prep time.
| yellow_lead wrote:
| > One also can (and should) be able to acquit oneself well
| at an interview even without prep time.
|
| I don't agree. If you don't prepare at all for an
| interview, it shows. Aside from leetcode, it's also
| important to research the company.
|
| My point is mainly that I might be upset if I were in that
| group that's laid off today. I don't want to prep leetcode
| for several weeks. It feels like a waste of time.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| I've never prepared for an interview in my life, and I've
| never had any difficulty. Anecdotal of course, but I
| think prep for interviews is vastly overrated.
| rsanek wrote:
| You're telling me you maintain the ability to pass the
| various interviews that the modern FAANG SWE gauntlet
| requires year-round? Good for you if so, but this doesn't
| match the experience of any of the folks that I've worked
| with across my career.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| Who said anything about FAANG? I don't work in that world
| and in fact you literally could not pay me to do so. It
| seems miserable as hell. But Dropbox isn't in that world
| either. And in any case, I've never ever had to prepare
| for a job interview _at all_ , let alone for multiple
| months. They aren't that hard in most cases.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Dropbox is (or at least was) renowned for having one of
| the hardest software developer interview loops.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| 16 weeks + 1 week / year severance works out to 3-5 months.
|
| Looks like enough time to prepare, take a vacation, ect.
| harimau777 wrote:
| Considering how horrible the job market is right now, four
| months of pay may not go very far.
| reverius42 wrote:
| I've heard of folks with 10+ years of experience not finding
| work in 9 months or more.
| gcr wrote:
| This is a bullshit package because of the healthcare.
|
| I was laid off from a different company with access to 18
| months of COBRA. Dropbox is offering a third of that. Lots of
| job searches take longer than 6 months, so the employees are
| going to be left high and dry right when they need it the most.
|
| For the non-Americans, my COBRA expenses are about
| USD$2,000/month for me and my partner. I'm paying as much for
| healthcare as I am for rent. Even so, it's still financially
| better to take COBRA than pay out of pocket for my
| prescriptions.
| erikw wrote:
| All West Coast states have free healthcare (medicaid)
| available if your income is below a certain threshold. And
| there is no time limit on that. It won't help with rent, but
| at least these folks won't be completely without healthcare
| access.
| vel0city wrote:
| There's pretty much no way they'd qualify for Medicaid if
| they were a dev at Dropbox. The income limit for Medi-Cal
| is $20,783 for a single adult, $28,208 for a household of
| two adults. Chances are they were past that income limit
| the first few months of the year. You don't just
| immediately qualify after making $140k annualized for the
| first 10 months and then hit $0 one day.
|
| Plus, they're getting 16 weeks of salary. At $140k/yr,
| that's $2,692/wk. Lets say their severance starts next
| week. There's 8 weeks left in the year. So they'll get 8
| weeks of pay in 2025. $2,692 * 8 = $21,538. So no, they
| won't qualify for Medicaid at all in 2025 if they make that
| much as a single person.
| cruffle_duffle wrote:
| True but even making $140k/year does qualify you for tax
| credits on ACA marketplace health insurance plans. COBRA
| is kind of obsolete, honestly. You should be switching
| over to a insurance plan purchased through your state's
| health insurance marketplace.
| vel0city wrote:
| Totally agree there. Chances are they'll be better served
| with a marketplace plan unless they've got a complicated
| health situation/very specific care that might be
| questionablly covered without thoroughly shopping around.
|
| I'm just pushing back at the idea someone can go from
| making six figures and turn around and hop on Medicaid.
| It's not that simple. It should be IMO, but it isn't.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| You have to be destitute to qualify for medicaid
| Lammy wrote:
| Even if one does qualify for those programs, the sign-up
| time is on the order of almost a year here in California.
| Applications are Supposed To Be(tm) reviewed within 45
| days, which is already a long wait, but they are using the
| new normal "due to higher than usual volume, fuck you"
| approach just like every other modern bureaucracy.
|
| https://www.dhcs.ca.gov/individuals/Pages/Steps-to-Medi-
| Cal.... sez "Due to the high volume of new applications,
| the process is taking longer than normal", and I have
| secondhand experience of six+ month wait times.
|
| Expenses incurred during the coverage gap need additional
| approval for retroactive repayment, meaning you have to
| have the funds to pay upfront for however many months/years
| the sign-up process takes, then once your coverage starts
| you have to apply/wait/hope to be paid back for everything
| paid out-of-pocket which might just get denied: https://www
| .dhcs.ca.gov/formsandpubs/forms/Forms/mc210a0907....
| sct202 wrote:
| I wonder if they meant paid COBRA of 6 months, bc 18 months
| is like the minimum to offer continuing coverage. COBRA
| coverage is a Federal Law for large employers.
|
| https://www.dol.gov/sites/dolgov/files/ebsa/about-
| ebsa/our-a...
|
| "Q11: How long does COBRA coverage last? COBRA requires that
| continuation coverage extend from the date of the qualifying
| event for a limited period of 18 or 36 months. The length of
| time depends on the type of qualifying event that gave rise
| to the COBRA rights. A plan, however, may provide longer
| periods of coverage beyond the maximum period required by
| law."
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| > The severance package is great!
|
| that's a function of how low the bar is in the US
| _sword wrote:
| Makes 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.
| recroad wrote:
| TIL 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 wrote:
| Dropbox 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 wrote:
| Are 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 wrote:
| If 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.
| osigurdson wrote:
| Yeah, I just had a look at dropbox stock. I would have
| expected permanent cash hemorrhaging, but no they have a P/E
| of 15.
| avgDev wrote:
| That is actually quite good. I am surprised.
| voisin wrote:
| A P/E on its own is not good or bad. If the company's
| earnings are in decline you would expect a low P/E, and
| if they were growing aggressively then you would expect a
| high P/E. It is only when there is a mismatch when the
| ratio becomes interesting. I am not saying it isn't
| interesting in this case but the comment you are replying
| to does not tell any information that would lead to the
| conclusion it is "quite good."
| bhouston wrote:
| Yeah if there is no growth but a lot of earnings the
| stock should probably start to pay dividends no?
| Otherwise what is it doing with all that cash it is
| generating?
| voisin wrote:
| 100%. Doesn't even have to be zero growth - just growth
| less than investors want to see, as implied in the P/E
| ratio (since investors control the P).
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| > how do you end up having more than 500 excess people than
| what you need?
|
| Not sure if you are serious or not, but understanding the
| output of knowledge workers is a famously difficult task.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> understanding the output of knowledge workers is a
| famously difficult task_
|
| That's why large companies don't look at individual worker
| output (performance reviews are mostly performative and
| subjective) and just look at stock prices and profits.
|
| If "line goes up", it means workers as a whole must be doing
| a good job , even if individually many might not be good at
| their jobs, but as long as line goes up, nobody cares to look
| too deep into the hows and whys.
|
| If line stops going up, then they start laying them off more
| or less randomly or forcing RTO, or such things regardless of
| individual performance.
| jumping_frog wrote:
| I have a offtopic but related question. Why are our taxes
| still calculated in stepwise bracket manner. Why not a smooth
| curve? We have the mathematical and technical knowhow to
| implement it. Coming back to the Dropbox layoffs, why was
| this decision a drastic stepwise reduction. Not a smooth
| curve over a period of say 1 year.
| colechristensen wrote:
| If you're running a SaaS that isn't customer-interaction heavy,
| you can usually get away with dropping about 80% of your
| technical staff (if, of course, you pick the correct 20%, which
| is not easy).
|
| Having worked in several startups through the early growth
| stage, it's just surprising how much you don't get more done
| with, say, a 500 employee company than a 50 employee company.
|
| There is a ton of room to grow less and maintain more, and it's
| a real struggle for a business to decide its product is done
| with major growth and the associated need for a large staff.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| Staffing your business (or even team) with the right number
| of people to accomplish a job is a real challenge that the
| majority of managers don't engage with, instead simply trying
| to grow their little kingdom to the largest size they can,
| both for intrinsic power reasons, and also to foster greater
| jobs for themselves later on.
|
| If I see a manager put "led a team of 40" on their resume, in
| the interview, I ask "did you need 40 people? Did you need
| more, did you need less, and how would you have found out?"
| and the number of times this completely catches them off
| guard is staggering. It's like... did you choose that number
| for a reason? Or was that just the most you could fit in your
| budget?
|
| And sure many hands make light work, but there's an
| inflection point where the sheer weight of your organization
| becomes a liability, where getting anything done or changed
| requires the involvement of so many people that most just
| don't bother unless it's an emergency. That's how you get
| corporate rot, and that's how you get all the massive
| companies we rag on here about all the time who have been
| making like, 5 products since before most of us were born
| that everyone fucking hates but everyone uses because
| everyone else does.
| higeorge13 wrote:
| Yeah but usually these people are top candidates and occupy
| the other engineering manager positions, and you, managing
| a super productive team of 5 or 10 instead, don't even get
| into a single interview there. And that applies to every
| single company I have applied to.
| colechristensen wrote:
| >many hands make light work, but
|
| I'd like to emphasize further the _but_. The speed of tasks
| scales with the inverse log of the organization size.
|
| In other words, as you get bigger, every project gets
| slower, regardless of how many people you have working on
| it. A project that would take a week in a tiny organization
| might take a month in a medium organzation and 2 quarters
| in a large organization. Sometimes there are good reasons
| for this, sometimes not.
| jumping_frog wrote:
| In a large orginaization, launching a new feature
| requires interaction with lot of other existing teams
| which slows speed down. Auth, permissions, metrics, etc.
| The new feature must seamlessly interact and integrate
| with existing systems.
| voisin wrote:
| > Didn't they at some point see that they have more people than
| valuable work
|
| Product roadmap probably had some ambitious ideas that got
| scrapped when earlier steps proved to not be marginal revenue
| generators.
|
| Jobs said it best: Dropbox is a feature not a product. All
| their efforts to make it a product (let alone a platform!) have
| worked against usability and alienated a lot of users. I am
| hopeful these layoffs signify a return to sanity in a company
| that seems to be leading the charge in racking up unforced
| errors.
| tootie wrote:
| They were (I think) first to market with fast, cheap cloud
| storage but at this point there's just too much competition
| and not enough differentiation. I have only the vaguest
| awareness of them trying to build some value adds to make
| Dropbox more of a collaboration tool, but I've never seen it
| get any adoption. I'm guessing those are the LOBs getting cut
| with this announcement.
| voisin wrote:
| I switched to OneDrive when it started getting bundled in
| free with Office 365. I also tried iCloud when it came in
| the Apple One subscription. Both are total shit compared to
| Dropbox. The sharing in iCloud is nothing short of
| laughable and OneDrive is just buggy Microsoft garbage (on
| my Mac - might be better on Windows). I am planning to move
| back to Dropbox which says something - I'd rather pay than
| use competitors' products that come to me for "free".
|
| That said, I'd rather the company stick to its fundamentals
| with no further feature creep and focus on lower
| subscription cost rather than features to justify higher
| costs.
| throwaway313373 wrote:
| I mean, imagine that you are leading a team of 4 people.
|
| Are you sure that you will always be able to accurately tell if
| you need a fifth person or not?
|
| Or you have a team of 5 people. Can you tell if you have a one
| too many?
| tyingq wrote:
| Maybe not. But typically natural attrition rates would let a
| hiring freeze take care of most of this. Layoffs are kind of
| normal current day, but a 20% layoff is not.
| throwaway313373 wrote:
| The common argument against relying on natural turnover
| rate is that the most competent workers are also those who
| are the most likely to leave because it is easier for them
| to find a new/better job. So if a company just freezes
| hiring instead of doing layoffs it will experience a
| reduction in the competence of their workers.
|
| I don't know if this is empirically true or not, I haven't
| seen any statistics. But I don't see any obvious logical
| errors in this reasoning.
| spamizbad wrote:
| People are hired to deliver what's on product and/or
| engineering roadmaps. If the roadmaps are less ambitious, it
| becomes pretty easy to justify headcount reductions.
|
| It's also less labor intensive to focus on a few core areas,
| making smaller incremental improvements than doing that PLUS
| launching big ambitious greenfield projects.
|
| Also, remember how people used to say "Startup X is a bad idea
| because <established tech company> could just clone you in 6
| months"? Well, those ideas are now back on the menu for
| entrepreneurs because bigger tech firms are now running too
| lean for quixotic defensive plays like that.
| cj wrote:
| > Jokes aside, how do you end up having more than 500 excess
| people than what you need?
|
| It's actually a pretty simple risk/reward equation.
|
| The risk of understaffing a company is greater than the risk of
| overstaffing a company.
|
| If you overstaff a company, the solution is quick and easy. If
| you understaff a company, the solution is extremely painful and
| takes a very long time to fix.
|
| E.g. it takes 1 day to fire someone, but 9 months to
| hire/onboard someone. So to ensure the staffing isn't a
| bottleneck for growth, the obvious answer is to err on the side
| of overstaffing.
|
| TLDR: You need to hire and onboard people before you actually
| need them. If hiring and onboarding someone takes 9 months, you
| need to guess how many resources you'll need a year from now,
| and hope that your estimation is accurate. (And obviously a lot
| of companies over-estimated how many people they would need,
| hence lay offs)
| wakamoleguy wrote:
| It has been even more than 500 excess employees. 300 were laid
| off in January 2021, and another 500 in April 2023. The
| percentages imply that headcount bounced around from 2800 down
| to 2500, up to 3100, down to 2500, up to 2600, and now down to
| 2100.
|
| These same macroeconomic headwinds have existed for some time
| now, and the fundamentals of Dropbox's core business
| commoditization haven't changed for the better.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| I wonder how many staff they need just to keep the lights on.
| I bet it's not more than a tenth of what they have now.
| elif wrote:
| This is literally every startup I've ever worked for. Grow
| before you need to, constantly expand your market. This is like
| 101 stuff
| golol wrote:
| I suppose it is the following: 1. Maybe they didn't over-hire
| but instead the economic conditions changed. 2. Maybe instead
| of gradually letting go of people it is best to wait and then
| strike once and hard.
| uhtred wrote:
| The problem is we live in a society now where everyone has a
| public platform to promote themselves (linkedin etc) and there
| are a lot of ruthlessly ambitious narcisists who put self
| promotion and resume building ahead of everything else.
|
| So they muscle into a team lead or manager position and grow
| the team, because it looks good to post on linked in "hey I'm
| growing my team" and it doesn't matter if the team needs
| another person.
|
| And who cares if the company is then stuck with surplus
| employees, not the person who hired them because they have
| moved on and up at another company.
| coldpie wrote:
| > Actually, I know why. It's because they have too much money
|
| Money was almost literally free for like a decade. I'm so glad
| that era is over, and I hope it never returns, but the period
| of adjustment as businesses discover that they have to actually
| have a business model again does suck a bit.
| stevenAthompson wrote:
| Forgive my ignorance, but why would very low interest rates
| ("almost free" money) be a bad thing we want to avoid?
|
| Isn't it for best if society keeps interest gathering, rent
| seeking, behavior to a minimum and instead encourages that
| more of the available capital is put to good use?
| coldpie wrote:
| Because having a functional business model is what defines
| whether the use of capital is good or not. Bad outcomes
| from low interest rates are all these layoffs from
| overstaffing, all the wasted human-years on blockchain &
| NFT garbage during 2021, VCs blowing money on obvious
| failures like Juicero, etc. These are not good uses of
| capital, and if they had to have a real business plan to
| get capital in the first place, it would not have been
| wasted.
| stevenAthompson wrote:
| > These are not good uses of capital
|
| I suppose it depends on what the alternative was for that
| capital. Sitting in an index fund wasn't really doing
| anything useful for society, but providing high paying
| tech jobs to dropbox employees was probably very useful
| to society. Especially when you consider all of the
| downstream impacts of those employees spending.
|
| Similarly, I would ask if society gets more good out of
| transferring the wealth to crypto-bro's or from it
| sitting in relatively low yield investment vehicles? I
| would wager that the crypto bro's buying lambo's acted as
| a better economic stimulus than non-productive interest
| gathering.
|
| Now if the choice had been between investing in "good"
| businesses vs "bad" businesses I would agree, but I don't
| think it was.
| coldpie wrote:
| > I would ask if society gets more good out of
| transferring the wealth to crypto-bro's or from it
| sitting in relatively low yield investment vehicles?
|
| I think rewarding people for dumping useful labor into a
| black hole is bad, yeah. If we're just handing it out, we
| could've split all that money to everyone equally and
| reaped much better rewards as a society (useful social
| services; more family stability; less poverty) than
| giving a few gambling addicts overpriced cars in return
| for nothing.
| stevenAthompson wrote:
| It feels like you're only thinking about it at a personal
| level.
|
| From a higher level perspective, we didn't give them
| those cars, they bought them. And buying them provided
| tangible benefits to the people who made them and the
| companies that serviced them, etc. The money was freed
| from the dragon hoards of the unproductive and actually
| SPENT on something. Spending is useful. Hoarding isn't.
|
| Could it have been better spent? Sure, but spending it at
| all is better than leaving it to rot collecting a few
| points interest without actually producing anything of
| value.
| mrthrowaway999 wrote:
| > 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.
|
| This is an incredibly uncharitable and shallow take, on the
| level of that comment many years ago that said something along
| the lines of "what's so interesting about Dropbox? It's just
| rsync, I could build it in a weekend".
|
| We don't operate in a perfectly legible world, especially more
| so when it comes to people. It's all bets and risks and
| whatnot.
|
| If you or anyone has the power to create perfectly aligned and
| efficient organization, I'm waiting here to see you build large
| multi-trillion dollar companies. Let me know how it goes.
| yojo wrote:
| My understanding is DropBox was trying to transition from
| sync and share to being a multi-product document-centric
| company (look at acquisitions like HelloSign).
|
| One possibility is they staffed up a bunch of projects on
| bets that ultimately didn't turn into viable products, and
| are now pulling the plug.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| More like the cloud sync functions out of the box on
| Google, Microsoft and Apple products caught up in features
| and already got good enough for the customer base of these
| to not bother paying extra for Dropbox no matter how much
| better they would have been. See Evernote.
|
| It's difficult to go against Apple, Google and Microsoft
| when they're vertically integrated and can squeeze you on
| all sides offering an OS, email, browser, cloud sync,
| document editing, etc with seamless integration between
| them, while you're just a cloud sync service on their OS.
| You don't have any moat, while they do. There's no way you
| can compete with them from that position unless the
| government were to break up their vertical integration for
| anti-competitive practices.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| For me, Dropbox's moat and USP is that they make all of
| their money from file storage, giving me some confidence
| that they'll ensure it keeps working.
|
| That's definitely not something one can say about their
| BigTech competitors.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> For me, Dropbox's moat and USP is that they make all
| of their money from file storage, giving me some
| confidence that they'll ensure it keeps working. _
|
| To me that's now become a red flag with these companies.
| Not speaking of Dropbox in particular but all these
| start-ups from the past that offered a free new
| innovative product/service for Android/iOS went to shit
| soon after Appel and Google copied and integrate similar
| functionality into the OS out of the box, leading to
| investor money drying up and the company suddenly
| paywalling and gouging existing users to make money to
| survive. Look at Evernote, LastPasss, Cerberus, etc. but
| also Amazon, Netflix, etc, enshitification galore.
|
| Google and Apple are less likely to do that since they
| already make more money than God and tend not to want to
| fuck up their reputation just to squeeze a few more bucks
| from their users.
|
| That's why I don't trust these small app companies
| anymore, since they'll get squeezed out by Apple,
| Microsoft and Google, and enshitification will ensure.
| The app is good in the beginning for a few years when VC
| money is abundant and their goal is user growth at any
| cost, but after that suddenly once you're locked in, you
| get paywalled, as the company tries to squeeze more money
| from you so VCs can get their money back. Rinse and
| repeat. So no thanks, I got burned a few times already.
| bunderbunder wrote:
| I think that is why Dropbox has been trying to diversify
| their offerings. They know as well as the rest of us do
| that cloud storage that's _only_ cloud storage and not
| much else will have serious trouble competing with cloud
| storage that you also _need_ to have to work conveniently
| with Google Docs, or Office 365, or whatever.
|
| But, as parent poster pointed out, taking on that new
| work requires hiring people to do it. But that's
| expensive, and those new products need to start
| generating revenue quickly in order to cover the
| increased payroll costs.
| kristianc wrote:
| The problem is that it's unclear consumers actually ever
| wanted Dropbox to become any more than a sync and share
| company, or to deal with the resultant complexity that that
| will bring to what has been a beautifully simple product.
| But they had to do that to justify Sky-high valuations.
| debacle wrote:
| The problem with DropBox is that it can't really compete with
| Google, Microsoft, Adobe, Amazon Drive, etc. It's too narrow
| of an offering.
| dangus wrote:
| Open the "More" menu in your Dropbox interface and I think
| you may be surprised at how many different products they
| have.
|
| I am sure they're not trying to be a Microsoft of Google,
| but they're trying to make a niche in document handling,
| file sending, password management, a lot of those little
| things that are something of a pain for many businesses.
|
| I think if you compare what Dropbox is offering at
| $15/user/month to Microsoft 365, there are a bunch of
| things that Microsoft isn't really covering or isn't
| covering as well (and vice versa, to be fair). For example,
| the ability to take e-signatures, document watermarking,
| facilitating out-of-organization file transfers, etc.
|
| I also think they compete quite well with Amazon Drive,
| considering that Amazon Drive was discontinued.
| CharlieDigital wrote:
| > Open the "More" menu in your Dropbox interface and I
| think you may be surprised at how many different products
| they have.
|
| Yeah, but what if I don't need/want "more"? I just want
| my files on my different devices.
| dangus wrote:
| I never said you personally are their ideal customer
| profile.
| CharlieDigital wrote:
| My point is that this is probably the case for most
| users; the "more" doesn't mean anything because it's some
| functionality created by underemployed product managers
| rather than things that customers actually need/want to
| pay for. If you have to point out "hey, look here under
| this 'more' menu", then it's not part of the primary
| value proposition for the product and not why someone
| would pick that product. Sure, it might be that it is
| useful for some subset of users, but that you need to
| wave people down to show them that value means that it's
| probably not that valuable.
| dangus wrote:
| I think what people forget about layoffs is that all those
| "excess" employees who have been there didn't sit around
| doing nothing during the time they were there.
|
| Those 20% of Dropbox staff wrote a bunch of code, made a
| bunch of sales, and did a lot of other tasks that will have
| an impact even after they don't work there anymore.
|
| Even though they are being laid off, their contributions
| still have a positive impact on the company. Even the
| government treats it this way from a taxation basis: software
| that is written by engineers is treated as a depreciating
| asset that is amortized over 5 years.
|
| In other words, if I write some code that consumes $100 worth
| of my labor, that engineering work is considered by the IRS
| to be an asset to the company with book value from now until
| 5 years from now. If I'm laid off, the company still has that
| $100 asset on their books, which depreciates over 5 years.
|
| It's perfectly normal for a business to plan out their future
| based on uncertainty and risks. If they only hired people
| they knew 100% they would need forever, they'd miss out on a
| lot of opportunities.
|
| Extending this logic far out enough and we could say
| ridiculous things like "How could IBM be so irresponsible to
| hire hundreds of thousands of engineers to make business
| mainframes when their marketshare will dwindle to a sliver in
| 40 years?"
|
| The truth is that businesses need the employees that they
| need at a point in time, and that number is constantly
| changing.
| jasonjayr wrote:
| > The truth is that businesses need the employees that they
| need at a point in time, and that number is constantly
| changing.
|
| Another truth is that we've collectivly decided that all
| people must be working in order to "earn" their right to
| exist. So anytime there is a large layoff like this, there
| are a lot of new stories about people relocating, making
| major changes to their lives, some for the better, some for
| the worse, and some for the absolutely devastaing.
|
| One must not forget that these 'human resources' are more
| than just a number.
| dangus wrote:
| I'm all for better protections for workers, and I think
| that the US should make companies give employees more
| notice, or alternatively make unemployment benefits a
| program that is more automatic, a full 100% of salary
| instead of being capped, and biased more toward the
| employee. I.e., I think a company should have to prove to
| a judge that an employee was fired with cause or quit
| voluntarily before the employee loses their benefits.
|
| I totally agree with the idea that the benefits of at-
| will no-notice termination employment are lopsided in
| favor of the company, but the flip side of that
| arrangement is that it's very easy to get a new job in
| the US compared to many other places. It's easy to be
| hired on a short conversation and a handshake in an at-
| will environment.
| 8n4vidtmkvmk wrote:
| Depends. If those employees truly are excess and they
| haven't been doing much for the past couple years, they
| might be just producing tech debt. Cancelled projects and
| migrations have negative value. I doubt this entire 20% was
| made redundant overnight, which means they haven't been
| valuable for some time.
| JohnMakin wrote:
| > This is an incredibly uncharitable and shallow take,
|
| So is yours.
|
| > We don't operate in a perfectly legible world, especially
| more so when it comes to people. It's all bets and risks and
| whatnot.
|
| What bet was dropbox taking by overexpanding their workforce
| by 20%?
|
| > If you or anyone has the power to create perfectly aligned
| and efficient organization, I'm waiting here to see you build
| large multi-trillion dollar companies. Let me know how it
| goes.
|
| This is an interesting statement. Dropbox is a single digit
| $billions company, not trillions.
| HelloMcFly wrote:
| > What bet was dropbox taking by overexpanding their
| workforce by 20%?
|
| When asking this question, I think it's good to remind
| ourselves how much we don't know. We don't know if they
| overstaffed in a push to expand their business that didn't
| work out, we don't know if the had an older operating model
| that went from "efficient" to "inefficient" as scale and
| market dynamics changed. We don't know if advances in
| productivity to tools, or changes to major client accounts,
| impacted their staffing needs. Determining whether one is
| "overstaffed" is a multi-factorial determination that can
| be false one month and true the next.
|
| Set aside whether it's uncharitable to just assume
| management oversight or idiocy - it's hubristic. Having
| said that, it doesn't mean the assumption is wrong, it
| could be exactly right! But it might not be.
| whatshisface wrote:
| They could also be reducing their workforce because they
| decided to for human reasons and their value might go
| down by more than the cost savings.
| mrthrowaway999 wrote:
| How is my comment uncharitable?
|
| The OP made strong statements with weak backing. Their
| statements were also placing blame. Your profile says
| you're an SRE--can you imagine a post mortem with that kind
| of attitude?
| abeppu wrote:
| > 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.
|
| In part, to unpack why part of this glib take is missing the
| complexity, "don't know what reality is", is that _finding_
| reality is slow and costly. Perhaps your team provides a
| platform which is used internally by several other teams
| building various products. It supports a bunch of use cases,
| but it 's hard to evaluate the actual ROI of the platform you
| provide, both because no one knows how much better/worse
| those products would have been without your platform. Would
| they have taken months longer to implement? Would they have
| not been possible _without_ spinning up a team like yours?
|
| Further, some of those products actually are used by paying
| customers, and others are still in development. Of the
| products used by paying customers, it's unclear which they
| would actually pay to use vs which they use because it's
| available in their subscription basket (e.g. is Dropbox Paper
| making money or is it just that some Dropbox customers use it
| but would pay the same sync subscription if Paper was
| killed?). Of the products that are not yet in customers
| hands, how should you value them? If your small team supports
| multiple in-development products, that must be worth
| _something_ even if they 're not revenue-producing yet.
|
| Similarly, suppose you're a manager who runs a team building
| a product which has dependencies on multiple platform/infra
| teams -- do you really have visibility into the real costs
| that your team's requests create? Can you really know the ROI
| of your team, to guide choices about various investments?
|
| This kind of ambiguity means that even when leadership
| _wants_ to see which teams are really contributing value and
| how much, it 's quite difficult to see. Teams may
| optimistically estimate their own value because they cannot
| see all of the costs to which they contribute, or because
| they cannot see which revenue-affiliated use is actually
| valuable.
| krisoft wrote:
| > What is management exactly doing during the time they went
| from 1 excess person to 500?
|
| It is usually not the case that these people are standing
| around and doing nothing. It is more that they are working on
| initiatives and projects which the company is discontinuing
| now.
|
| When the company has a lot of money investors expect them to
| spend some of it in finding new directions and opportunities.
| It's not all just spent on keeping the lights on, and the
| servers humming.
|
| If they don't do this people in 3 years will be asking "What
| has Dropbox been doing all these years?"
|
| If they are doing it right you are just amazed by the steady
| trickle of new features and services, and improvements which
| keep the company relevant in the years to come.
| lokar wrote:
| Also, factors like quality, maintainability, performance, etc
| are open ended and hard to measure. So teams tend to just
| keep improving them. Some amount is critical, some is
| important, some is nice to have and some is just excess.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Sometimes I think that tech world has been after "growth" for
| too long. Instead accepting that at some point companies are
| reasonably mature. After which they can do more incremental
| development with lot less head count growth.
| mateus1 wrote:
| That's such a naive take. For the past 5 years at least these
| layoffs are not about particular projects being discontinued
| or even improving the bottom line. This is about how people
| are expendable and their priority is investors.
| a0123 wrote:
| > Jokes aside, how do you end up having more than 500 excess
| people than what you need?
|
| There never is an excess amount of workers (sure, there
| probably are 4-5 exceptions). What happens is that they need
| those employees, but instead are going to demand that the
| employees that are left pick up the slack. Which they will
| because they need a roof over their head.
|
| Those companies are merely cutting costs, they don't _actually_
| have any excess employee.
| mikeweiss wrote:
| It's not black and white like this. There is such a thing as
| having to many employees and such a thing as having too
| little. I think realistically, most of the time, it's a mix.
| jumping_frog wrote:
| Maybe they developed all the features they thought were
| necessary and now can manage the features with less
| workforce.
| briandear wrote:
| Or they hire Accenture.
| bottom999mottob wrote:
| As a recent example, when you have "the great resignation" of
| 2021 turn into (in my view) "the great hiring" of 2021 followed
| by the Silicon Valley Bank collapse of 2023, it's obvious that
| hiring managers just follow what is trendy.
|
| Obviously past results do not guarantee future, but what the
| masses follow is generally a recipe to disaster. I think that's
| why we're seeing the return/visibility of stacked ranking.
| Management theorists see one successful company trive or a
| former successful company fall, and then everyone follows suite
| because they're "data driven," not driven by first principles
| artyom wrote:
| In my experience a lot of hiring in those big or publicly
| traded companies is to "build the structure to get promoted".
|
| When you're big, investors and banks and auditors don't like
| flat structures with a lot of individual contributors. A
| vertical structure is a must to go public. The rest is people
| playing the game they're forced into.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> In my experience a lot of hiring in those big or publicly
| traded companies is to "build the structure to get promoted".
| _
|
| This comment should be at the top. Not just at the top of the
| thread, but at the top of HN homepage.
|
| It's how during the pandemic many companies just suddenly
| doubled their headcount without any extra output in products
| or quality, and now we're seeing somewhat of a correction to
| that with all the layoffs.
|
| It's how you see people in tech hubs climb to the top of some
| large companies despite never having worked longer than a
| year at any company. Nothing against job hopping but I ask
| myself what skills and value people like that actually bring,
| who have 10x 1-year of experience, as they're never in a
| place long enough get to see the end results of their work
| and decisions, if they're good or bad, they barely pass the
| onboarding stage.
|
| It's also how many of these large orgs end up failing long
| term. Look at Intel now, or german auto makers, as the goal
| of each worker there becomes gaming the system to getting
| yourself a promotion at the cost of the org as a whole,
| instead of adding value to get a promotion, since the org is
| very bad at setting the right goals and incentives for the
| workers. Google and the like who have a monopoly with an
| impossible moat or an infinite money cheat can resist this
| enshitification much much longer than the rest of the
| companies.
|
| I'm not even mad, in the end most people are just playing the
| game, they don't get to write the rules of the game, and the
| ones who do are out of touch with reality so they can't be
| mad when people try to game it for their personal advantage.
| fakedang wrote:
| > When you're big, investors and banks and auditors don't
| like flat structures with a lot of individual contributors. A
| vertical structure is a must to go public. The rest is people
| playing the game they're forced into.
|
| Might be the first time I've heard this hot take out. What
| makes you think banks care what the org structure is for a
| public company? Banks don't care for size as long as the
| company is fiscally prudent and can prove it. They do check
| silly metrics sometimes like revenue per employee, but they
| really don't give a damn how your company is structured. By
| that metric, 2012 frat club Facebook wouldn't have been
| touched - yet they had like 10 investment banks frontrunning
| their book. In fact, I'd say 2012 Facebook IPO was the
| trigger for a lot of banks not caring about such silly
| things.
|
| As a counterpoint to your argument, there are 200-500
| employee biotechs not generating meaningful revenue that are
| trading publicly (and which went public without a SPAC play).
| The decision on who gets to go public falls on the exchange,
| not on the banks - they simply sell your stock to their
| investor list, and a flat structure with fewer than needed
| employees is actually a great selling point for a bank.
| bluedino wrote:
| Most companies have a bunch of people who are literally doing
| nothing.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Conversely, I also know folks where everyone is redlining in
| the org because they cut deep and folks who can leave are
| able to leave for equivalent or better roles. The market
| isn't great, but it isn't 1999-2000 or 2007-2009 either.
|
| If you want another job, make it a job to find it, and you
| will eventually find it.
| jsbg wrote:
| > Jokes aside, how do you end up having more than 500 excess
| people than what you need?
|
| If you bet on growth/new features but your current and future
| customer base are going out of business or downsizing and you
| have to switch to more of a survival strategy.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > 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?
|
| Well, part of the overhire spree was to prevent _other_
| companies from hiring the talent.
|
| IMHO, that's both disgusting and abusive.
| TechDebtDevin wrote:
| Labor = KPIs not People.
| flappyeagle wrote:
| how about you estimate a software project to within 20%
| accuracy? I've never seen it happen once for anything beyond
| the most trivial thing. have some humility buddy
| wslh wrote:
| > 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.
|
| But that view might oversimplify things from a business
| perspective, especially beyond the case of Dropbox.
|
| When a company has ample cash reserves, a common strategy is to
| leverage the opportunity cost. This can mean growing the team
| or investing in ventures with both planned and unplanned
| outcomes. Take Microsoft or Google, for instance: both have a
| long history of projects and acquisitions that might be
| considered failures, but these bets were possible because they
| had the resources to try, even if some failed to pay off. This
| approach acknowledges that some investments will succeed, while
| others are simply part of exploring new growth avenues.
|
| Time is the resource that you cannot recover.
| jeswin wrote:
| > Jokes aside, how do you end up having more than 500 excess
| people than what you need?
|
| Twitter fired 80% of their staff; and they've been releasing
| features faster than when they had 4x more people. I suppose
| work can expand to occupy whatever available headcount - nobody
| cares whether it's useful work or not.
| CharlieDigital wrote:
| What is a fiefdom without serfs?
| danity wrote:
| There is a tendency for managers at big tech companies to want
| to hire regardless of need and "build an empire", so they can
| then say on LinkedIn that they managed n number of people. Then
| they will move to another big tech company, rinse and repeat.
| At these companies, the more people you manage is translated by
| higher ups to responsibility and salary. There isn't much
| reward to keep a team small, focused, and efficient.
| ryandrake wrote:
| > Jokes aside, how do you end up having more than 500 excess
| people than what you need?
|
| This question always gets posted to HN, and is always the top
| comment whenever an article talks about how many people Company
| XYZ has. It seems like a lot of people just have never worked
| for a company that's growing (in terms of both profit and the
| amount of _stuff_ they are trying to do). Companies' need for
| people grows quadratically in proportion to the amount they are
| trying to do, not linearly. If it takes a staff of 20 to deal
| with 2 "units of work", it's going to take many more than 40 to
| deal with 4 units, more like 80. For 10 units of work, we're
| talking a staff of 500. You need all of these people to manage
| all of the growing internal network of complexity and yes
| bureaucracy that forms whenever you need to get people to work
| together. For every N people you hire, you'll need a manager to
| manage them, and for every N of those managers, you'll need a
| second level manager, and so on. You also start needing to
| actually deal with legal and regulatory compliance (rather than
| the yolo approach most startups take), you need to deal with HR
| and payroll for all these new people, you need to deal with
| power-of-2-scaling training and internal documentation needs.
| And all of those people you hire to do these things need their
| own managers and on and on and on.
|
| I've never seen a company successfully scale what they are
| trying to do without needing a ton of people. Maybe every
| company I've ever worked at is just inefficient but I don't
| believe it.
| faramarz wrote:
| And not to mention acquisitions come with their engineers,
| sales staff, support and management crew.
|
| The leadership should have been rebalancing yearly and
| quarterly in small chunks so they're not in a position like
| this. It's also a strategic play, while they come out with
| their major AI move next. That's my guess. Gotta satisfy that
| board somehow
| Y_Y wrote:
| > This question always gets posted to HN, and is always the
| top comment whenever an article talks about how many people
| Company XYZ has.
|
| Perhaps because there hasn't been a good answer yet.
|
| > For every N people you hire, you'll need a manager to
| manage them, and for every N of those managers, you'll need a
| second level manager, and so on.
|
| But clearly that's not absolutely necessary, because already
| we know that two uncoordinated companies can make 4 units
| with 20 staff each. If the second level manager isn't
| providing enough value in terms of eliminating duplicated
| work then they shouldn't be hired.
|
| Of course diminishing returns are going to set in, and
| bureaucratic inefficiency is a law of nature, but I see your
| answer as more shallow a dismissal than the question
| deserves.
| senko wrote:
| > Companies' need for people grows quadratically in
| proportion to the amount they are trying to do, not linearly.
|
| That's fine. The question the poster raises is how come they
| have 500 over the number of people they need, if the amount
| of work wasn't reduced.
|
| As a proxy for amount of work, we can take Dropbox revenue:
| https://stockanalysis.com/stocks/dbx/revenue/
|
| If those people were needed but now aren't, does this mean
| Dropbox plans to do less "units of work" and decrease its
| revenue?
|
| I think a more convincing argument is they overhired even
| when taking your argument into account.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Jokes aside, how do you end up having more than 500 excess
| people than what you need?
|
| Because circumstances change and evaluation of projections and
| optimal employment numbers under them change, and it's never
| optimal to hire enough people to actually assess that with
| minute-to-minute updates.
|
| > There's something to be said about spending within your
| limits and not splurging on the next shiny object.
|
| There _is_ something to be said for hiring and cutting slowly
| rather than rapidly in response to changing circumstances, and
| that is that, under the material incentives in a competitive
| capitalist economy, it is a poor strategy for a corporation.
|
| > Way back when it was called cost control and operating within
| a budget.
|
| Guess what happens quickly when you are good at operating
| within a budget and the projections on which the budget is
| based changed and so the budget changes going forward?
| alwayslikethis wrote:
| > how do you end up having more than 500 excess people than
| what you need
|
| The Law of Multiplication of Subordinates:
|
| > we must picture a civil servant called A who finds himself
| overworked. Whether this overwork is real or imaginary is
| immaterial; but we should observe, in passing, that A's
| sensation (or illusion) might easily result from his own
| decreasing energy--a normal symptom of middle-age. For this
| real or imagined overwork there are, broadly speaking, three
| possible remedies
|
| > (1) He may resign.
|
| > (2) He may ask to halve the work with a colleague called B.
|
| > (3) He may demand the assistance of two subordinates, to be
| called C and D.
|
| > There is probably no instance in civil service history of A
| choosing any but the third alternative. By resignation he would
| lose his pension rights. By having B appointed, on his own
| level in the hierarchy, he would merely bring in a rival for
| promotion to W's vacancy when W (at long last) retires. So A
| would rather have C and D, junior men, below him. They will add
| to his consequence; and, by dividing the work into two
| categories, as between C and D, he will have the merit of being
| the only man who comprehends them both.
|
| source: https://www.economist.com/news/1955/11/19/parkinsons-
| law
| corry wrote:
| Huh? It's obvious to almost everyone that Dropbox is in a tough
| position in that it's largely failed to expand its offering
| beyond the very original product and value prop, which is also
| being eroded by the other major players.
|
| So they attempted to use DB's position to leap-frog into new
| product categories, which require big spend on R&D and related
| teams, as well as new heads for supportive teams (sales,
| marketing, support, etc).
|
| It's not working, so they are pulling back and re-trenching.
|
| That all seems pretty transparently NOT a "having too much
| money" problem.
| ben_w wrote:
| > Jokes aside, how do you end up having more than 500 excess
| people than what you need?
|
| One of my dad's anecdotes, back when he was alive, was when he
| was interviewing someone for a job.
|
| "Why did you leave your last position?"
|
| "After six months, management noticed my entire floor was doing
| the same thing as the next floor."
| rsynnott wrote:
| > Jokes aside, how do you end up having more than 500 excess
| people than what you need?
|
| Often with this sort of thing, the company is essentially
| sacrificing future revenue to cut current costs; projects get
| delayed or cut, but, hey, the balance sheet looks better for a
| bit!
|
| The other reason it happens (and here the cuts would mostly be
| operational and sales) is if the company just isn't getting as
| many customers as it had expected.
| slightwinder wrote:
| > Jokes aside, how do you end up having more than 500 excess
| people than what you need?
|
| What you need can change over time. As I remember, Dropbox
| acquired a bunch of companies of the years, so maybe some of
| them originated from there. They also had many new products and
| tried to move into new directions, which probably also brought
| many new people.
| anon291 wrote:
| As a former engineering manager this is obvious, in my opinion.
| Companies don't really like laying people off and PIPs are long
| and require work. If someone is underperforming, hiring a new
| person is easier. Alternatively, instead of retraining someone,
| hiring a new person is easier, and you just keep the old guys
| around doing whatever. Plus, once in a while they might
| actually offer something (they typically are very knowledgeable
| about past decisions)
|
| Given how much money there is in these industries this strategy
| works for a long time.
|
| The alternative is a harsher work environment that is common in
| other fields. Despite the popular belief on this forum, tech
| work has some of the most genteel management of all industries.
| daft_pink wrote:
| i 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 wrote:
| this 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 wrote:
| PR-speak is the same everywhere. The audience for this is Wall
| St, not the general public.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Gotta 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 wrote:
| Because 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.
| teeray wrote:
| Responsibility would be the CEO also taking 4:1 odds on retaining
| his job.
| bhouston wrote:
| If 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 wrote:
| Slack 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 wrote:
| MS 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 wrote:
| What are they moving to, though? I can't imagine that Teams
| is any better.
| antonyt wrote:
| Teams and Google Chat. They're both incredibly bad compared
| to Slack. But if your org is on 365 or Workspace, you're
| already paying for them. Big orgs don't love double-paying,
| quality be damned.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Teams 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.
| trmanb wrote:
| Crowded 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-...
| magicalhippo wrote:
| _We'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 wrote:
| That's been the trend at many companies recently. Cut a middle
| layer and consolidate.
| GenerWork wrote:
| Per 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 wrote:
| For a software services company, that margin is pretty low.
| tschellenbach wrote:
| Google rule of 40
| GenerWork wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| I'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 wrote:
| It might be 500 middle managers which you can't do much with.
| elric wrote:
| It's not. And that's not a very nice take on something that's
| affecting 500 people (and their families).
| dylan604 wrote:
| But 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 wrote:
| I'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.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| > Both my parents stayed in the same job for their careers
|
| My father was the same, BUT.. this is an INCREDIBLY risky
| thing to do career-wise in the modern era. Given how much
| tech advances and that we actually face international
| competition that a lot of our boomer parents didn't during
| their career, I don't see really any going back either.
|
| Some of the worst layoff situations I've seen were guys who
| worked in the same company for 25 years.. long enough that
| their knowledge & skills was too company-specific, but not
| long enough to retire. Just because someone seems
| indispensable doesn't mean they are safe.
|
| Having to drain savings for 1-2 years jobless after a layoff
| in the last 10 years of your career and reset at a probably
| lower salary can set back your retirement 10 years.
| alluro2 wrote:
| Fully agreed - yet, we as a society consistently and
| systematically trade (or let "others" trade) much more
| critical aspects of life, such as quality of air, water, food
| etc. for short-term profits, even though that very often has
| no clear/direct positive impact on any other comparably
| valuable aspects of our lives.
|
| So it's no wonder that "some people losing their jobs and
| needing to move for a new one" is irrelevant, when the only
| goal is profit maximisation, even though we don't even
| understand what for.
| randomdata wrote:
| _> 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._
|
| The thing is, Dropbox is done (as in feature complete). Like
| when the construction of a building completes, many people
| are "laid off" because they aren't needed anymore. Yeah, you
| need to keep some people around for things like maintaining
| the building, but not to the scale of the original workforce
| required to build it.
|
| It is "good" that the excess labour is freed up to go work on
| the next "building". What may not be good is that the workers
| didn't think to associate with each other like construction
| workers do. Construction, being a much more mature industry,
| typically keeps a clear separation between the workers and
| the building so that then construction is done the entire
| excess group of people can be lifted on to the next project
| instead of all going their separate ways.
|
| Software will undoubtedly go that way eventually. But it is,
| in the grand scheme of things, still early days for it as an
| industry. We haven't yet learned the lessons that older
| industries have.
| whilenot-dev wrote:
| Software engineering, as profession, offers a very
| different kind of capacity compared to professions found in
| the construction industry, though. The physical resources
| for buildings are expensive and rare (land, material etc),
| whereas compute and storage are literally getting cheaper
| by the minute. The Silicon Valley dream of getting from
| garage to unicorn within months might be far from
| realistic, but still way more probable that in any other
| industry. Quick prototypes can be built in days and it
| isn't uncommon for graduates to finish their research with
| a viable business idea. I never seen that in my circle of
| architecture friends.
| jedberg wrote:
| Interesting insight about construction. I think you're
| right.
|
| We see this ad hoc in software now. When there is a mass
| layoff, someone will go get a new job, and then try to
| bring on all of their previous coworkers. Or a group will
| go off and start a startup which (if they're lucky) will
| get acquired and they get to keep working together.
|
| Which now makes me think, if you're a big company, maybe it
| behooves you to offer a highly functioning team a seed
| round instead of individual severances...
| asah wrote:
| As one friend put it, he "works for Silicon Valley Inc, <name
| of company> division."
| ramraj07 wrote:
| Often they target the lowest performers for such layoff. Of
| course they rarely succeed in doing that, but the idea is that
| these people should have been let go anyway but weren't for
| various reasons.
| _whiteCaps_ wrote:
| That hasn't been my experience. I usually see the senior
| people with higher salaries being laid off.
|
| At one company I worked at, a whole division got laid off
| because the director didn't like the manager of said
| division.
| beezlebroxxxxxx wrote:
| > Often they target the lowest performers for such layoff.
|
| In my experience, this is often an after-the-fact
| rationalization by people who "survive" layoffs to explain
| them, and a convenient justification by leadership for
| layoffs. If you've ever been in the room when layoffs are
| planned or discussed, the actual process is way more focused
| on blunt cost, personality of the people involved or on the
| chopping block, and is often practically a tossup considering
| "performance" is not really a clear or meaningful metric
| (actually, more often it's arbitrary for most companies ---
| they will find the metric they need to justify laying off
| someone). This phenomenon is greater the bigger the company
| and the more abstracted managers and leadership are from
| their lower level employees.
| sgerenser wrote:
| In many cases it can actually be inversely proportional to
| performance, since the one factor they can count in black
| and white is how much the person costs. Laying off someone
| making a TC of $500K probably feels like you're saving the
| company a lot of money, but its also possible the reason
| they were making that much is because they were more than
| twice as productive/valuable as the person making $250K.
| But salary and benefits are easy to quantify, and
| performance is not.
| RivieraKid wrote:
| Those employees were costing more than the value they were
| creating.
|
| If the marginal product of labor is lower than the marginal
| cost of labor, the company should reduce headcount. If higher,
| the company should increase headcount.
| hmmm-i-wonder wrote:
| Arguably the value they were creating was influenced by the
| direction and application that labor was directed at.
| Redirecting that available labor at something more valuable
| would fix that as well wouldn't it?
| beezlebroxxxxxx wrote:
| > direction and application that labor was directed at
|
| That would require leadership to take a hard look at the
| value _they_ bring to the table as well.
|
| It's a lot easier to just lay people off than do that
| though, conveniently.
| RivieraKid wrote:
| Yes, if there is something more valuable to redirect the
| labor to and my intuition is that there is not, I mean not
| in the Dropbox business.
|
| 2640 employees seems like a ridiculous number for a company
| like Dropbox. I work at a company that's about half of that
| and you wouldn't believe how many different services this
| company runs and I still think there's a lot of
| inefficiency.
| vundercind wrote:
| That is the current orthodoxy, yes.
|
| Whether _in the long term_ this is net-beneficial for a given
| actor in the typical case, is at best unclear. This marginal-
| labor-cost /benefit-in-a-given-moment accounting misses a
| large proportion of the harmful effects of a layoff.
|
| When a bunch of companies in one sector do it, it does lower
| wages and reduce labor power to e.g. demand better working
| conditions. That part, is a benefit for companies. But it's
| not the result of one company doing what's best for their
| particular situation--it's a result of coordination, even if
| only by the understanding that "this is what you do, when
| there's an excuse to, and especially when you see others
| doing it". It's merely _best practice_ then, not...
| collusion.
| MrHamburger wrote:
| It is basically showing that company is out of ideas, so only
| thing which they mange to do now is bean counting.
| ericmcer wrote:
| It always seemed common sense to me that once a piece of
| software became stable and profitable you would need a much
| smaller engineering staff than when it was being built. The
| opposite seems to happens and orgs 10X their engineer headcount
| once they start making money.
|
| It makes sense to keep some high performers and a few
| redundancies to stabilize/modernize it and make small
| improvements, but it feels like tech got really bloated with
| these massive corps who were trying to burn as much as they
| could to keep all the VC money flowing. Take like Uber having a
| team that built and maintained a chat app just for internal
| use, and every single big org having a bunch of teams
| responsible for various "some_dumb_name" that is the "custom X
| for 'Y'" where smaller teams just use the OS solutions to those
| problems.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _once a piece of software became stable and profitable you
| would need a much smaller engineering staff than when it was
| being built_
|
| This is not generally the case, except in monopoly
| situations.
|
| Your software product generally has a competitor, and they're
| busy trying to make theirs better than yours -- whether with
| more features, better integrations, whatever it is.
|
| So your staff size generally stays about the same in order to
| build more features desired by customers to prevent customers
| from switching to your competitor and you go out of business.
| And certain features, by themselves, can be more complex than
| the entire v1 of a product. And/or involve massive
| refactoring, etc.
|
| The companies that get to reduce their team size are often
| because they're in a monopoly position, and then customers
| suffer because the software gets stagnant and the features
| they need don't get built. That's capitalism failing.
|
| Also, something like an internal chat app isn't always a bad
| decision. If your company is above a certain size headcount,
| it can literally be cheaper to build small tools than to
| license them. Especially when you can more deeply customize
| and integrate them, which you often simply can't with off-
| the-shelf software.
| randomdata wrote:
| _> Your software product generally has a competitor, and
| they 're busy trying to make theirs better than yours_
|
| Unless you are selling a commodity. There is a good case to
| be made that what Dropbox sells is a commodity.
|
| _> That 's capitalism failing._
|
| That's government failing.
|
| 1. You can't dig the moats necessary to establish a
| monopoly without regulation to support it.
|
| 2. If/when the government screws up, the onus is on it to
| fix the problem before the situation gets out of hand.
| smileson2 wrote:
| For real, at some point running development and product teams
| cracking on features for no reason is a real negative
|
| software can generally be 'done' in the same way building a
| skyscraper can be
| InkCanon wrote:
| The present value of your org is your old products, all
| futures gains are from _new_ products. The tech industry is
| littered with tombstones of companies that sat coasted on the
| success of an older product. Conversely there 's a
| fascinating habit of really smart people in the right
| environment (Google, Bell Labs, Xerox PARC etc) to create
| things of enormous value. Things that were just a side
| project include AWS, Slack, the transistor and transformer
| architecture. All these companies are really trying to be
| incubators for the next 100x thing.
| majani wrote:
| What you are talking of is only possible in companies where
| the founder didn't take VC investment. Once you take VC
| money, you get on the treadmill of infinite growth to satisfy
| investors. That makes companies do strange things in pursuit
| of this impossible goal. Like hiring for the sake of showing
| growth in headcount, hiring people to branch into unrelated
| verticals, hiring people with big resumes just to say you
| have them on the team etc
| crabbone wrote:
| Why not? Some companies do try this. It rarely succeeds though.
| The reason is that re-education en-masse, restructuring of the
| chain of command, re-allocation of resources are hard. Most
| businesses at some point enter the phase where the inertia is
| the strongest driving force: they only need to apply a tiny
| fraction of initial force to keep the lights on. At this point,
| trying to restructure is bound to be very hard.
|
| Maybe, if the company can foresee and realistically assess the
| problems it's about to face, it may gradually prepare for the
| transition. I've seen this happen at my friend's job at Dell
| storage division: some storage product failed, they tried to
| reshuffle the teams to start working on something else, with
| some code reuse from the previous one. It still didn't go well,
| and a lot of people were still let go (because the initial
| effort of developing a new product cannot really accommodate an
| army of various kinds of extra personal that's necessary for
| mature product). They sort-of survived, but with a huge loss.
| Hilift wrote:
| Remember Better, the mortgage company? They were briefly
| notable for laying off 900 people on a Zoom call. However, no-
| one asked why a re-envisioned mortgage application/process was
| failing in the best possible market. My opinion is Dropbox most
| valuable commodity is the millions of Windows PCs with a system
| level scheduled task that is vulnerable to "hijacking"...
| basically they are a data stream.
| kshahkshah wrote:
| It was not failing in the best possible market. Better was a
| successful lender for mortgage refinancing. Better struggled
| to establish itself within the purchase market which has far
| more complex relationships.
| sgerenser wrote:
| And once 30-year mortgage rates got to 5% or higher, the
| refinancing market basically dried up. Without much of a
| purchase mortgage business they basically had no business,
| regardless of how much _better_ their technology was.
| beezlebroxxxxxx wrote:
| > 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?
|
| I think a lot of the low hanging fruit in tech has been eaten
| up, bought up and consolidated, or actually was recognized as
| much more difficult and expensive than they actually thought.
| The leadership talent and vision in a lot of these companies is
| also painfully lacking. In short, to answer your last question:
| probably not. And I think they're terrified that Wall Street is
| going to notice.
| aylmao wrote:
| I agree with both comments. ~500 can surely build some
| amazing tech, smaller teams have done more. I personally do
| think there's still a lot of relatively low-hanging fruit
| left, especially with the boom of possibilities due to AI, or
| simply what one can do with modern CPU/GPU performance, new
| browser APIs, modern tech factors, etc.
|
| I also do agree and think leadership talent and vision in a
| lot tech companies is painfully lacking. This are the
| companies that could burn some money and use their wedge in
| the market to build some really cool things, but they wont. I
| guess to some degree, ironically, the money they're making
| might be part of the problem.
| qwe----3 wrote:
| Not everyone is the type of person that can build a new
| product from scratch..., I bet the majority of the 500
| aren't that type
| InkCanon wrote:
| The "exhausted low hanging fruit" model IMO has been wrong
| since the industrial revolution. The fundamental problem is
| it's based on the heuristic of fixed demand + technology
| saturating the demand. It's really the opposite - technology
| is an ever expanding fractal, and the larger the surface
| area, the more things are needed. For example compilers are
| having a huge boom now because hardware is increasingly
| performance demanding and heterogeneous.
| jltsiren wrote:
| It's easy to find new uses for technology. The hard part is
| turning the new idea into a commercially viable product.
| And it's even harder to find a business model that doesn't
| destroy the product in the long term.
|
| The whole is often more than the sum of its parts. A
| company is not just a bunch of people, but it's also the
| company culture and the established ways of doing things.
| It's common that a company can't make something work, but
| the same people in another company could, because they can
| organize their labor in a different way.
|
| Software development is often an investment. Hiring a
| developer is often an investment. Most companies eventually
| reach the point, where the rate of investment slows down
| and the company chooses to return the profits to the
| shareholders. When the company no longer believes that it
| can invest the money more profitably than the shareholders
| could, it's rational to lay off people working in R&D and
| use the profits for dividends or buybacks.
| slightwinder wrote:
| Every new product or market usually also needs additional
| investments, maybe even new workers with relevant domain
| knowledge. And Dropbox did try new products and markets, but
| what if it's not working out? Should they continue until money
| runs out?
|
| And some interesting part of this announcement is the
| mentioning of the grown overcomplex management. This kinda
| smells of some shrinking for health-benefits. For some reason
| or another, they grew into a wrong direction, and maybe now
| remove the unhealthy parts to be able to operate better.
| jayd16 wrote:
| What's the alternative? Busy work and shrinking equity value
| until things turn around or I get a much more abrupt layoff?
|
| I think I prefer the severance, the full disclosure, the
| opportunity to find another job and the possibility to keep
| teams together at a new thing.
| elric wrote:
| It may well be that there is no alternative. Maybe Dropbox
| did try everything, maybe tried to let those 500 people work
| on producing different products or on finding other sources
| of income, I don't know. And I get that it's important for a
| business to keep itself afloat. But it's a recurring
| phenomenon in larger tech companies that I find puzzling.
|
| Many of the answers in this thread have been perfectly
| reasonable. And I'm probably kidding myself when I think that
| "if I were that CEO, I'd do things differently".
| anon291 wrote:
| The company could put them to some use, or they could get
| capital and launch their own ventures. It's equivalent from a
| market perspective, except the one you suggest requires
| unnecessary coercion (forcing the employees to work on
| something they may not have signed up for).
|
| At the end of the day, the american market place is
| distinguished in that venture capital, especially in tech, is
| very accessible. Being laid off seems to be a bonus in the hunt
| for VC money.
|
| It's the same reason companies return dividends. Sure, they
| _could_ use the money for R &D and launching a new product, or
| they could send the money to investors so that they can scour
| the marketplace for a new technology of their own choosing for
| investment. The first one unnecessarily takes investor money
| for a project they may not have signed up for, whereas the
| former maximizes their freedom to invest in what they find
| interesting
| ac29 wrote:
| > I'm always a bit confused by profitable companies with
| (presumably) large reserves laying off lots of people.
|
| According to their financial statement, Dropbox has more
| liabilities than assets. So yes, they have a large cash
| reserve, but with an even larger debt offsetting it its hard to
| argue they are in a good overall financial position.
| ilamont wrote:
| > A new product, a new market, a spinoff.
|
| Five or 10 years ago, they were doing a lot of this. Dropbox
| Paper ("a collaborative online workspace that allows you to
| create, share, and edit documents and notes with your team")
| for one. It's still active but it never took off. I was just
| notified that there is some sort of migration taking place
| which is probably related to the RIF.
| bsimpson wrote:
| They also bought that indie email app that was a peer of
| Inbox.
|
| Neither exists anymore.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Interestingly enough, I once worked at a company that saw how
| huge amounts of money could be made taking the exact opposite
| approach.
|
| This all came about because this company had built a couple of
| hugely successful, and profitable, enterprise software
| products. So this company then decided to plow a ton of money
| into building out other products. The company was also pretty
| famous for having a high employee bar, and their college
| recruiting process was kind of legendary for attracting top CS
| and other tech grads.
|
| However, this company discovered that building follow on
| successful products, even with lots of really smart people, is
| _extremely_ difficult. As a not-perfect analogy, think of all
| the "one hit wonders" out there in the music industry. Beyond
| those one hit wonders, the vast majority of the rest are
| basically two hit wonders. Point being, once you've built a
| really successful product, even if you have tons of smart
| people, there is no guarantee that plowing money into another
| product will give you a positive ROI.
|
| So this company realized this, and then saw there were a lot of
| other small-to-midsize software companies who were similar:
| they had one or two really successful products, but then were
| trying to use money from that to expand and grow into other
| areas, usually with little or no success. So this original
| company pivoted their business model: they went out to buy
| these "one hit wonder" software companies, immediately stopped
| any investment into other products, laid off as many people as
| possible and outsourced the operations and maintenance of the
| few successful products to low-cost locales (at the time, India
| and China) and then essentially just milked the subscription
| revenue until the product slowly petered out. That is, they
| weren't really investing in big new features in the product,
| but the product had a lot of existing customers who didn't (or
| couldn't) move off of it right away, so often they had at least
| a couple years of milking the existing revenue dry. I called it
| "the world's most successful and depressing business model".
|
| My overall point in telling this story is that when you ask
| "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?", that often times the answer is "Correct!" People tend
| to underestimate how difficult it is to build successful
| products, even if you've already knocked one out of the park.
| bsimpson wrote:
| "Killed by Google" has a similar problem.
|
| Google has killed products that could be entire companies if
| they weren't attached to the Search Ads firehose.
|
| A $100 dinner could be an annual splurge if you're making
| minimum wage, and an arbitrary Tuesday if you have a quarter
| million dollar salary.
|
| Executives think the same way about revenue streams. When
| they have one product that makes $$$$$ in revenue, they think
| "not worth my time" to consider another that makes $$. Really
| frustrating for the people making and using the lower revenue
| product, but it's why Google feels like a "billion users or
| bust" company.
| sgerenser wrote:
| Was the company Computer Associates (now part of the Broadcom
| conglomerate)? Sounds exactly like their playbook.
| Seattle3503 wrote:
| My guess is Oracle.
| monero-xmr wrote:
| It's better for cash cow companies to acquire startups with
| PMF and real revenues. Let the market experiment and then pay
| for the successes. Investors and founders win, the company
| doesn't waste it pretending to be a startup. Any other cash
| should be returned in dividends or buy backs.
| teqsun wrote:
| Was this Insight Software? I usually wouldn't ask since you
| didn't volunteer the name, but seeing as throwaway is in your
| username I'd figured I'd ask.
| nitwit005 wrote:
| I had a product manager at Salesforce tell me he went around
| trying to build support for a new reporting product. He was
| eventually taken aside by some coworker and told they don't
| build new products at Salesforce, and bought companies instead.
|
| And they did indeed later buy multiple companies, including
| Tableau, in that space.
| GrumpyYoungMan wrote:
| Which can make business sense if you take into account both
| the probability of the project failing to deliver a
| competitive product (always high no matter how slick the
| pitch deck is) and the probability that it gets no traction
| in the marketplace even if it is as good as the competition.
| Buying an existing successful product and its customer base
| can be much lower risk even if it is the more expensive
| route.
| Ray20 wrote:
| >bunch of talented people
|
| Very bold assumption
| marcosdumay wrote:
| It absolutely says a company is done innovating, and shouldn't
| expect any large growth from now on.
|
| And somehow, the P/E of its stock almost always increases...
| Forcing it to double down on growth, that it can't do anymore.
|
| Corporation governance is broken nowadays.
| kermatt wrote:
| Companies become myopic past a certain stage.
|
| New products take time to mature into revenue generating
| things.
|
| Cost savings from layoffs are immediate.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Dropbox was barely cash-flow positive (basically meaning
| profitable excluding equity compensation) when it had its IPO.
| It's been having trouble expanding from the consumer space into
| the business space, and I wouldn't be surprised if its profits
| are slim.
|
| Also, they've repeatedly tried to create new products.
| Carousel, Mailbox, and others. Dropbox has had little to no
| success outside of its core business. While it does that core
| business very well, it has stiff competition, and the market
| seems to be already tapped out.
| quitit wrote:
| I feel like leadership and vision are lacking at DropBox, so
| they don't have any good ideas of what to do with the staff
| they've got. They should be exploring new opportunities which
| leverage the skillset of their existing employees, this would
| diversify them from the effects of OneDrive and GDrive.
|
| For example with AI alone we've seen an incredible number of
| new file services dedicated to just serving models, and DropBox
| has totally ignored that need.
|
| Instead they regularly add bitsy, poorly implemented, "us too"
| features to DropBox which adds friction to common workflows -
| then provide no way to customise these features away for people
| who do not want them.
|
| Perhaps to them they see this as evolving the product and
| keeping it relevant, but their approach doesn't address why
| Google and Microsoft are eating their lunch, nor does it take
| their eggs out of one basket.
| switch007 wrote:
| I expect to see more of this as companies see their disappointing
| revenue projections as we approach a common end of FY.
| GiorgioG wrote:
| Spineless executives with their corp speak - they're layoffs.
| colesantiago wrote:
| It 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 wrote:
| Just plain capitalism. They hire fast when everyone else is doing
| it and shedding workers when doing so is the norm.
| Phil_Latio wrote:
| So 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 wrote:
| People 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 wrote:
| Kind 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 wrote:
| > 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.
| seunosewa wrote:
| I'm sure that they did their research before making the big
| move.
| echoangle wrote:
| What kind of argument is that? Everyone does their
| research, that doesn't mean there aren't bad (and even
| stupid) choices made.
| galactus wrote:
| Good lord, the number of people defending the poor poor CEO is
| staggering. Do people have any idea of how much CEOs pay has
| skyrocketed in the last decades in the US?
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| He 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 wrote:
| I 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).
| nemo44x wrote:
| This 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 wrote:
| and 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 wrote:
| This 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 wrote:
| You know what's better than a great severance plan? Keeping
| your job.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Not 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-...
| MeetingsBrowser wrote:
| The 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 wrote:
| Most employees can as well - IFF you move to different
| companies.
| MeetingsBrowser wrote:
| I think its tough to argue that getting laid off is a
| net-benefit for your career most of the time.
| John_Cena wrote:
| Yeah I end up with like twice the salary, but the job
| search is always the worst parts of my life.
| gcr wrote:
| You can't be serious. This package sucks specifically because
| of the healthcare.
|
| Industry standard is to offer 18 months of COBRA, not 6. Job
| searches frequently take way longer than that.
|
| COBRA is a huge deal for departing employees. My single largest
| expense is health insurance for my partner and I, more so than
| even rent.
| 7thpower wrote:
| It is a great deal. The core demographic of HN has been very
| fortunate and does not understand what the norm across
| industries is.
| coding123 wrote:
| Should companies reduce salaries instead?
| kraig911 wrote:
| Dropbox 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.
| NKosmatos wrote:
| Exactly!!! 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 wrote:
| you're not a target customer anymore.
|
| they need $$$ from enterprise, everything else is a
| distraction.
| HEmanZ wrote:
| OneDrive/Google can afford to take a loss on you, they are
| effectively selling you storage at a loss. Dropbox can not do
| this.
| sk11001 wrote:
| Steve Jobs was right - Dropbox is a feature, not a product.
| karaterobot wrote:
| It's been a product for 17 years.
| JAlexoid wrote:
| Not when your competition are consumer companies like
| Google, Microsoft and Apple.
|
| I'm on Google One at $100 per year, getting more services
| than Dropbox can offer with their $120 plan.
|
| Maybe they have a future in enterprise sales, but they are
| outcompeted even by Zoho in consumer space
| karaterobot wrote:
| I'm responding to the person who quoted Steve Jobs by
| saying Dropbox isn't a product, it's a feature. 17 years
| is a really long time on the web, and Dropbox has not
| only been a product, but a successful publicly traded
| company for most of that time, during which so many other
| "real" products have risen and fallen. The fact that you
| subscribe to Google One doesn't tell me anything, except
| that Google created a product to compete with Dropbox,
| which is also a product.
| onion2k wrote:
| A feature of _what_? Surely Jobs didn 't expect a feature of
| Windows, OSX, Android, Linux, and ChromeOS to all seamlessly
| interact with one another.
|
| I don't doubt that Jobs might have seen Dropbox as a feature
| that Apple could have implemented across the Apple ecosystem,
| but that's a pretty limited view of where the value of
| Dropbox lies.
| ghusto wrote:
| It's a product that I was willing to pay for (until I
| required native E2E encryption). _iCloud Drive_ is a feature,
| mostly -- aside from the fact that you still have to pay for
| it to be useful, so kind of still a product.
|
| Steve Jobs was wrong about many things, and this was one of
| them.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| People bring up the old naysaying comment about DropBox from
| some HN user years ago like it was a bad comment.
|
| Maybe people like bad products, and make bad products rich
| all the time?
|
| You can make a good product and go out of business, sometimes
| through actually no fault of your own too.
|
| I agree, Dropbox is a feature - and it shouldn't be a
| product.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| I left Dropbox when they added (and preemptively enabled) a
| checkbox that shared your data with them for AI training. I
| _refuse_ to do business with a company that will just
| unilaterally invade my privacy like that. They can make it as
| cheap as they want, I 'll never go back.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Selling data is always the last play for all businesses that
| have data.
|
| Either you never give it to them in a way that can be sold
| (e.g. fully encrypted), or you expect them to sell it when
| the leaders need to increase cash flow.
| jjnoakes wrote:
| Citation please, about Dropbox training models with customer
| data?
| Lammy wrote:
| I think this is what people are talking about? RE:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38684252
|
| https://help.dropbox.com/view-edit/privacy-settings-
| dropbox-...
|
| > "For eligible accounts, [...] The Third-party AI toggle
| is turned on"
|
| I just logged in and checked and don't have the "Third-
| Party AI features" tab, but I only have an old free account
| and am probably not at the tier where this appears.
| jjnoakes wrote:
| That feature doesn't train the model on customer's data
| though, unless I'm missing something.
|
| I agree it's annoying it was enabled by default in
| places, but I'm trying to either correct the incorrect
| "for AI training" part, or find a citation that shows
| they are actually doing AI training with it.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| The article Lammy linked is indeed the correct one. When
| that bit of news came out I checked my account, and it
| turned out that Dropbox had added and enabled the toggle
| without my consent. I was a paying customer mind you, I
| paid like $120/yr for my storage. After they pulled that
| crap I started working on setting up Nextcloud hosted in a
| VPS. It's more expensive, but Dropbox permanently burned my
| trust when they did what they did.
| talldayo wrote:
| Funny how Hacker News spent the past 15 years laughing at
| anyone questioning the viability of Dropbox as a business, but
| then after two years in a down market half the site is begging
| them to be cheap again.
|
| What's the matter? You like the sound of that crusty, slow
| Linux NAS that this site has derided for years?
| mock-possum wrote:
| I 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.
| andygcook wrote:
| For 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-...
|
| 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 wrote:
| The 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 wrote:
| > 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.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Agreed. "Industry standard is to offer 18 months"!! Please
| let me know this industry, because it ain't tech where I
| live!
| pc86 wrote:
| It's not any industry anywhere. Any layoff thread on HN
| is people saying what they wish things were but framing
| it as "this is how everyone else does it this one company
| is being greedy" when it's not the case 99% of the time.
| cruffle_duffle wrote:
| > COBRA is the single largest expense for departing
| employees.
|
| Life pro tip: Do not use COBRA!!!!! It is almost always much,
| much cheaper to find an ACA compliant healthcare plan on your
| state's health insurance market. For one thing the plans will
| often be cheaper (though with fewer features). For another
| ACA plans qualify for tax credits, etc and COBRA doesn't.
|
| When I got laid off I made one of the worst financial
| mistakes of my life keeping my employer's high-deductible
| plan via COBRA. I stupidly figured it had to somehow still
| work out to be cheaper than shopping for private insurance.
| Boy was I wrong! Between the "high deductible" part and the
| fact the plan wasn't able to qualify for tax credits I
| overpaid my medical expenses by about $10,000 over the course
| of a year. Had I gone with even a "bronze" level ACA
| compliant plan that would have been cash in my pocket that
| would have helped out a lot while I was looking for work.
|
| The big reason was my medication was like $800/mo. And on my
| employer's plan once I hit my $3500 deductible it went to
| $0/mo. This wasn't a problem when my former employer picked
| up most of the insurance premium for my high deductible plan
| but with COBRA you are paying the entire premium! And for my
| use case, medication was my top medical expense so I was
| paying a hefty premium for a fancy health plan that didn't
| actually cover my expenses.
|
| A "regular deductible" ACA plan would have made much more
| sense in my unemployed scenario as the premium was not only
| lower but the medication was generic and would have only been
| like a $23 copay!
|
| Always, always bust out Excel and compare the full cost of
| healthcare on different plans. Compute the total cost of your
| medications, how & when you'll hit things like your
| deductible, what tax credits & deductions apply, etc. What
| made rational financial sense while employed might not make
| sense when unemployed or buying your own health plan. But you
| have to find out for yourself. Rarely does it make sense to
| continue paying your employers health plan via COBRA. After
| loosing your job you have like a 30 day window to switch
| plans before you will be locked into your COBRA plan for the
| remainder of the year -- do not dilly dally around, figure it
| out now!
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| COBRA can be good if you are on a platinum plan and have a
| lot of foreseeable health expenses. HDHP COBRA makes no
| sense at all.
| anon291 wrote:
| Please check though, because my kids qualified for
| medicaid despite my six-figure income. The state of
| Oregon qualifies by week, so even if you made $10 million
| / year, if your expected income in the week is $0, you
| qualify for that week (yes, I literally asked them this
| question, and he said yes, that is how it works).
| According to our DHS, there is no upper limit on yearly
| income that would mandate a clawback of benefits
| received[1] . And in Oregon at least, OHP is accepted
| everywhere, and is usually better than the platinum plans
| (no payments taken from users, ever)
|
| [1] As another example, I asked if I didn't work Jan -
| Nov, and then made $10 million in December, would my kids
| qualify for mediacid Jan - Nov, and he said yes.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| That is interesting to know, and does seem to be true if
| that $10 million is the lottery and is truly random
| income and is truly instantaneous. If you are working on
| a company that you sell, it may not be the case.
| anon291 wrote:
| that is not what I was told. I bluntly pointed out that I
| expected to make good money that year despite being laid
| off (and I did), and he said it did not matter, since I
| was unemployed, my expectation for the current week was
| zero. It has nothing to do with whether you have a lotto
| ticket or a company exit.
|
| Although obviously if you're working at your company, you
| are not unemployed and do not have zero income
| expectation.
| wmfiv wrote:
| Please look at your individual situation and don't take
| this suggestion blindly. If you've already contributed
| significantly to your deductible or out-of-pocket maximum
| it can definitely make sense to continue with COBRA.
|
| Also you can game the COBRA enrollment window. You have 60
| days from your loss of coverage to elect COBRA and once you
| elect COBRA you have another 45 days to submit payment. You
| can elect on the 59th/60th day and then pay 45 days later
| if you ended up needing the coverage. If you don't need the
| coverage don't pay.
| cruffle_duffle wrote:
| > Please look at your individual situation and don't take
| this suggestion blindly.
|
| Exactly. The message here is it is incredibly important
| to re-evaluate your healthcare plan. Every household is
| going to be different! Bust out excel and crunch the
| numbers.
| anon291 wrote:
| Forget ACA compliant health plans. When I was laid off,
| since my income / week was $0 (Oregon), we just got
| medicaid for my kids, and pregnant wife, and I paid an
| extremely modest amount for a solid plan. There is no
| reason to use COBRA. It's a relic and probably should be
| done away with.
| cruffle_duffle wrote:
| > It's a relic and probably should be done away with.
|
| This is the conclusion I came away with as well. It made
| sense back before there was the public health insurance
| marketplace.
|
| ...but I tell you what there was nobody out there who
| told me "hey, revisit your health insurance" and it cost
| me a non-trivial amount of real money to learn that
| lesson!
| anon291 wrote:
| My advice is to simply go on Medicaid.
|
| When I was laid off in 2023, my mom and aunt told me to go on
| Medicaid. I thought it was a bit ridiculous since I had
| already made well above the poverty line, and was planning on
| still pulling in a substantial amount in the same year
| despite the lay off (I was laid off in January). I was going
| to pay several thousand a month for COBRA, and I thought my
| mom and aunt were crazy, since they are the sort to claim
| everyone's using welfare (my aunt retired early and is on
| medicaid, since her income is zero, so I guess she has some
| evidence to support her claim).
|
| Anyway, so I did look into it mainly for the 'I told you so'
| aspect, to 'prove' to her that the social safety net did not
| exist as she imagined it.
|
| However, to my surprise, it did, and within an hour of
| filling in the form online, I got free medicaid for my kids,
| and highly subsidized marketplace plans for my wife and I. In
| my state, medicaid eligibility is based on expected income /
| week. According to the man on the line from the state, even
| if I did end up making more, since my expected income was $0
| (being unemployed), I still qualified! My wife's premium /
| month was like $100 (she was pregnant so qualified for more).
|
| I did tell several colleagues about this, but they didn't
| believe me and forked over thousands of dollars.
|
| In my state, medicaid is superior to my old PPO plan. For
| one, there is no co-pay and my daughter ended up needing
| major orthopedic intervention (severed finger) and we paid $0
| out of a total cost of $150k. Although you're assigned a
| doctor, it's still essentially a PPO plan (you can see
| whomever you want whenever you wanted, so we stuck with our
| old doctors).
|
| So, please avail yourself of the very safety net you pay for.
| COBRA is basically always a bad deal. There is almost
| certainly a subsidized plan out there for you. There's a
| pervasive myth that the social safety net doesn't exist in
| the USA and I almost lost $10k (or more with my daughter's
| incident) because I didn't do the obvious. I also learned
| that should I ever want to leave my job to start a business,
| I honestly really don't need to worry about health insurance.
| grepfru_it wrote:
| That's actually a pretty low salary but I just looked up their
| revenue numbers and it's not looking that hot. They are also
| hemorrhaging cash this year. His salary and the performance of
| the company were probably a good foreshadowing of the layoffs
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| > His salary and the performance of the company were probably
| a good foreshadowing of the layoffs
|
| As is standard. My recommendation to anyone that works in a
| corporate environment is that if you want to know whether the
| company will be at risk of layoffs in the future, become good
| friends with someone in sales. When the sales leads and
| activity start to drop (or growth rate starts to slow), you
| can usually be assured that layoffs will eventually follow.
| In my experience the sales folks were always the first to
| clean up their resumes and start the job hunt because they
| knew what was coming.
| bhouston wrote:
| > Drew Houston's total compensation for the year in 2023 was
| $1.5M
|
| That is insanely low for the CEO of a public company of
| Dropbox's size. But I suspect he owned a lot of shares in the
| company so when it went public, so he doesn't need salary, it
| is just a rounding error in terms of his wealth.
|
| EDIT: Yeah, he is worth $2B according to Forbes:
| https://www.forbes.com/profile/drew-houston/
| echoangle wrote:
| I always wonder what gives these people the drive to
| continue. Maybe I'm lazy and lacking vision but if I were
| worth 2B, I don't think I would go to the office every day
| just to get accused of mismanagement when I have to lay
| people off. I would take my yacht to the Caribbean and slack
| off.
| pc86 wrote:
| Some people do exactly that but it's rare that someone will
| simultaneously have the drive to do something that will
| generate them _billions_ of dollars and also be willing or
| able to just stop working at that point.
|
| Also remember once you have that much money a lot of things
| become basically free, both figuratively ($100,000 to a
| billionaire is nothing) and literally (comped rooms, gifts,
| etc for basically every event and your company(ies) end up
| footing the bill for most of your expenses).
|
| There's plenty of people who make $5-50 million in a
| windfall and are never heard from again.
| echoangle wrote:
| True, it's probably that this drive is what allowed them
| to be billionaires in the first place.
|
| Just to rant a bit more: the Wordpress situation makes
| this point even more crazy to me. Mullenweg has about
| 400m and instead of retiring and enjoying life, he's
| arguing with anonymous users on Hacker News. No offense
| against hacker news but defending my life decisions on HN
| isn't exactly the first thing I would do if I could do
| everything I ever wanted. Like, go buy a plane and take
| flying lessons, or go scuba diving? Nah, I'd rather
| justify myself on the internet.
| 0xfeba wrote:
| hey gotta do something on the toilet
| randomdata wrote:
| I expect a lot of people with that kind of money can't
| enjoy life as it disconnects them from everyone else.
| Your friends can't afford to do those things with you, so
| you either end up buying friends - with all the
| disillusionment that goes with that - or you turn away
| from people and get your fix trolling computers instead.
| CrimsonCape wrote:
| The internet is a direct pipe to every person on earth.
| You have to acknowledge that this is new territory for
| humankind.
|
| In fact, internet communication is much closer to dark-
| age "public square" type communication. Bring your
| soapbox to the square, talk loudly, gather a crowd, and
| listen to the crowd jeer or clap. We haven't had that
| since the industrial revolution pre-1800s (i.e. at the
| earliest 1700s)
|
| For the forseeable future, we are in a situation where
| people will "feel" that the most authentic communication
| is intentionally said in-front of the internet
| bystanders. So a CEO posting an intimate reply to an
| individual with billions of people able to see the
| intimate reply is more "authentic" than everything else.
|
| (Much closer to dark-age communication implies that we
| are closer to "old" methods of communication that
| disappeared for the last couple of centuries. We used to
| have industrial revolution-type communication medium,
| one-direction broadcast medium.)
| jnwatson wrote:
| Even if he still wants to work, restructuring a second tier
| post-growth tech company wouldn't be my first choice.
| spacebanana7 wrote:
| Yeah I figure a long shot deep tech project would be
| better suited to a billionaire. Little to no
| accountability for the first decade or so, and loads of
| glory if it somehow works out.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Yeah but if you were worth $10m, $100m, $250m, would you
| take it easy? If you would, then you wouldn't get to $2b.
| echoangle wrote:
| I got from the other comments that he got the 2B by
| owning part of the now very valuable company, not by
| working for a salary. Assuming he picked a good enough
| successor that didn't completely ruin Dropbox, he should
| still have pretty much the same net worth without any
| work, no?
| JAlexoid wrote:
| Your presumption is that it's about the money for
| everyone.
|
| But there's a lot more at play when you are rich enough
| to not worry about money.
| skellington wrote:
| Type A people who become CEOs don't dream of sitting around
| on yachts.
|
| Some might be driven by money, but at a certain level it
| probably switches to a sense of responsibility, but also,
| it's intoxicating to be at the top where you don't really
| have to work in the same way, but get to direct what
| happens. People enjoy power. People enjoy the secrets of
| what happens at the top. People enjoy the recognition
| (within their peer group). etc...
| csallen wrote:
| People enjoy having a purpose and a mission in life.
| Leading a team of people that you put together, in order to
| improve a project you started, and knowing that doing so
| will improve both your lives and theirs, is incredibly
| fulfilling. Even if the day-to-day is full of hardships. In
| fact, working to overcome hardship is one of the primary
| source of meaning in life.
|
| Kids are another example. They're expensive, they're
| annoying, they ruin your health, they take up your free
| time, they consume all your resources, and they're
| inherently needy, selfish, and largely incapable of being
| grateful. Yet raising kids can be profoundly rewarding and
| fulfilling, in part _because_ of the hardships, and in part
| because you 're contributing to something bigger than just
| yourself, which is another crucial ingredient of meaning.
|
| Sitting around on a yacht doing nothing is not so different
| than moving into your parents' basement and doing nothing,
| save with better scenery. It's the kind of thing you crave
| when you're burned out, overworked, and jaded, the same way
| we crave sleep when we're tired and food when we're hungry.
| It's a reaction to a state of being. But we only desire
| sleep until rested and we tire of eating once we're sated.
|
| If you ever get to your tropical yacht vacation you may
| find that, in much the same way, what you thought was a
| permanent desire was only a temporary one.
| keybored wrote:
| Dreaming of winning the lottery and Going On Permanent
| Yacht Vacation is precisely the difference between being
| a worn out low-level worker and being a high-level
| executive who has all their needs met (or at least has
| the resources to have them met). With the latter you can
| have enough resources for you next ten generations and
| still go to work and optimize shareholder profits while
| thinking to yourself that you are serving a higher
| purpose.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| you are not wrong, but I don't think that is necessarily
| a huge criticism.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| One hardly needs $2B to slack off on a boat in the
| Caribbean... many people do so on surprisingly nice ~30
| foot sailboats you can buy with a few months work at
| minimum wage, and wild seafood is free
|
| I see a lot of people that say "If I won the lottery
| I'd...." and then describe something they could definitely
| do without winning the lottery... which makes me think they
| still would not actually do so if they won
| gardenhedge wrote:
| If you win the lottery there's no risk in doing it
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| Sure there is- opportunity cost, the real dangers and
| skills required to operate a vessel at sea, etc. You can
| pay a professional crew to do everything for you, but
| then you'll probably feel pretty useless, and be looked
| down upon by the people you meet along your journey that
| do it themselves.
|
| The sea doesn't care how rich you are, and being a
| helpless dependent is boring and infantilizing no matter
| how big your boat - and you don't develop skills without
| taking risks.
|
| Ultimately, I don't think people are often that conscious
| of their real goals and motivations. It's easy to say you
| have no choices in life because of financial and time
| constraints, but I don't think those are the real reasons
| most people choose to do or not do things.
| computronus wrote:
| Lawrence: Well, what about you now, what would you do [if
| you had a million dollars]?
|
| Peter: ... Nothing.
|
| Lawrence: Nothing, huh?
|
| Peter: I would relax, I would sit on my ass all day ... I
| would do nothing.
|
| Lawrence: Well you don't need a million dollars to do
| nothing, man.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lmW2tZP2kU
| thayne wrote:
| I can understand wanting to continue doing _something_.
| What I don 't understand is why instead of putting their
| time and now considerable wealth into more philanthropic
| pursuits, they decide to continue increasing their wealth,
| often at the expense of other, less fortunate people.
| toast0 wrote:
| I don't have billions and I don't manage people (I've been
| voluntold to manage 1 person a few times, and I'd rather
| that not happen again), but I have enough that I don't need
| to work for economic reasons.
|
| I'm working part time anyway, because it keeps me busy and
| interacting with people outside my home, and it gives me
| access to interesting real world problems that I can't
| really access as an individual person on the interwebs.
| Having other people depend on me to get things done
| provides motivation to keep moving on things that I can't
| seem to manage on my personal projects.
|
| If I liked the kind of organizational management work a CEO
| does and I was good at it, I'd probably get roped into
| being a CEO.
| anon291 wrote:
| Because it's fun? Honestly after two days of vacation, I'm
| about ready to do something
| yoshyosh wrote:
| He breaks it down in this interview, I believe in this
| section https://youtu.be/KSeraZxSAbQ?t=1350
|
| Ultimately he mentions that being CEO is a rare opportunity
| to play a more infinite game and practice the craft of
| getting really good at something that doesn't have an end
| jrussino wrote:
| I have a slightly different version of this. There are some
| other replies here to the effect of "people like to have a
| purpose in life". But surely "helping people share files"
| or whatever the Dropbox "mission" is can't be that
| inspiring, right? I mean, the point of starting a company
| like that is to make those billions. Maybe to do it
| successfully you need to delude yourself into thinking that
| mission is really important, I don't know.
|
| But for me, if I had that kind of business success I'd cash
| out and go do something that feels _actually_ important. Go
| get a PhD and take a crack at curing some obscure disease,
| or setting up a Dyson swarm around the sun, or making a
| great work of art, or thinking about how to improve
| elementary education a la Khan Academy; something like
| that. Then you get to have a real purpose and work toward
| something that most people don 't just by virtue of the
| fact that it doesn't pay well enough, _and_ you still get
| to spend plenty of time on your yacht!
| lucianbr wrote:
| The instinct to acquire resources does not have a limit.
| When homo sapiens evolved, such a limit would not have
| been a useful adaptation. There were no billionaires
| then.
|
| Also it's nice to boss people around, probably for the
| same reason.
|
| You and lots of people say would do something or other. I
| submit that it's different when you're actually in that
| position, as opposed to imagining it. Lots of us imagine
| we're going to go to the gym for years, and give up after
| a month or two.
| echoangle wrote:
| Some people have made the (good in my opinion) point that
| this is actually survivorship bias and a lot of people
| actually do retire and are never heard from again once
| they have enough money. So people predicting what they
| would do aren't necessarily that wrong, it seems that
| some people actually do that.
| mrkramer wrote:
| People who have mission and vision of the future are
| entrepreneurs because they want to solve problems and help
| other people not because they want to become rich and sail
| with yacht.
|
| Listen to Snapchat's founder and CEO Evan Spiegel[0] why he
| didn't sell to Facebook for $3 billion. He even didn't sell
| to Google which offered 10x more ($30bn) for Snapchat.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVu6M72XWUI
| echoangle wrote:
| To clarify, I actually kind of get it for businesses that
| actually have a important mission (using my definition of
| important of course). If you're working on curing cancer,
| I would understand that a CEO doesn't want to leave even
| if he's set for life. I just don't see entertainment and
| service businesses like Snapchat or Dropbox as actually
| meaningful endeavors. To me they are nice to have and
| something I would work at for money, but I wouldn't feel
| like I'm making the world a better place. Maybe that's
| exactly the thing I was misunderstanding about those
| CEOs, they truly think their work is needed and important
| for the world.
| searchableguy wrote:
| No idea about what big CEOs feel but for me, I would
| absolutely continue working even if I was a trillionaire
| someday. What matters and drives me would be impact and
| influence I could have on society. Have couple billions?
| Throw them on things I care about and keep getting more to
| throw at the same.
| BonoboIO wrote:
| I think even the Mozilla CEO made more ... I looked it up as
| I wrote this.
|
| Nope ... the Mozilla CEO makes 6.9M a year which is insane.
|
| In comparison Drew is underpaid by a factor of 50 or more.
| foobiekr wrote:
| It's not "ridiculously low." Before the layoff they were 2700
| people. That's like a VP2 at most large tech companies and
| 1.5M total comp is spot on for that level.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Public company CEO pay is almost always paid by shareholders
| _not_ by the company itself.
|
| It's so misleading that these "CEO compensation is 100x
| employee pay" stats always get kicked around like it is an
| apples to apples comparison. It's not.
|
| CEO's get paid in stock which they need to redeem from
| shareholders. Employees get paid with cash which them redeem
| from the company's checking account. They are different sources
| of money.
|
| It's so annoying that this keeps getting repeated, on and on
| and on. It's totally disingenuous.
| JohnMakin wrote:
| Yes, but we can all agree that stock/$ is pretty fungible and
| can be exchanged for goods and services in pretty much the
| same way. So effectively, it _is_ apples to apples.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Stock/cash _is not_ fungible for the company itself. Using
| shareholders as an ATM is a surefire way to tank a stock,
| and companies tend to use it as an absolute last resort.
| JohnMakin wrote:
| We aren't talking in the context of the company though.
| The gp comment said it's not an apples to apples
| comparison to say a CEO makes 100x an employee because
| CEO's compensation is stock.
|
| If the CEO's stock compensation has a monetary value of
| $100 and the employees salary is $1, it absolutely is
| fair to say the CEO is compensated 100x the employee,
| regardless of it is stock or cash. The CEO can borrow
| against this and use it as effectively cash, if they are
| unable or do not want to exercise the options. This is
| such an insanely common practice and absurdly pedantic
| argument that I wonder why we're even having it. Does the
| distinction matter? Of course it does not.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| It's not apples to apples because it is in essence two
| different employers. The CEO does not work for the
| company (this why you see that $1 CEO salary so often),
| the CEO works for the shareholders. But the employees
| work for the company. They are two distinct entities with
| two distinct finances.
|
| If a company does layoffs and the CEO still gets paid,
| that is perfectly logical because the company was never
| paying the CEO in the first place. Whether or not the CEO
| got his $5 million compensation package has no impact on
| whether or not the company could have laid people off, as
| just about everyone portrays it (and thinks how it is).
| runako wrote:
| Can pretty quickly see that the CEO comp # in question is not
| the stock. Houston sold many times more than $1.5m in stock
| in 2023. The $1.5m is likely direct cash and services.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| He owned a huge amount of dropbox before it went public.
| $1.5M is the money from the company to him (likely
| including stock compensation).
| pjc50 wrote:
| The company's checking account also belongs to the
| shareholders, albeit indirectly.
|
| The remarkable thing is how readily shareholders will accept
| narratives which give the CEO very large amounts of
| compensation. The notorious $50bn is a high mark: https://www
| .forbes.com/sites/antoniopequenoiv/2024/06/13/tes... - but
| that is very much taking value away from shareholders and
| handing it to the CEO in huge amounts.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| It doesn't indirectly belong to share holders, it directly
| does.
|
| But that doesn't change the fact that employee's are paid
| with money that is generated by the business itself. Stock
| compensation comes from the wallets of shareholders and is
| totally disconnected from the operations of the company
| (although generally proportionate).
| ericmcer wrote:
| Seriously, that severance is awesome. Of all the tech workers
| struggling, the ones from companies big enough to throw 4+ mo
| severance packages are not the ones I am worried about. Any
| smaller company your severance is a pat on the back.
| eweise wrote:
| Yep. last time I got laid off, I got paid through that day.
| nothing else.
| xnorswap wrote:
| Lobby your representative for change. This is something
| that laws can and should fix.
|
| Not having worker protections is a political choice. It's
| not something the market or technology will solve.
|
| Many countries have laws that prevent workers getting laid
| off with no severance. It is a solved problem, but it's
| inherently a political problem.
| JediPig wrote:
| This is why people should build a huge ass f-u fund and not
| look back.
| bityard wrote:
| Yep, this is what I do. Individual responsibility is an
| unpopular idea these days but the way I look at it, I am
| the one who is ultimately in charge of my family's
| wellbeing. That is far too important to entrust to a
| corporation's generosity or the whims of lawmakers.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Yes, as soon as you have a regular paycheck you should
| start building an emergency fund. This should be taught
| to everyone in high school (or earlier) but we don't do
| it, among many other "life skills" that we do not teach
| because they aren't on the state standardized tests.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| And all the debt you pile up while struggling to get hired.
| anon291 wrote:
| The average tech worker really should not have to go into
| any debt for even a year long hiatus from their typically
| well paying job. All that is required is living like a
| typical American and saving your salary. I honestly don't
| see how anyone can claim tech workers are not compensated
| for the volatility inherent in the industry.
| andreimackenzie wrote:
| Early-in-career folks are more vulnerable. Even before
| major family/life costs start to play a role, it can be
| difficult to save enough for a safety net after moving to
| an apartment (even w/ roommates) from college & managing
| student debt, etc. I remember it took me a couple of
| years of stability to not feel at risk.
| anon291 wrote:
| Sure, no argument there.
| pjmlp wrote:
| In many countries severance package is guaranteed by law.
| dandigangi wrote:
| USA: lol ok but no
| otteromkram wrote:
| Yet, people still vie from all over to work at US
| companies and we still draw the best talent.
|
| There's also unemployment benefits for US workers.
|
| Haters gonna hate, I guess.
| pjmlp wrote:
| No need to be in US to work for US companies, and still
| get a nice severance package.
|
| Not everyone is looking forward to US working conditions.
| benced wrote:
| And it leads directly into the US being richer than all
| but tiny petro-states and growing faster than all of its
| peers. Fair enough if that's not what you want but there
| are tradeoffs.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Lets see how much it remains left if US keeps offshoring
| all the stuff, followed by imposing import bans after
| those countries become good enough to start taking over
| economy sectors.
| WrongAssumption wrote:
| You can certainly work for a US company outside the US,
| however you will not get a US salary.
| pjmlp wrote:
| It rather work to live than live to work.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| What happens if there isn't enough money left to fund the
| legally-required severance? Do the taxpayers pick up the
| cost?
| DebtDeflation wrote:
| Same thing that happens when there isn't enough money to
| pay their taxes. Or their debtors. Or their vendors. Or
| their payroll.
| duped wrote:
| > Layoffs suck and no one wants to do it, but sometimes it's
| needed to save the ship.
|
| Layoffs are the trolley problem but you get to pick how many
| people are lying down on each side of the track and if you want
| yourself to be one of them.
|
| That said, if one reaches the conclusion that under their
| leadership they were forced to downsize by 20% (either due to
| over hiring, failure to reach revenue/growth targets, whatever)
| that should make that person one of the people on proverbial
| tracks. Compensation has little to do with it.
| Matticus_Rex wrote:
| >that should make that person one of the people on proverbial
| track
|
| That's a satisfying thing to say, but as practical advice
| it's absolutely _terrible_.
|
| Often that person's leadership wasn't the problem, but even
| when it was, that doesn't necessarily mean that the company
| will be better-off without them. And that's the question --
| what will make the company most likely to be the most
| successful going forward? Even if the current trouble is
| because of some of that leader's mistakes, the answer is
| often to keep that leader. Sometimes it isn't.
| pixelatedindex wrote:
| > Often that person's leadership wasn't the problem
|
| Then what is the problem? Ultimately you're paid the big
| bucks for being held responsible. Why isn't it never
| something like the CEO doesn't get any stocks that year.
| I'm not saying he needs to leave the company but maybe he
| should take a substantial hit to his pay. He has enough
| money to put food on the table for many years, unlike the
| people who are let go where it's mostly a mixed bag.
| teitoklien wrote:
| The ones out of job can join a different company,
| america's unemployment rate especially in the tech sector
| tends to be low.
|
| Them doing layoffs doesnt mean the people become
| destitute.
|
| It is better to layoff people who are not adding value to
| a company, so that those newly unemployed folks can join
| a different company and build great products and add more
| value to the economy.
|
| Ofcourse this only applies to US tech sector where hiring
| is tight. Especially when coming out of top tier
| companies like dropbox on your resume.
|
| I don't think its that dramatic, folks who tend to hold
| similar ideologies like you state, tend to not even bat a
| single eye, when average americans who lack the privilege
| of a tech worker lose their job to automation (with tech)
| or outsourcing or due to overburdened climate regulations
| and redtape leading to fewer factory jobs in America.
|
| This is not the titanic, those people will move on to
| places where they'll have a chance for promotion.
| DrillShopper wrote:
| How does that boot taste?
| teitoklien wrote:
| It aint me in front of the boot, random internet
| stranger, its emotional folks like you who end up getting
| taken advantage of by communist / socialist / comrade
| like ideologies, and drown entire societies with you.
|
| I've lived previously under a communist government for
| 30+ years, they often spoke like you, brought our lives
| nothing but misery though. You could have argued against
| my original comment, but instead you had to drop down to
| boots.
|
| I guess boots are what you see in your life in front of
| your face. Good day
| DrillShopper wrote:
| > its emotional folks like you who end up getting taken
| advantage of by communist / socialist / comrade like
| ideologies
|
| Oh, so anyone who disagrees with you is a communist /
| socialist? Hate to break it to you, but I'm a red blooded
| American capitalist that has a few criticisms to make the
| system better and freer. You cannot have liberty in
| today's world without a job - you will be homeless, on
| the street, and freezing, and society has decided that
| applying resources to that problem is a waste of time.
| That doesn't mean anybody "owes" you a job, but not even
| remotely considering the consequences of layoffs is
| bloodless and heartless and ultimately a detriment both
| personally to the person laid off (though no fault of
| their own, after all, just wanting to juice those stock
| numbers!) and to the US economy as a whole. And god
| forbid you're here on an H1B visa - better pack your shit
| and get out if some corporate overlord decrees so.
|
| Have a good day as well - not everyone that disagrees
| with you is a communist. Get therapy for your problems.
| dandellion wrote:
| Whenever people are laid off where you work, I suppose
| you always volunteer to take their place? Since according
| to you it's only such a minor inconvenience I think it
| would be hypocritical of you to not to offer to take
| their place.
|
| Grandparent is not even saying that it should be avoided,
| just that the CEO should face some accountability from
| it. In many cases they have none at all, whereas the
| impact on the employees can range from actually quite low
| (as in your example) to very high. In fact there is no
| upper ceiling to impact to the worker which is the real
| problem. From the horror stories I've heard about the US
| they could even lose health insurance and end up with
| someone in the family dying because they can't afford
| treatment. Accountability is good precisely when there
| are such asymmetrical power imbalances, where one person
| makes the decision and someone else bears all the
| consequences. Either you add some feedback loops or the
| imbalance grows unchecked until it becomes unsustainable,
| and eventually you end up with a war of independence, or
| a French revolution and things like that.
|
| With just a bit of empathy it should be easy to
| understand why accountability is needed in such
| situations to keep a good social dynamic long term.
| Someone with the empathy of a river boulder might think
| it's just people behaving irrationally, but I suggest you
| look into game theory and you'll see how some seemingly
| irrational behaviours like tit-for-tat are not as
| irrational as they seem.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| >Why isn't it never something like the CEO doesn't get
| any stocks that year.
|
| Performance based compensation is absolutely standard for
| CEOs- Both in terms of options and stock grants.
| DrillShopper wrote:
| Do those metrics count "number of people laid off"
| explicitly?
|
| We know they do _implicitly_ because laying off people
| makes the company more profitable, but is there any
| penalty for killing jobs?
|
| If not, shouldn't there be?
| mulmen wrote:
| The purpose of a corporation is to make money, not jobs.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| to play devils advocate, there are different levels one
| can look at that. From the level of the companies and
| owners, the goal is to make money.
|
| From the perspective of society there are tons of
| answers. A common answer is that companies provide goods
| and services that give consumers more value than they
| cost, thereby enriching the lives of consumers.
|
| It seems like some people, especially those who take
| issue with layoffs, tend to think the social purpose of
| companies is to give jobs/money to workers. This leads to
| a lot of frustration for those people because the entire
| economic system is set up such that jobs are an optional
| byproduct of making goods, not the other way around.
| duped wrote:
| We live in a society where there are more metrics than
| money. The entire notion of corporate amorality is a thin
| veil that people use to hide their own unethical and
| immoral behavior.
|
| That's why I made the comment that layoffs _are_ the
| trolley problem. It 's an ethical question and companies
| don't always make the ethical choice, for example
| choosing profit over jobs in a downturn.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| That presupposes an ethical obligation to provide jobs,
| which is of course at the center of this.
|
| If you think companies have a ethical obligation to
| provide jobs and do so continuously, of course you will
| find issue with the rest of it. All objections stem from
| this, and it is controversial.
| duped wrote:
| I disagree, and think you're missing the forest for the
| trees. I think that _people_ have an obligation to keep
| their promises to other people - that 's a virtue called
| honesty or integrity. When a promise needs to be broken,
| that presents an ethical dilemma.
|
| One example of _people_ making a promise is hiring. A
| layoff is fundamentally breaking the promise you made to
| a group of people to keep them employed - whether that 's
| the most ethical choice or not circles back to the
| trolley problem. If 20% need to be laid off to save the
| 80% then it's not an unethical choice. If 20% need to be
| laid off to make up for the mistake of a small group of
| leaders in order to benefit the small group of
| shareholders, then it's unethical.
|
| > All objections stem from this, and it is controversial.
|
| It's only controversial when you pretend that you can
| absolve an unethical choice by placing it behind the
| corporate veil. It's not controversial outside of Milton
| Friedman disciples.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Do you think hiring is a promise? What do you think the
| promise consists of? I think you are projecting a promise
| where you _want_ one to be, but nobody is actually under
| the impression it exists.
|
| Neither employers and employees are under the impression
| jobs are for life. If you're concern is primarily honesty
| and promise, would this piece satisfied by a written
| declaration and acknowledgment that the duration of
| employment is not indefinite and can change based on the
| arbitrary whims of the employer?
|
| If you remove the corporate veil, what do you think the
| promise is for one human hiring another, and the ethical
| requirements. If I hire a housekeeper or babysitter, what
| am I committing to?
|
| I dont see how corporations are held to anything but a
| _higher_ expectation than individuals, not lower. Can you
| expand on this?
| mulmen wrote:
| > The entire notion of corporate amorality is a thin veil
| that people use to hide their own unethical and immoral
| behavior.
|
| Do you believe there is no such thing as an ethical
| layoff?
| duped wrote:
| No, but that specific sentence you're quoting is
| targeting a very specific bit of business ethics teaching
| that I find great issue with. IME no one making decisions
| like layoffs really believes in the amorality of
| corporate decisions, except the morally bankrupt. You
| don't find solace in the idea that a company only exists
| to make money when you're telling a father whose kids are
| about to start college that he needs to look for a new
| job.
| mulmen wrote:
| Ok but you brought it up. I didn't say anyone should be
| finding solace in anything. Or even mention ethics.
| You're replying to something I didn't say.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| No, I dont think there should be a penalty by default.
|
| The objective of a company isnt and shouldn't be to run a
| charity. Some amount of layoffs are desirable just as a
| matter of housekeeping. Layoffs can be a hard part of
| doing a good job.
|
| I think there are extreme examples and tactics where
| layoffs cross a moral line but not a legal line. for
| example, I think the humane thing to do is freeze hiring
| before layoffs so you dont relocate someone only to let
| them go.
|
| That said, there are already a lot of business incentives
| to avoid turbulence in headcount. It is slow and
| expensive to hire people and let them go.
| sangnoir wrote:
| And who sets the standards? Their CEO-buddies on the
| boards. None of them would dare rock the boat.
|
| One of the failure modes of 401ks and investment funds
| are large investment pools that don't vote at AGMs,
| leaving boards largely dominated by CxOs, to their own
| devices.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Either you dont understand my point, or I dont understand
| yours.
|
| Im saying CEOs have financial skin in the game tied to
| company performance. They get less, often much less when
| the company shits the bed. This was in response to a
| parent post that seems to think CEO comp is entirely
| isolated from performance.
| sangnoir wrote:
| You probably didn't understand my point. You said CEOs
| are paid that way because it's the standard. In your
| opinion, who sets the standards for CEO compensation, and
| what are their day-jobs? The majority of boardmembers
| happen to be C-suite executives themselves.
|
| My thesis is that the boards of public companies have
| been captured by the executives, and the diffuse
| shareholding has been ineffective in providing oversight
| to the boards at AGMs. If SWE (or teacher) remuneration
| were determined by a (nominally independent) subcommittee
| dominated by other SWEs (or teachers), I posit that
| incomes for that role would outstrip other roles at the
| same organization over multiple decades, due to biases
| and knowing who butters their bread. It would become
| standard practice, naturally.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Okay, I think we are both misunderstanding then. My
| original point was a fairly mundane one. Pixel was asking
| why CEOs don't suffer substantial financial cost for bad
| performance. My point was simply that they do! Poor
| performance often incurs millions of dollars of
| opportunity costs to CEOs. I suspect that the deeper
| question was why don't CEO suffer more than just
| opportunity cost, in harsher way that would be more
| emotionally satisfying.
|
| You raise good questions about how prevailing
| compensation is set and the relative power of corporate
| governance. I tend to agree that executives have a lot of
| leverage and it seems like boards are relatively weak.
| They don't have a lot of incentive to pinch pennies push
| back on CEO compensation. There's a pretty huge cost to
| shareholders if they want to fire or even replace a CEO,
| and uncertain upside.
|
| There might be some class/roll solidarity going on as you
| propose. However, I think the bigger factor is that
| minimizing CEO comp simply is not a priority for boards
| and shareholders, despite the attention it gets from
| outside critics.
| pixelatedindex wrote:
| > Performance based compensation is absolutely standard
| for CEOs- Both in terms of options and stock grants.
|
| Yes but you're still making $1.5M after a 34% haircut.
| That seems like a reward, and not any real sense of
| taking responsibility when you have to let go 1 in 5.
| Wouldn't it be better if he just got a base salary of
| 200K or something and no stocks for that year? He already
| has a bunch of equity and if he does well at the end of
| the year, that equity will be worth more anyway.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| In what sense do you think it would be better? Would it
| advance CEO performance or the company? Would it bring
| the world more into alignment with some sense of moral
| justice?
| pixelatedindex wrote:
| It certainly would be some real accountability. They
| didn't perform well and they're mostly compensated in
| equity, so they get less of it. When they perform better,
| they'll get more equity. Why wouldn't this encourages the
| CEO perform better? The sword cuts both ways.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| You are describing how the world already works. The only
| difference is base pay. Why do you think lower base pay
| is better accountability and performance? They already
| have millions on the line. I imagine better base pay
| means better candidates.
| geodel wrote:
| Held responsible for what? The what part is written in
| contract for execs, movie stars, sport persons. I have
| not seen in any category people not getting paid per
| their contract for poor performance.
| duped wrote:
| I didn't say which track they were on in the problem, just
| that they're on one of them.
| sangnoir wrote:
| > Often that person's leadership wasn't the problem, but
| even when it was, that doesn't necessarily mean that the
| company will be better-off without them
|
| How convenient (for them)! When the company is doing well,
| they get millions in bonuses because their irreplaceable
| leadership skills - which make them 2000x more valuable
| than the least paid worker - were instrumental to the
| organization's success.
|
| When the chips are down, it wasn't their fault _per se_ ,
| and the company still would be allegedly worse off without
| them, so laying-off waves of those who don't have decision-
| making power is the correct remedy, until the good times
| roll again, and senior leadership is ready to claim
| responsibility.
|
| It must be nice to claim "macro-economic headwinds" as
| justification for poor performance and poor planning, but
| still get paid bonuses for the never-mentioned "macro-
| economic tailwinds"
| flappyeagle wrote:
| Go start a company already -- you're on YC forums
| sangnoir wrote:
| I have started a company[1], but that's neither here nor
| there. I vehemently disagree with your insinuation that I
| couldn't challenge leadership culture had I not.
|
| Founding a company doesn't make one infallible or
| irreplaceable. Though to be fair, it doesn't feel that
| way when it's _your_ company though!
|
| 1. I will note that this is an incredibly low bar.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _must be nice to claim "macro-economic headwinds" as
| justification for poor performance and poor planning, but
| still get paid bonuses for the never-mentioned "macro-
| economic tailwinds"_
|
| What would you do if you owned a business? Fire
| leadership every time they make a wrong call? Or ban them
| from admitting they made a wrong call?
| sangnoir wrote:
| If I owned a controlling stake in a business, I'd fire
| the leadership every time there's evidence of short-term
| thinking. The problem with public companies is systemic:
| a large fraction of shareholders _want_ short term
| appreciation, and so they support and reward short-term
| mindsets in leaders at the cost of long-term value.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _I 'd fire the leadership every time there's evidence
| of short-term thinking_
|
| Have you owned a business? Worked for a manager who
| thought like this? You're describing the sort of
| mercurial boss who fires people for disagreeing with
| them.
| sangnoir wrote:
| There's nothing mercurial about firing someone over poor
| strategic planning. Before you hire someone, you
| communicate the expectations of the job, amd if an
| executive prioritizes quick ones over long term big wins,
| that is a fundamental misalignment in values - not a
| spur-of-the-moment dismissal.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Before you hire someone, you communicate the
| expectations of the job, amd if an executive prioritizes
| quick ones over long term big wins, that is a fundamental
| misalignment in values_
|
| Right, this is micromanaging leadership. You're looking
| for a manager to execute your vision. Not a leader. Short
| termism is a problem. But layoffs aren't proof of short-
| term thinking. If anything, they're a sign of past
| exuberant optimism.
| duped wrote:
| If the leadership mistakes lead to the loss of livelihood
| and healthcare of thousands of employees because of their
| mistakes, yes, they should be included in the firings, or
| strongly considered for them - more so than any of the
| people getting laid off who made no mistakes, except
| working for a bad leader.
| lucianbr wrote:
| > Often that person's leadership wasn't the problem
|
| What's the basis for this claim? I would rather think often
| it was the problem. Not absolutely every time, but most
| times. After all, the C-suite makes the decisions. I can
| not believe management decisions do not influence the
| course of a business.
|
| Sure, it's possible that outside circumstances were such
| that no decision could avoid a bad outcome. But that's a
| rather unlikely possibility. Most of the time, outcomes
| depend on decisions. Otherwise businesses would be some
| headless automatons. And if that was the case, we should
| not pay execs much at all.
|
| It's an obvious cheat: when times are good - it's all
| because of the leaders, when times are bad, it's all
| because of the environment. This is what they claim, but it
| is not the truth. Again, what's the basis for this claim?
| Any proof, studies, anything?
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Generally leaders are not going to fire each other.
|
| So sometimes a doomed strategy will be pursued far longer
| than you'd expect, barring some board or activist
| intervention.
|
| Some of it is self interest, some of it is hubris.. but also
| one can easily blame a bad run on some broader economic
| situation, specific competitor actions, or right strategy
| with wrong team (so fire the team) .. this works for a while
| until it doesn't.
| amelius wrote:
| > Layoffs suck and no one wants to do it, but sometimes it's
| needed to save the ship.
|
| But they always fire the weak employees, not the ones that can
| easily help themselves.
|
| Maybe we should have some laws that randomize the layoffs ...
| onion2k wrote:
| _they always fire the weak employees_
|
| This is definitely not the case. Companies use a lot of
| different mechanisms to choose who to lay off, and it's
| rarely entirely performance based.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Arguably from what I've seen it is TOO random or non-
| performance based.
|
| Some combination of personal dislike and unfamiliarity.
|
| The people making the cuts are not line managers and are
| sometimes given very short amount of time to make their cut
| list. So "oh I know that person" stays vs "I have no idea
| what they do / they asked me a pointed question in a
| meeting once" goes.
| scarby2 wrote:
| I've been laid off twice, neither time has been
| performance based.
|
| once i was on a team of 2 ICs and a Manager - only the
| manager stayed - the company is now about to fold. Other
| time i was let go as part of the entire US arm
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Yes, most layoffs I've seen in my career are of the "mass
| layoff" variety, and these are generally far from being
| performance based.
|
| There's just too many people, the decision making is too
| quick, at too high a level.. and more driven by cost /
| future strategy (so which teams to cut deeper).
| heyjamesknight wrote:
| This is a joke, right? If a company is underperforming, then
| the underperformers are the first to go. Market economies
| require efficiency. Capital flows in the direction of
| success. Impeding this flow with regulation is a great way to
| create a malfunctioning economy.
| pixelatedindex wrote:
| I've seen instances where the people with the most
| seniority are let go first because they cost the company
| more.
| indy wrote:
| Isn't firing the weak employees the correct long term
| strategy? Especially with regards to ensuring that the
| remaining employees stay employed
| JAlexoid wrote:
| Why would you fire your best and brightest? That would be
| like throwing out good fruit, when there are spoiled ones.
|
| No, it's a very poor idea to force companies to lay off at
| random.
| bastardoperator wrote:
| We should start with the executives who didn't
| perform/execute, they're the biggest liability.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| This often does happen along with layoffs when a company
| is in real trouble. A problem of silicon valley culture
| is that you basically can't fire anyone for
| underperformance, so you need to have these sorts of
| layoffs as a prophylactic measure to cull the heard. So
| that means you get a cycle of "overhiring" followed by
| "layoffs" and that is working exactly as intended.
| bastardoperator wrote:
| California is at will, you can fire anyone for anything
| or even nothing. I'm yet to see poor performing
| executives take themselves out before they take out the
| people that actually create value. You don't need to have
| layoffs, you need better leaders, and they're the last
| ones to get culled, usually running off with bonuses for
| under-performance and lousy work.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Legally yes, culturally no.
| bastardoperator wrote:
| In certain cultures its okay to hurt people and not face
| repercussions. We typically refer to those cultures as
| underdeveloped.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Why is firing someone hurting them when it's not working
| out? Both the company and the person would be better off
| doing something else.
|
| We have attached shame and this idea that it is "hurtful"
| likely because it is so rare. At a place like a hedge
| fund, firing the bottom 10% of people is relatively
| normal, so being fired can sometimes just mean "you had a
| bad 6 months" not "you am a terrible person who does not
| deserve to work anywhere" (which seems to be how tech
| people and Europeans think of it). In that environment,
| there isn't any shame involved in the firing and everyone
| gets on with their lives (usually including a cushy
| severance package).
| bastardoperator wrote:
| The executive failed to ensure profitability which is
| their entire focus. They are the ones that should be laid
| off first. You're giving them a pass which is literally
| the crux of the problem, these people are allowed to fail
| up at others expense. I'm talking about the dropbox
| layoffs, you're talking about just cause termination
| which is again completely meaningless in California.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| I am telling you that "layoffs" are the mechanism by
| which silicon valley makes just cause termination
| culturally acceptable. If a silicon valley firm decided
| to fire the bottom 5%, they would lose huge amounts of
| talent that doesn't want to work in a "competitive"
| environment. If the bottom 10-20% happen to get "laid
| off" every 3 years, that's just an "unfortunate
| oversight" and a "management oops" that they take "full
| responsibility" for.
|
| These layoffs do not generally happen when executives and
| companies fail; they happen as a matter of course. They
| are, of course, accompanied by _rhetoric_ about executive
| failure (again, a cultural cover), but nothing more. When
| executives _actually_ fail, executives get fired.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Im not sure if you are sarcastic or not.
|
| If not, I think you have a highly unrealistic opinion of who
| the company operates for.
| infamouscow wrote:
| When layoffs are random, it engenders a profound sense of
| betrayal among those who have diligently gone the extra mile.
| It severs ties and creates a chilling effect, dampening the
| morale of those who remain.
|
| Employees, acutely aware that their efforts might be
| disregarded in the next round of cuts, become increasingly
| disincentivized to exceed expectations. The result is a
| workforce more focused on survival than excellence, fostering
| an environment where mediocrity thrives.
| Clubber wrote:
| >But they always fire the weak employees
|
| What you are referring to is called _rightsizing_ and it 's
| taught in business schools, but almost never implemented
| well. I would guess it's because it takes to long to figure
| out who's weak and who's not and they are in a hurry to cut
| costs.
| hiddencost wrote:
| Uh, drop box cost per employee is likely closer to $750k, not
| $100k.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| That $1.5M comp package is about 2-4 employees being laid
| off. It's not very many people.
|
| It's also insanely low for a CEO, but about right for the CEO
| of a company in decline (which dropbox is).
| bravetraveler wrote:
| https://blog.dropbox.com/topics/company/a-message-from-drew
|
| Drew is developing a habit. 16% last year
|
| _edit:_ 11% before that: https://dropbox.gcs-
| web.com/node/8916/html
| alberth wrote:
| It's less of a habit and more indication of a matured
| business.
|
| Their revenue has only been growing ~5% (and slowing to just
| 1% most recent quarter).
|
| When you aren't growing, you must focus on operation
| efficiencies.
|
| Rule of 40, now being applied to margin.
| bravetraveler wrote:
| Yea, that's fair. I'm just being critical of the 'facade'
| _(said with less ire than it sounds)_. The size is no
| surprise, in or out. I 'll be mildly merciful - not all his
| doing
| pjmlp wrote:
| Nope, MBAs have to learn exponential growth is impossible to
| accomplish forever.
|
| Companies should be managed to be profitable, while paying
| employees and business expenses.
|
| Anything other is a pipe dream that eventually blows up, but
| since only employees suffer while the MBA guys go to become CEO
| of yet another adventure, who cares. /s
| anon291 wrote:
| The myth of exponential growth is not that companies can't
| grow exponentially forever (since that's the case for most
| companies) but rather that the valuation of these companies
| depends on exponential growth (it does not). Most public
| companies in the United states do not experience the
| exponential growth many tech startups do, but do perfectly
| well for themselves, their customers, and their employees.
|
| No one is pushing for exponential growth. If a company wants
| to stop, declare a dividend, and be done with it, and let
| investors choose a new rodeo.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Except that isn't what happens, instead every year a new
| goal that has to be X % higher is set, and when
| expectations are not met, the employees are the ones
| landing on the street for stupid values of X%.
|
| The one signing off on X% might even get a bonus for doing
| that, and enjoy some Bahamas vacations.
| anon291 wrote:
| In tech sure, but in the market, many companies simply
| return dividends. Lots of mining stocks, retailers,
| commodity producers, etc don't experience exponential
| growth
| pjmlp wrote:
| In this case we're talking about tech sector anyway.
| otteromkram wrote:
| I have an MBA and am not a CEO. I'm probably better at
| developing software than you, too.
|
| But, I do get a chuckle out of what you believe is a "diss,"
| when you're actually stating that MBA holders will not only
| do better in life, but they'll also control your fate.
|
| Keep that narrative alive; I love it!
| pjmlp wrote:
| Like all rules there are exceptions, and I am old enough to
| remember when management was battled earned from the
| trenches, not people thinking they could manage any random
| company.
|
| It is like assuming generals can win wars straight into the
| battlefield after graduation from military school.
|
| Some get lucky, most of them do not, then again the little
| soldiers are the ones thar have to worry with the actual
| outcome.
|
| Good that you're having fun.
| wolvesechoes wrote:
| "But, I do get a chuckle out of what you believe is a
| "diss," when you're actually stating that MBA holders will
| not only do better in life, but they'll also control your
| fate."
|
| This doesn't mean it is not a diss - most parasites fare
| quite well, and definitely determine fates of their hosts.
| apwell23 wrote:
| > $100K all-in comp (which seems low to me for a tech salary)
|
| ic1 at dropbox is 175k and ic4 is near 500k, ic5 near 700k.
|
| https://www.levels.fyi/companies/dropbox/salaries
|
| Do they really need such highly paid engineers? Are they really
| doing anything that innovative, new or first on market.
|
| They could probably save these jobs by adjusting the comps.
| thrownaway561 wrote:
| I still hate the fact that people can borrow money against a
| stock. Stock should be sold, period. That is how the market
| sets a price for stock, through the volume of it being sold and
| bought. By allowing people to borrow against a stock, let's
| them get the money for the stock while still holding it. That
| artificially increases the stock price and value.
| trallnag wrote:
| Isn't this also the case with mortgages?
| currymj wrote:
| probably whoever makes the loan will hedge, maybe by shorting
| the stock. or buying puts, but then whoever sells them the
| puts will hedge by shorting the stock.
|
| if they decide not to hedge, then it must be because they
| don't think they're exposed to much risk, which basically
| means they like the stock and would be willing to own it. it
| feels like it mostly works out.
| carabiner wrote:
| Why is the CEO's TC relevant to layoffs?
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| > No growth is more or less bad on Wall Street.
|
| In other words, this is to satisfy Wall Street.
| wg0 wrote:
| Not 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 wrote:
| You 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| Once you're a big enough company hiring needs to be its own
| workstream just to keep up with attrition.
| bloqs wrote:
| This happens because of the culture of "if you dont spend your
| budget it gets cut"
| andyjohnson0 wrote:
| > _" 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 wrote:
| Most people understand that companies need to adjust in size.
| There's nothing moral about it.
| andyjohnson0 wrote:
| (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 wrote:
| If 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.
| 39896880 wrote:
| You're allowed to say kill on Hackernews
| penguin_booze wrote:
| "I earn the big money because I make decisions and I take risks
| (with others lives, but let's not talk about that). My
| decisions haven't worked; my risks haven't paid off. I'm
| however letting you take the hit, because I'm too important for
| that kind of shit. I've more decisions to make, and risks to
| take. My family is fine; my pay is fine. It's just you who are
| affected.". -- Your CEO, who still makes more money that you do
| (or don't), no matter what.
| jmclnx wrote:
| >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 :)
| tinyhouse wrote:
| It'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 wrote:
| I'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 wrote:
| Kind 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 wrote:
| Anecdotal: 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 wrote:
| Yeah, that makes sense. If I wasn't a PC user, I'd probably
| be utilizing iCloud as well.
| UnreachableCode wrote:
| Where 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
| racl101 wrote:
| Dropbox ain't nothing to duck with.
| seandoe wrote:
| cream
| baudpunk wrote:
| This guy Wu Tangs
| turnsout wrote:
| Anecdotally, 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"
| moystard wrote:
| The premium experience does have a heavy price tag attached to
| it since they repeatedly increased the pricing. In the UK, the
| first plan is now PS7.99 / month.
|
| This eventually led me away from Dropbox and I am now an iCloud
| user - the convenience and cheap prices eventually convinced
| me, even though I wish a Linux client existed.
| leoapagano wrote:
| Pardon--what does Wu Tang have to do with Dropbox?
| protonprivacy wrote:
| Can you share more about your experience, which platform you
| were using and what features you were looking for so that we
| can share it with the team?
| bbcbby wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| rsync is free why would anyone use anything /s
| jchw wrote:
| Lifetime 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 wrote:
| > As CEO, I take full responsibility for this decision
|
| CEOs need to not say this, unless they're quitting too.
| tqi wrote:
| TBH 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 wrote:
| Alternately 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| Providing goods/services. Perhaps the qualifier _" being
| publicly traded"_ will help
| bink wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| I 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
| alephnerd wrote:
| > pretty fair earnings multiple at the moment (~4X).
|
| Dropbox's EBIDTA is 14.67, but most Software Companies tend to
| have an EBIDTA of 28.
|
| Dropbox is significantly underperforming compared to their
| peers.
|
| Furthermore, cloud file storage has become commodified and
| Dropbox missed the DLP, DSPM, and AI Search train.
|
| > Have we reached a point where tech companies have been around
| long enough that they can / should enter a sort of maintenance
| mode
|
| Absolutely not.
|
| If you do not innovate as a software company, you risk becoming
| commodified.
|
| And if BUs within a company fails to execute on their
| innovation or GTM strategy, they will be let go.
| rsync wrote:
| "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?"
|
| Yes, absolutely.
|
| There is value in new features and functionality but _there can
| be so much more value_ in a predictable, stable tool that can
| be depended on _and returned to_.
|
| There are people who cancelled their first account with us
| _before dropbox existed_ and have returned, post-covid, to find
| a familiar tool to be picked right back up again.
|
| This has been immensely valuable to a great many people and we
| wouldn't dream of ever changing it.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Very 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 wrote:
| They've been doing 20% layoffs two years in a row now.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Yeah that's "run for the exits" territory to me. Especially
| considering they are already below pre-COVID staff levels it
| appears.
| TechDebtDevin wrote:
| Severence 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 wrote:
| There'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.
| sosodev wrote:
| Obviously the win is not laying people off. It's no secret
| that tech companies have not been hiring for sustainability
| and that sucks.
| gretch wrote:
| "It's no secret that tech companies have not been hiring
| for sustainability and that sucks."
|
| Does it suck? It means that someone got a job where they
| didn't really have to do that much and got paid anyway.
|
| An alternative is where that job was never offered. And
| then we're complaining that there's no jobs.
|
| Also, no, the solution is not to "just hire the perfect
| amount". Sure if we could just do anything perfectly
| everything is great, but how is that a reasonable demand.
| rsanek wrote:
| > where they didn't really have to do that much
|
| Source?
| TechDebtDevin wrote:
| ^
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| > Obviously the win is not laying people off.
|
| All you are arguing for is that Dropbox should never have
| hired these people in the first place. Why is that
| better? At least these people got some years of high pay,
| experience, networking relationships, etc. Obviously it's
| disruptive, and it could be a big net negative for people
| who maybe jumped ship from more stable jobs only to be
| quickly laid off, but that's not the broad experience.
| sosodev wrote:
| I suppose it's largely a matter of perspective but I
| would argue that fewer more stable jobs would likely be
| better for both the companies and employees.
|
| Also, you're missing another obvious argument. Most tech
| companies that are doing layoffs could afford to keep
| their employees. Dropbox hasn't done 3 rounds of layoffs
| because they're on the verge of bankruptcy but rather
| they're just following the trend and pleasing
| shareholders or whatever.
|
| So I'm not arguing for less jobs but rather less
| corporate bullshit.
| spit2wind wrote:
| What regulatory scrutiny do you mean? They don't need to
| provide severance, as far as California law seems concerned.
| I'm not a Californian, but an Internet search shows they're
| an at-will state. So it seems like everything is on the
| (legal) level.
| benbayard wrote:
| California has the WARN act which I believe requires notice
| of 50 days, which people usually use to give severance. In
| the USA when someone is told they will be fired, usually we
| do not keep them on staff so severance is the usual middle
| ground.
| sgerenser wrote:
| It's 60 days, not 50. But 60 days of severance would be
| significantly less than what they are offering. They're
| definitely not doing it strictly to avoid regulatory
| scrutiny, more like to avoid bad press and a bad
| reputation in the tech market. When things eventually
| swing back up, companies still want to be able to hire
| the best talent, they don't want to be grouped with
| companies like Twitter.
| objektif wrote:
| What is wrong with Twitter?
| mbbbb wrote:
| They did not pay severance when they laid people off.
| sgerenser wrote:
| Even worse, they said they would then reneged.
| TechDebtDevin wrote:
| Yeah, they used weird conditions upon their termination
| to claw back severance
| kirubakaran wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_Adjustment_and_Retrain
| i...
| bravetraveler wrote:
| Not one-and-done, _at least_ step 3 in a potential routine:
|
| 16% in 2023: https://blog.dropbox.com/topics/company/a-message-
| from-drew
|
| Or, before that, another 11%: https://dropbox.gcs-
| web.com/node/8916/html
|
| I wish them well, things look rough.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| > it strikes me that more big companies would rather have a
| one-stop shop full of 80% solutions than pay for 100 different
| SaaS.
|
| Strongly agree (unfortunately I might add, because I'm not a
| fan of "the big just keep getting bigger). When it comes to
| data management, tons of companies are really concerned about
| access controls, policies and DLP (data loss prevention). In my
| experience setting up these policies and rules correctly, and
| appropriately monitoring them, is very difficult and easy to
| get wrong (many data breaches are a consequence of this). This
| is especially common when you need to bidirectionally share
| content with third parties, you may want to give some of those
| parties access control rights on some data buckets, etc.
|
| I was at a previous company where we were essentially all on
| Google Workspace. Google Drive's access controls for sharing
| with third parties used to really suck, though they've improved
| in recent years. We had teams that wanted to use Dropbox
| enterprise because their third party sharing features were
| much, much better. The problem is that I spent a ton of time
| learning all of the access control and management policies in
| Google Drive (which aren't great, mind you), and then I needed
| to spend another large amount of time learning an entirely
| different interface and set of rules for Dropbox. I almost had
| a breach because a checkbox buried down somewhere was checked
| incorrectly. Also, adding Dropbox meant I had a host of
| additional SOC 2 compliance checks that I needed to validate.
|
| Meanwhile, sharing features in Google Drive (of Google
| Workspace) have largely gotten "good enough", as of the past
| couple years.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Case in point - when it came out almost 20 years ago it was
| ground breaking.
|
| Meanwhile, every single desktop OS, mobile OS and cloud
| provider basically has had this functionality in some form
| for maybe 10 years now.
|
| If you are a home user in Google or Apple ecosystem, its all
| native and seamless. If you are a corporate setup in
| Microsoft or Google ecosystem, its all native and seamless
| there as well.
|
| Not clear what the standout features of Dropbox would be now.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| Ah that sucks, I wanted to work for them a while back
| meindnoch wrote:
| This is the first wave of the LLM layoffs.
| onion2k wrote:
| That'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.
| hankman86 wrote:
| The 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 wrote:
| So, reduce people to numbers and accept the suicides?
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Perhaps 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.
| whatshisface wrote:
| They don't know which 20% needs to be cut. That's why they wait
| until something unrelated to their business internals (market
| downturn, other companies are cutting) happens to try.
| jordanb wrote:
| I remember seeing somewhere an analysis that layoffs do not
| improve medium or long-term stock performance for companies
| performing layoffs. But if layoffs are coordinated sector-
| wide they can have a big impact on employee compensation in
| the sector by creating a reserve army of unemployed.
| whatshisface wrote:
| Yes, it's justified on the same economic basis as
| pricefixing, and unionization with coordinated strikes if
| you interchange the parties.
| adamc wrote:
| Evidence, please. From what I've seen in person, it doesn't
| work this way at all. Companies don't have a great fix on whom
| to cut, and it usually just makes the other employees feel
| stressed (and start looking at other jobs), while the
| unemployed suffer very significant life stress.
| VirusNewbie wrote:
| I was originally a huge fan of dropbox, and still a customer,
| though reluctantly these days.
|
| Dropbox has fallen so far behind many other companies. Google
| photos search is amazing, it merges people even if they don't
| have contacts, it has really good image recognition, it has
| some sorting/ordering amongst many various dimensions.
|
| Why can't I make small edits to text files in dropbox? Why
| haven't they added any useful apps?
|
| Why are they not the best photo organizer/searching system?
| rsanek wrote:
| Keep in mind that knowledge work isn't really a bell curve,
| it's more of a power law.
| https://www.hermanaguinis.com/pdf/PPsych2012.pdf
| cjblomqvist wrote:
| Du you have sources for this? Now I'm not much better but I
| actually think there are several studies that show correlation
| between layoffs and worse than average performance.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| You think that people who are doing nothing all day are
| unhappy?
|
| Protestant work ethic got you by the gizzards.
|
| We call it "rest and vest" here in the tech retirement homes of
| companies known for being "chill" like Microsoft, Linkedin,
| Salesforce, Oracle, IBM, Intel (historically), etc
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| > The uncomfortable truth is that pretty much any business can
| cut staff by 20% without impacting overall performance.
|
| Sorry, but I call BS on this
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| Remember 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-play...
| carabiner wrote:
| This guy takes "full responsibility," even.
| Quothling wrote:
| When 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 wrote:
| > 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.
| zaphod12 wrote:
| I think a lot of people misunderstand the statement 'I
| take responsibility.' They are not actually taking
| responsibility for the company's situation. They are
| owning the decision to make these layoffs.
| carabiner wrote:
| In what other realm of life does "taking full
| responsibility" absolve you from any consequences? It
| "shows empathy," what? Suspect: "I murdered someone and
| take full responsibility, and I empathize with the victim's
| next of kin," Judge: "Thank you for your candor all is
| forgiven, you're off scot free"
|
| If a CEO did _not_ take full responsibility, what would be
| different?
| geodel wrote:
| Indeed. "An update.." is a trend in lot of enterprises
| nowadays, probably taking cue from SV companies.
| jordanb wrote:
| "A difficult decision"
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I always think it's a bit weird how people put so much effort
| and angst into (over)analyzing the language that execs use in
| layoff announcements in the first place.
|
| It's a layoff. Yeah, it sucks, and no matter what the CEO says
| people will be pissed. Better to just take the same good advice
| as when starting a new relationship: "Just ignore everything
| they say, and only consider what they _do_. " I.e. is the
| severance package good? Are folks given some
| assistance/recommendations finding new jobs? If so, I couldn't
| care less about what the preamble in the layoff announcement
| looks like.
| switch007 wrote:
| Nailed it. We got "An update on..." when they cancelled our
| Christmas parties.
| bravetraveler wrote:
| They used this exact phrasing a year ago, lmao. Building
| rapport, The CEO has a name. Hi Drew.
|
| https://blog.dropbox.com/topics/company/a-message-from-drew
| azemetre wrote:
| Something 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 wrote:
| You 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 wrote:
| But 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 wrote:
| >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.
| tantalor wrote:
| > sold my data
|
| Sure the license agreement would not legally permit that.
|
| I wonder what kind of legal recourse you would have. There's
| obviously copyright infringement, but I think state laws like
| CCPA include remedies for violations.
| layer8 wrote:
| If they delete your stuff, you almost certainly won't resume
| your subscription. The cost of storage may be lower than the
| benefit from re-subscriptions, and possibly the cost of
| actually implementing and maintaining an automated deletion
| process in compliance with all jurisdictions.
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| Maybe they are just good people and don't like to do evil
| things like deleting someone's life memories?
| adamc wrote:
| This is a company, so no.
| stego-tech wrote:
| Incredibly 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.
| tschellenbach wrote:
| The 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 wrote:
| A 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 wrote:
| Avoid 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 wrote:
| Exactly, 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.
| Brystephor wrote:
| The only mortgages that don't require cashflow are the
| paid off mortgages. Even if someone has a year of
| savings, or two years, or three, after that amount is
| drained, they need cash flow again. So how does one buy a
| house without being dependent on cash flow?
| mulmen wrote:
| Well the most obvious approach would be to pay cash.
|
| The more fiscally conservative option is to only borrow
| money if you have capital which is earning income at a
| higher rate than the mortgage. This probably necessitates
| having more capital than the house costs.
| xeromal wrote:
| The problem with that is that unless you have an
| extremely well paying job or rich parents, you have to
| outsave inflation and rising house prices. You may never
| own. Getting a loan just locks you into an inflation
| proof price as a "forced" savings. I don't think it's
| realistic at all for 85% of Americans to save for a new
| house.
| mulmen wrote:
| Yes, it's a tragedy of the commons. That doesn't make
| taking on a loan you can't afford less of a bad idea.
|
| House prices are unaffordable because people take on
| loans they can't afford. This reinforces the unaffordable
| prices. If milk was $40.00 a gallon you'd just stop
| putting it on cereal and eventually farmers get the
| message. Houses are the same thing.
|
| If you can't comfortably afford a house then don't buy
| it. You're stuck renting or buying something more modest.
| This isn't complicated.
|
| The idea that house prices can only go up is delusional.
| Nothing about a house is uniquely inflation proof or even
| inflation resistant. This isn't the only investment
| vehicle available to you.
|
| This idea that houses are an important part of financial
| security is putting the cart in front of the horse. It
| leads to the NIMBYism that prevents additional supply
| from being built because prices must always go up.
|
| We all exist in the same economy and no action happens in
| a vacuum. When you buy something you have reduced supply
| and applied upward pressure on price. Individually this
| effect is so small it is immeasurable. In aggregate it
| isn't.
| itake wrote:
| If you save $2.5k/mo for 15 years, after 14 years
| (mid-30s), you'd have $800k at 8% interest.
|
| Even in Seattle, $800k would get you a decent starter
| home.
|
| (I chose $2.5k, bc 15 years ago out of college, that's
| how much I saved living in GA on a $70k salary). I saved
| even more when I move to California in my mid 20s.
| xeromal wrote:
| That' assuming houses don't go up in price though right?
|
| Also I think it's pretty rare for people to have the
| mental fortitude to save 2.5k a month for a house on top
| of living expenses, rent, and trying to build your
| retirement / savings / emergency fund.
|
| It's definitely possible but I think it's out of reach
| for the average person.
| mulmen wrote:
| > That' assuming houses don't go up in price though
| right?
|
| No, it isn't. You can invest your savings. If you had put
| $2,500.00 a month into SPY500 since October 2009 (15
| years ago) you'd have $1,388,302.13 today.
|
| https://dqydj.com/sp-500-periodic-reinvestment-
| calculator-di...
|
| > Also I think it's pretty rare for people to have the
| mental fortitude to save 2.5k a month for a house on top
| of living expenses, rent, and trying to build your
| retirement / savings / emergency fund.
|
| How is saving for a house "on top of" literally "saving"?
| If you can save for retirement, savings, and emergencies
| then you have the mental fortitude to save for a house.
| People are bad with money, we know that. One of the best
| examples is buying a house they can't afford.
|
| > It's definitely possible but I think it's out of reach
| for the average person.
|
| Yes, agree.
| xeromal wrote:
| Yeah, I just think examples like this need to work for
| the masses in order to be useful otherwise they're just
| pie in the sky advice like abstinence to prevent
| childbirth. It does work and it's 100% effective but
| humans are horny. Same with saving this amount of money,
| there's a select few that can pull it off but most are
| incapable. Those are the people advice is for
| mulmen wrote:
| I don't disagree with you. But I was replying to this
| question:
|
| > So how does one buy a house without being dependent on
| cash flow?
|
| The answer to which is "you don't".
|
| Most people can't afford to buy a house and never will.
| Even many homeowners.
|
| I will spell it out if it isn't already clear.
|
| Live within your means and save as much as you can,
| investing that savings in a diversified portfolio. Buy a
| home only when your savings allow for it.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Most people can't afford to buy a house and never
| will_
|
| Most homes in America are owned by the person who lives
| there.
| kasey_junk wrote:
| And it's not particularly close. ~65% of households own
| their home.
|
| That rate is higher now than in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s or
| 90s. It rofl stomps the pre-war era.
| lancesells wrote:
| Glad you made that work but that's counting steady job,
| steady health, no kids, cost of living staying the same
| the entire time.
| xeromal wrote:
| Plus the cost of houses which will definitely go up
| mulmen wrote:
| 2008 would like a word. House prices absolutely do go
| down. They rose for a long time but recently they are
| again beginning to fall.
|
| Median home price in the US peaked at $479,500.00 in
| 2022. By Q3 2023 it was down to $431,000.00. In Q3 2024
| we reached $420,000.00.
| itake wrote:
| Estimation considers that as my career started 13 years
| ago and we can see how home prices are today
| itake wrote:
| No, those are considered. That $2,500/mo is at the bottom
| of your career. You will be saving more as you age, even
| accounting for employment gaps.
|
| If we are considering kids, presumably there is another
| partner (and income) to be added to the equation. While
| you may have half the amount saved due to the cost of
| raising children, your partner would have the other half.
|
| 8% was chosen to discount 3% inflation (cost of living)
| from SnP 500's average 11% growth.
| ghaff wrote:
| Well, you need cashflow on a house in general. Even with
| a paid-off mortgage, I'm easily $10K/year and probably
| closer to $20K if I'm not pushing various stuff off.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Property tax alone is around $13K/yr for me. Insurance is
| another couple grand. Only after that comes wear and tear
| and maintenance items.
| herf wrote:
| If you pay cash for a house and put 60% _more_ in an
| annuity, you cover the total costs. Not cheap though.
| ghaff wrote:
| The point is that, however you finance it, owning a paid-
| for place will often have significant ongoing costs. Some
| more, some less.
| phonon wrote:
| Why would you forgo the mortgage interest tax deduction?
| ghaff wrote:
| For modestly-priced houses at least may not hit
| deductions these days.
| jonkho wrote:
| If the problem is the mortgage then rent /s. If the
| problem is you need money to pay the bills, well I got
| news for you...
| xeromal wrote:
| I make a decent salary as a programmer (150k) but my
| house only cost 250k and my mortgage is about 1400. How I
| see it, if I have to flip burgers to keep my house, I can
| pull it off. I can't imagine have a mortgage that's 10gs
| a month.
| mvdtnz wrote:
| For a lot of people this isn't possible. You won't find a
| liveable home in my country for under 600k.
| xeromal wrote:
| For sure but that would mean saving for it is even more
| impossible.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| And salaries are likely not 150k either
| jrs235 wrote:
| >if I have to flip burgers to keep my house
|
| Sadly it seems it's unlikely they'll hire you even though
| they might need the help that bad because they're afraid
| of paying to train you and then you leaving once
| something better, and in your line of work, comes along.
| xeromal wrote:
| I mean I just meant a low paying job. During COVID which
| even have more oversupply, I was bored and I was drive
| around doing doordash and other delivery services even
| though I had my tech job. There is always a surefire way
| of making one or two thousand a month here in the states
| if you're properly motivated.
| firesteelrain wrote:
| > my house only cost 250k
|
| I find it hard to believe you can flip enough burgers to
| pay that mortgage and still survive. Not many fast food
| places will pay over 30 hours a week to burger flippers.
| Managers yes. You would barely survive.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _find it hard to believe you can flip enough burgers to
| pay that mortgage_
|
| To keep a $1,400 within the 28/36 rule [1] you need to
| make $60,000 a year. That's around the median wage for a
| fast-food manager [2].
|
| [1] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/t/twenty-eight-
| thirty-six...
|
| [2] https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/fast-food-manager-
| salary-...
| Izikiel43 wrote:
| > I make a decent salary as a programmer (150k) but my
| house only cost 250k
|
| I'm guessing remote work, or a high position in the
| midwest or some other place?
|
| In SF/Seattle/NYC, 250K is not enough for a studio
| apartment.
| silisili wrote:
| Every house requires cash flow, regardless of mortgage
| amount. There's something to be said for overspending on
| a house for sure - but let's not forget mortgage(if any),
| maintenance, property tax, utilities, insurance, etc.
| Last year I spent more on maintenance than my mortgage
| cost.
| GiorgioG wrote:
| Can I avoid inflationcreep? How?
| krambs wrote:
| Index funds?
| GiorgioG wrote:
| I can't eat index funds.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _I can 't eat index funds_
|
| You can't eat cash either. If "can I eat it" is your
| metric, buy army rations.
| basiccalendar74 wrote:
| you can sell index funds and buy stuff. you will mostly
| be ahead of inflation.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _I can 't eat index funds_
|
| You can't eat cash either. If "can I eat it" is your
| asset metric, buy long-lasting preserved foods.
| nickff wrote:
| There are also different types of creep, some that you can
| easily stop, and others that are more difficult.
| Specifically, everything that involves a medium to long-
| term obligation (such as a mortgage or vehicle loan) can
| cause problems if you cannot sustain it through cashflow
| interruptions or significant declines. Going out to
| expensive restaurants and Broadway shows definitely costs a
| lot of money, but you can immediately stop them if you have
| money trouble.
| dvngnt_ wrote:
| like kids?
| majani wrote:
| One thing I've come to realize is that the larger your
| social circle, the more prone you are to comparisons and
| hence lifestyle creep. You can see this where the careers
| that involve a lot of socializing (sales, entertainment,
| law, finance etc) are known for having flashy people. And
| the careers that you can do as a loner (programming, quant,
| researcher etc) are known for having miserly folk
| jes5199 wrote:
| honestly this is one of the reasons I prefer pre-IPO
| companies, my salary is lower until they do a buyback or an
| exit, but it ends up basically in the same place over the
| long term. This is how I was able to put a downpayment on a
| house without consciously "saving up" for it. Obviously
| there's some risk but I've had two buybacks, one IPO, and two
| acquisitions since 2012
| lazide wrote:
| Just wait until you have to deal with child support and
| imputed income.
|
| Getting fired/laid off is about the only thing that can save
| you.
| midhhhthrow wrote:
| This why we need the tiny home movement combined with
| progressive property taxes - 0 prop tax bracket for lowest
| 20% property values If you have mortgage then you don't
| really own your house.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Seems like this would hurt those laid off here. They are
| probably in the top 20% of property values.
|
| That said, I think it is a pretty bad idea. Use of public
| funds dont increase with property value, it just means you
| have deeper pockets. I would be more in favor of flat taxes
| on homes independent of value, so people pay their fair
| share for community resources consumed.
| Carrok wrote:
| Tiny homes are great! Provided you have no family, and no
| hobbies.
| enugu wrote:
| There seems to be an analogy to servers being capable enough
| for usual demand(income>spending), but fails due to some
| downtime for some servers(out of a job) or peak loads(medical
| emergency). This can be amortized by having data centers
| serving multiple apps(social security, insurance - but they
| dont always exist).
|
| One main fault in the analogy is that in an economic crisis,
| there is a vicious cycle of income loss which leads to lower
| demand leading to more lost jobs. This coordination failure
| can be handled by fiscal/monetary policy. Whereas server
| failure, even when widespread due to a virus doesn't happen
| recursively like that.
| sokoloff wrote:
| > bit weird how people feel so differently when they get fired
|
| That doesn't seem the least bit weird to me. If I _choose_ to
| leave a job (or relationship), I could quite sensibly feel
| differently if that same job (or relationship) chooses to leave
| me.
| miningape wrote:
| > Your manager doesn't get upset when you leave, bit weird how
| people feel so differently when they get fired.
|
| Really? You think its weird that someone leaving impacts that
| person more than their manager, team, or company?
|
| A manager doesn't care that you leave because he still gets to
| bring home a salary, all they have to do is hire another person
| and maybe cut back on scope for a little while. When someone is
| layed off or fired they have to go find a new job, their income
| streams dry up, and are forced to rely on savings. People often
| have long term financial commitments they cannot back out of,
| and not knowing how you'll make rent, if you can afford your
| child's school fees, or even maybe having to cut back on how
| much you eat, _is stressful_ and emotionally taxing.
|
| Are you fucking kidding me? "Which is a bit weird" I'll tell
| you what's weird: management who doesn't understand that their
| employees rely on them more than they rely on the employee.
|
| Of course its fine when someone chooses to leave their job,
| they've made contingencies and planned around it. Whether it's
| through savings, another job, or the lottery, people have at
| least some idea of their plan when they leave a job.
| Goronmon wrote:
| _A manager doesn 't care that you leave because he still gets
| to bring home a salary, all they have to do is hire another
| person and maybe cut back on scope for a little while._
|
| Yeah, I'm curious how someone can have an opinions on
| workplaces and workers and not seem to have personal
| experience with the subject, especially in a community like
| this.
|
| Do they just come from a wealthy family so the stance is
| "Getting fired isn't a big deal, just ask your dad to cover
| expenses until your next job."?
| mrthrowaway999 wrote:
| Don't people have savings? Don't people see what's
| happening in the industry and make sure to have 6+ months
| of savings? Don't people think that putting away a small
| portion of their immense tech salary would be a healthy
| thing to do?
| muffinman26 wrote:
| If you grew up with even the slightest feeling of
| financial insecurity, dipping in to savings can already
| feel like the end of the world.
|
| I can't imagine living with only 6 months of savings.
| There's no guarantee that I could find another job in 6
| months, and unexpected expenses (medical, car trouble,
| housing repairs) can easily wipe out a month of savings
| anyway. In fact, given that a layoff means likely also an
| economic downturn, finding a job at the same salary
| within 6 months seems highly unlikely.
|
| I have probably 3 years of no-risk savings at this point,
| have managed to reduce my living expenses to the point
| where I could work a 40-hour minimum wage job and still
| pay for my expenses, and have multiple back-up careers,
| and I'm only now starting to feel that taking money out
| of savings is an acceptable risk. That took years of
| frugal living on a high tech salary. People in their
| first few years at a tech job or with families will
| probably never achieve that.
| zero-sharp wrote:
| It's so frustrating reading the comments around here.
| It's like the conversation is driven by people whose
| circumstances fall on the upper tail end. No concept of
| financial insecurity. No long-term financial commitments
| to worry about. Infinite flexibility. Like jeez,
| congrats. Now try imagining somebody else that's not you.
| Exoristos wrote:
| No. Most Americans live paycheck to paycheck.
| miningape wrote:
| It seems the original commenter has never really been a
| "line-worker". But I could be very wrong too, but then I'd
| be curious how those opinions were formed.
| cipheredStones wrote:
| Nope, you're correct: he runs a startup and apparently
| has been running startups since his early 20s.
|
| > Please tell us briefly about your background.
|
| > I grew up in the Netherlands, and I was interested in
| technology from a young age. I started a gaming website
| when I was 13. Later, I attended Erasmus University
| Rotterdam before founding Fashiolista, my first startup
| and an early social network similar to Pinterest. It grew
| to millions of users...
| mrthrowaway999 wrote:
| > People often have long term financial commitments they
| cannot back out of, and not knowing how you'll make rent, if
| you can afford your child's school fees, or even maybe having
| to cut back on how much you eat, _is stressful_ and
| emotionally taxing.
|
| I'm sure people making >200k/year and getting a 4 month
| severance package will be cutting back on how much they eat.
|
| What you say is true about low or even medium income jobs.
| But most of the cuts are to tech workers and their managers,
| ie. people best equipped to manage in this kind of event.
| miningape wrote:
| You'd be surprised what lifestyle creep does to people.
| Often people don't pay off their debts and instead scale
| their debts to their new income - it's stupid I know.
|
| I agree they _should_ be in a better position because of
| their income, and I 'd say more than an average amount are.
| But there are still a lot of people in that bracket who
| absolutely would have the floor pulled out from under them.
|
| People are often caught with their pants down assuming the
| good times will keep rolling. And even when they see the
| market downturn or have a generous severance, it still can
| be very difficult to scrape together the 6+ months
| emergency fund required on short notice.
| whatshisface wrote:
| Depending on the resale value of what the debt is for
| (homes mainly) maintaining your leverage ratio can work
| out great for you. Mortgages are the only way most people
| are able to invest with leverage and the source of a lot
| of generational wealth.
| from-nibly wrote:
| You should only leverage what you are OK with losing
| entirely. Most people should not be leveraging their only
| home as investments. We are heading into some rough times
| and people will find out about that.
| miningape wrote:
| That's true, but if you over-leverage yourself and the
| market goes through a downturn it can spell financial
| ruin. It's not something to lightly do without the
| cashflow/assets to back up your financial knowledge -
| which most people don't have.
| Mawr wrote:
| You would think so but it's often the opposite. The poorer
| you are the more conscious you have to be about money
| management so getting laid off may just be yet another
| obstacle life has thrown at you, business as usual.
|
| Meanwhile if you've lived an easy life you may not have
| learned how to cope when the hard times come.
| desbo wrote:
| The idea that someone's response to being fired should be the
| same as a manager's response to one of their reports quitting
| is hilariously out of touch.
| ironmagma wrote:
| It kind of ignores the core asymmetry of capitalism, that
| those with the capital are the ones with the power. Nobody
| can do a background check on a company to see who they laid
| off or fired before they work there.
| nradov wrote:
| What do you mean? Information about previous layoffs is all
| over the news, social media, and dedicated sites like
| Glassdoor. Only a fool or someone really desperate would
| take a job without doing a thorough background check on the
| company first. And while I sympathize with workers who have
| to take whatever job they can get, that doesn't apply to
| most HN users.
| ironmagma wrote:
| Glassdoor itself encourages users not to post anything
| factual, only opinion-based, because of the legal
| consequences [1]. Glassdoor is more like a Google
| business review than a background check anyway.
|
| Also your estimation of HN users is probably out of date
| with the current state of the employment market.
|
| [1] https://help.glassdoor.com/s/article/Tips-on-writing-
| a-revie...
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| WARN notices are public.
|
| > _your estimation of HN users is probably out of date
| with the current state of the employment market_
|
| You're probably not around start-ups if layoffs are a top
| concern.
| ironmagma wrote:
| I worked at startups for 7 years. Interestingly, WARN
| acts are mostly irrelevant for startups because they are
| only triggered when a certain number of people are about
| to be laid off (100 or more, I believe). When an employer
| accesses your employment record, they can see very
| detailed information. A WARN act filing is neither
| comprehensive nor detailed.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _WARN acts are mostly irrelevant for startup_
|
| Well yes. If you're at a startup you should assume you're
| always a few months from being laid off. _Everyone_
| should assume that. You 're fighing to survive; the
| default is dead.
|
| Dropbox, on the other hand, is not a start-up. It's had
| to file WARN notices [1]. "Nobody can do a background
| check on a company to see who they laid off or fired
| before they work there" is false.
|
| [1] https://www.warntracker.com/company/dropbox
| ironmagma wrote:
| Once again, an employment check is not like a WARN act
| filing. I want to know for a given startup exactly who
| was fired and why, when, etc.
|
| It's one thing to be laid off from a startup in general.
| Another entirely to be laid off right now.
|
| The number of recent layoffs is everyone's concern right
| now because of how hard it will be for you to find a job
| afterward. Layoffs always were going on, and always will
| for startups, but the days of turning down job offers due
| to small uncertainties are mostly paused or gone at this
| point. The demand crunch is very real.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _I want to know for a given startup exactly who was
| fired and why, when, etc._
|
| What? I don't want you to know when I was fired and why.
| Employment reports typically don't contain the why either
| because that's litigation bait.
| ironmagma wrote:
| They at least contain exactly who you worked for and the
| time period as well as possibly your title. None of that
| is provided in the WARN act.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _at least contain exactly who you worked for and the
| time period as well as possibly your title. None of that
| is provided in the WARN act_
|
| We're talking about the information asymmetry in hiring
| and firing. Why does knowing the titles and time periods
| of those laid off in the past help you estimate your lay-
| off odds in the future?
| not_your_vase wrote:
| > high tech salaries
|
| Are they really high? They are not that different from UPS
| driver salaries.
|
| Just the other day I clicked on the website of some random law
| firm's career page. I wasn't happy with what I saw (in the
| context of my own career). Some researchers with 1 year of
| experience with starting salary of 450k+... tech salaries
| _look_ high as long as you don 't check other professions.
| stoniejohnson wrote:
| They were high in 2013.
| stoniejohnson wrote:
| Revisited this, and while it was tongue-in-cheek, it feels
| a bit ungrateful.
|
| A lot of tech roles are intellectually stimulating and have
| a wage in the upper distribution of salaries. I think we
| have a very nice situation going for us.
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| This doesn't really make sense. What is a "researcher" at a
| law firm? Lawyers at top firms are on fixed pay schedules,
| starting at 180k as a 1st year going up to something like
| 450k after 8yrs (?).
|
| Tech _is_ high earning. It gets beat out by high finance and
| partner-level roles in e.g. law though. If someone is earning
| 450k in their first year it 's probably similar to a quant
| finance role.
| mulmen wrote:
| > 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
|
| Do you have any evidence of this? There are unfounded claims of
| "productivity metrics" but I have never actually seen one.
|
| E: I realize this is a poor choice of words after saying
| productivity metrics don't exist. What I mean is my tasks are
| easier to complete in a WFH environment than they are in an
| office.
|
| I have been far more productive from home. The constraints
| around communication necessitate effective documentation which
| enables asynchronous communication which alleviates scheduling
| challenges which improves delivery.
|
| Maybe managers need to go in to the office to rub elbows but
| ICs definitely don't.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _I have been far more productive from home._
|
| Same. It's been a boon for me, and I genuinely enjoy my work,
| so it's win win. But anecdotally, I know people who abuse it.
|
| On net, remote work is a plus: less commute, less pollution
| etc etc. And even the abusers, it's not like those people
| were highly productive in the office, I'm sure.
| mulmen wrote:
| Ok but how do you know they are abusers? And what is the
| net effect?
| progbits wrote:
| > remote work, which is a perk, but also has a lot of abuse in
| terms of how much work gets done
|
| If you can't tell remote employees are slacking then you also
| can't tell if they are slacking in the office, you are just
| getting fooled by thinking presence implies work.
|
| So tired of hearing this "argument".
| ghaff wrote:
| There's also COBRA, and the exchanges in the US. Frankly, even
| if you're eligible for Medicare it really isn't any cheaper if
| you're a current or recent high earner. But, in any case, it's
| about $7K/year for an individual who doesn't otherwise have
| coverage for a spouse etc.
| pc86 wrote:
| > There should also be some reasonable government provided
| safety net
|
| There is, it's called Medicaid.
| slater wrote:
| They said reasonable, not "endlessly-patched-up nonsense that
| conservatives want to gut at every turn"
| pc86 wrote:
| I feel like "Medicaid could be better" is a statement
| everyone can agree on, but my point stands that the meme
| that US healthcare is some Mad Max apocalyptic wasteland
| where you're completely on your own and left to die in the
| street is categorically false.
|
| Not a single person in the US is denied healthcare based on
| inability to pay.
| slater wrote:
| > Not a single person in the US is denied healthcare
| based on inability to pay.
|
| Yes, because that's the law. Then they hand you an
| exorbitant bill on the way out, which you can't pay. Then
| you get hounded by collections. Then your credit score
| tanks. etc. etc. etc.
|
| Not everything is a direct line, the end result is the
| same.
| jjav wrote:
| > Not a single person in the US is denied healthcare
| based on inability to pay.
|
| This is not true. Emergency rooms are required to take
| you in and stabilize your situation even if you can't
| pay. Everything else is not available if you can't pay.
|
| Think of something like cancer, which an emergency room
| can't treat since it develops over time. You will indeed
| be left to die on the streets if you don't have the money
| or coverage from somewhere.
| jedberg wrote:
| That's not really a solution. You have to be broke to use
| Medicaid. They expect you to fully drain all your assets
| first.
|
| I shouldn't have to sell my house to get medical care.
| teractiveodular wrote:
| FYI, Dropbox does not merely allow remote work, it's a fully
| remote-first company. There's a couple of offices for get-
| togethers and a few people physically staffing data centers,
| but everybody else works wherever they want to.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > Your manager doesn't get upset when you leave, bit weird how
| people feel so differently when they get fired.
|
| That's because people have a single employer, while companies
| have several employees.
|
| That's also why employees are protected, while companies are
| mostly not. And yeah, the US doubles down on the problem by
| linking health insurance with the job.
| deeviant wrote:
| > 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
|
| Do you mind expanding on this? How does remote work change the
| standards of how much work somebody has to get down?
| Powdering7082 wrote:
| Being able to stay in the country is also tied to employment
| for plenty of people
| bruckie wrote:
| > Your manager doesn't get upset when you leave, bit weird how
| people feel so differently when they get fired.
|
| When you leave, your manager loses 1/N of team productivity.
| When you get fired, you lose 100% of your income.
|
| I bet the manager would be more upset if the entire team quit.
| But even then, they'd still have their job--for a while, at
| least.
| BobbyJo wrote:
| Yeah, the stakes for the two sides of that transaction are
| completely different, so equivocating rational responses on
| either side makes no sense. OP lost me there.
| nradov wrote:
| Eventually we all get fired. It shouldn't come as a shock.
| This is why people working in volatile industries subject to
| boom/bust cycles should live below their means and keep at
| least several months of living expenses (including health
| insurance premiums) in low-risk, liquid investments.
|
| I do understand that it can be challenging to save for young
| people with student debt starting out in a HCOL area. But I
| see older tech workers who ought to know better buying luxury
| cars and fancy gaming PCs and taking exotic vacations. Good
| luck to them when the next recession hits.
| trod123 wrote:
| > Eventually ...
|
| Yes, but the problems start in severe economic crises.
| Specifically, when those several months turn into years.
|
| Many filters during the hiring process, prior to interview
| will discard those candidates who have gaps since last
| employment regardless of circumstance. They may use AI as a
| third-party company to review and obscure the fact that
| they aren't hiring anyone over 40, female, or otherwise
| protected classes but that is what is happening regularly,
| along with other elements such as degrees being weighted
| higher than experience algorithmically.
|
| > I do understand ...
|
| I can tell you from personal experience, this opinion of
| yours isn't reflective of the whole. I've been in Tech for
| a decade, I was unlucky and was laid off before the major
| lay offs (2022) as I was involved in workforce reduction
| for a buyout merger. I've been looking ever since, and I've
| had to find work elsewhere in the interim once my reserves
| were expended.
|
| I was extremely frugal, cooking everything myself, nothing
| luxurious. Inflation destroyed my reserves, the lack of
| jobs forced me to look wider than my given profession since
| there are no jobs, and I had more saved than most (>50k in
| liquid reserves at the start).
|
| This isn't some recession like before. This is a great
| depression, potentially a big debt crises like Germany pre-
| WW2.
|
| 70% of my professional network in IT/Tech right now, across
| the board, is out of work. I'll let that sink in. 70%.
|
| We are at peak hiring for seasonal hiring and unemployment
| is 7.0% in August? Hiring freezes guarantee this will be
| double digits by the annual count. National unemployment is
| 1.5%. That's a 4.6x national distortion between the
| national average unemployment and one sector that impacts
| everything else as a labor multiplier, and that measurement
| only counts those currently getting unemployment, any long-
| term displacement outside 18 weeks isn't counted.
|
| Its looking more like we're in the middle of an economic
| collapse, which makes sense if you know about ponzi's,
| economics of boom-bust cycles, and how we are entering a
| bust cycle related to the petrodollar agreement abandonment
| (by the Saudi's); all those dollars printed for abroad use
| are now flowing back to compete with the same goods despite
| high interest rates.
|
| BRICS largely isn't about attacking the US economically,
| its about sheltering from the global economic fallout of
| fiat money printing, for more than half a century. The
| bankers are and have been doing this to us since before we
| were born, and this happens every time large fractions of
| global assets get concentrated into few hands. Its
| cyclical. Large market-share companies are funded by
| preferential loans made by those same bankers. This is how
| you sieve wealth and marketshare, then drive prices up, and
| eventually end in deflation or hyper-inflationary collapse,
| because unlike normal systems economics is both sticky
| psychologically, and mathematically chaotic (3-body-
| problem).
|
| There is no beautiful deleveraging, the bill always comes
| due. If this worsens, and I don't see how it cannot, this
| will be known by the survivors as the folly of one big
| generation.
| teractiveodular wrote:
| > This is a great depression
|
| No, it's not even close. Unemployment in 1933 was 25%.
| trod123 wrote:
| You are comparing apples to oranges.
|
| Unemployment calculations from data recorded during that
| time have since changed. The same unemployment numbers
| are not the same mathematical objects being compared.
|
| At this point, we can never know the true scope of
| unemployment to make any comparison definitively, because
| the measurements no longer accurately collect the
| necessary information for such a comparison.
|
| You don't see engineers turn sampling data into an
| average rate of change, and then use it for safety-
| critical applications that require instantaneous rates of
| change.
|
| In my previous response, I said unemployment today isn't
| counted after 18 weeks, so you should be aware that these
| objects are not the same.
|
| Just because you have no visibility on a problem doesn't
| mean there isn't a problem especially when objective
| measures indicate there is a problem.
|
| No definitive comparison can be made objectively,
| claiming its not even close would involve delusion when
| no external objective comparison can be made,
| definitionally.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Unemployment calculations from data recorded during
| that time have since changed. The same unemployment
| numbers are not the same mathematical objects being
| compared_
|
| We can look at the number of people on payrolls and the
| number of people claiming unemployment.
|
| You are in a deep tech bubble if you think we're in a
| recession let alone depression. (What we _are_ in is a
| cost of living crisis.)
| trod123 wrote:
| Recessions typically are pullbacks of the market sector
| for 1-2 years, but not necessarily slowdowns in growth,
| though there is no globally accepted definition for a
| recession.
|
| Depressions typically have stagnant growth, starting in
| one sector, and expanding; with no prospects and a
| duration that can last years (plural). You can have a
| depression where everyone says they are hiring, but no
| hiring actually occurs.
|
| Cost of living crises naturally occur during the latter
| crises given the chaotic nature of deflationary and
| inflationary forces (money-printing). They are not
| mutually exclusive.
|
| Payroll data collection has problems with accuracy,
| people claiming unemployment also have data collection
| problems. Its not uncommon for the government to withhold
| unemployment benefit approval until some arbitrary
| bureacratic requirement is met with no means to contact
| someone to resolve it timely. I know several people who
| received their 18 month unemployment effectively as a
| lump sum and they spent days of labor trying to overcome
| those hurdles.
|
| This causes a delay of action, and bursts in time
| (temporally) which cannot be compared except as an
| average. Revisions are subject to problems too.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Recessions typically are pullbacks of the market
| sector for 1-2 years, but not necessarily slowdowns in
| growth, though there is no globally accepted definition
| for a recession_
|
| There absolutely is. A slowdown in growth is not a
| recession.
| aworks wrote:
| US President Harry Truman: "It's a recession when your
| neighbor loses his job; it's a depression when you lose
| yours."
| frmersdog wrote:
| It comes down to the concentration of wealth. Companies
| wouldn't have the capital to bid up salaries if they faced
| stiffer competition or couldn't access investment from a
| limited pool of investors (who all think the same), as is the
| case now. I know that "diversity" is a dirty word these days,
| but it's key. A large middle class, where each family has a
| small amount of money to put towards their diverse desires, is
| going to lead to a more stable economy than all of the money
| pooled in the hands of a small group with a much smaller set of
| needs. Dropbox should never have been able to hire so many
| people; that capital should have been in the hands of the
| larger public, who could have spent it supporting a more
| diverse set of hundreds or thousands of jobs (who wouldn't all
| be competing with each other for a limited number of seats in
| the "not laid off" lifeboat).
|
| Put simply, these kinds of things are going to keep happening
| until our wealthiest (individuals/families/companies) are a lot
| less rich.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > The market for talent is competitive.
|
| A couple months ago interviewing.io posted something bragging
| about how "we do anonymous mock interviews. If people perform
| well in those interviews, they get introduced directly to a
| decision-maker at top-tier companies, regardless of how they
| look on paper." ( https://interviewing.io/blog/i-love-
| meritocracy-but-all-the-... )
|
| This annoyed me enough that I sent in an email complaining that
| their introduction process specifically notes that I am not
| eligible for anything, despite performance measured by the site
| as "highest ever achieved: 94th percentile" (so, knock that
| down a bit for being a high water mark), because of an
| insufficient number of years of experience.
|
| They responded:
|
| > It really sucks, especially in this market, but this policy
| is a function of us having tried for years to get companies to
| take junior intros, and it didn't work. We offered to do it
| completely for free, too, fwiw, and no dice.
|
| How competitive is the market for talent? Let's stipulate that,
| because of a lack of prior employment, I'm not qualified to
| have a job. How exactly would that situation change?
| leeny wrote:
| Founder of interviewing.io here.
|
| Clarification: Just because companies don't want a 3rd party
| like us providing them with junior candidates, it doesn't
| mean they don't want them. Even back in 2017-2019, when the
| market was booming, we couldn't get employers to take our
| juniors... because they generally have their own robust
| pipeline.
|
| So the solution is to go to companies directly, rather than
| relying on a 3rd party service like ours, which companies
| tend to use specifically for roles they can't fill on their
| own.
| midhhhthrow wrote:
| Healthcare attached to employment makes no sense ina world
| where people constantly need to switch jobs
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| > Your manager doesn't get upset when you leave, bit weird how
| people feel so differently when they get fired.
|
| How is this weird? Your take is like the famous saying about
| the chicken and the pig both contributing equally to the egg
| and ham sandwich.
| trod123 wrote:
| I disagree with your conclusion, you have several flawed
| premises.
|
| The market has been slowly shrinking into fewer and fewer hands
| over time, which is why it has become more competitive over
| time. This has also led to cooperative behavior among the large
| marketshare companies in the sectors to disadvantage
| competitors, and employees.
|
| Companies do not bid up to the max they can, because the
| executives take their cut first. The companies bids can only
| ever be the max of what is left after that, and varies by the
| greed of those people.
|
| Interest rates would be the shock you described, but Tech
| unemployment as far as I can tell has until now been
| bulletproof, and uncorrelated with interest rate rises or
| falls. Its not rational to assume this market shock is a result
| of interest rates, AI is the only competitive alternative.
|
| The issue is not that you're getting fired. Its that you can no
| longer get base goods needed for survival arbitrarily and
| without notice, and without capital reserves which are finite
| you are living on the street.
|
| When the entire market as an entirety is contracting, there are
| no new jobs to move to in other fields.
|
| Worse, the concentrated market is naturally incentivized to
| impose high costs on any job seekers to interfere in labor
| relations to create barriers to entry for competitors while
| suppressing wages for prospective workers.
|
| This natural progression occurs when anti-trust fails, and
| money printing makes it worse potentially leading to either
| deflation (a collapse to non-market socialism) or hyper-
| inflation (a collapse to non-market socialism). Debt issued as
| preferential loans from a money-printer makes a company state-
| dependent/controlled apparatus even if its claim is that it is
| held privately.
|
| The economy today is worse than 2008, much worse then the
| dotcom bust, and if you plot the trend with good data going
| back and starting around the 1970s, the trend shows progressive
| ruin as time passes, with seiving and consolidation occurring
| regularly. That is the force driving this problem, and it
| doesn't enable tech salaries.
|
| > There should also be some reasonable government provided
| safety net so people can reskill/learn.
|
| There is a limit to what government can provide, it takes
| awhile to get to those limits (we're in a super-cycle going
| back to the 1920s) but we'll be there in the next 5-10 years
| thanks in large part to deficit spending and the FED picking
| winners and losers.
|
| The main issues with academia also applies to government. They
| are structurally the same. Education today is not about
| learning skills, that is always secondary to instilling the
| qualities a loyal unthinking worker. That is what the entire
| prussian-model of schooling is about (which is what we have in
| this country).
|
| These structures for training follow the same structure as
| guild socialism, and the same intractable failures (ref Mises
| for related details).
|
| It inevitably ends up being a cult of qualification, where you
| are automatically considered unqualified without a piece of
| paper even if you have the actual skills to do the job. Once a
| target market size is identified and reached, new candidates
| are put on an endless escalator of suffering with arbitrary
| filters/requirements where the claimed outcome is nothing but
| an unobtainable pipe dream.
| raydev wrote:
| > weird how people feel so differently when they get fired
|
| It's weird that the average person working these jobs has bills
| to pay, and perhaps additional family members to care for?
| sidcool wrote:
| Sad news. But the message is crafted well. Crisp and no overly
| emotional.
| noisy_boy wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| I'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 wrote:
| Let's keep trying. What learning opportunities do you see in
| the details here?
| mrthrowaway999 wrote:
| Just 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 wrote:
| > 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.
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| I think the real learning here is that the company is still
| around even though they are sort of not in the popular
| zeitgeist at all anymore and there are so many other tools that
| does what they do.
| ozim wrote:
| It is still around even if as a Linux user I can get ftp
| server and mount it locally then use CVS or SVN ... ;)
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| This literally happens every single time there is a big layoff
| announcement on HN; at this point it's completely predictable.
| People love these stories as a place to vent (not that I
| necessarily blame them), but I do find that these kind of
| stories always attract the lowest quality comments. E.g. "Why
| hasn't the CEO committed harakiri!" Which is always a bit sad
| to me because I think the biggest mistake (especially in highly
| paid industries) is to think that a layoff is the end of the
| world and the absolute worse possible thing that can happen to
| someone.
| John_Cena wrote:
| Ahem The CEO's breath smelled of genitals
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| We've learned it because we've seen this movie many times over
| the past couple of years (the catalyst perhaps being Musk's
| decimation of Twitter): it's become acceptable -- and perhaps
| not only acceptable but expected -- to suddenly cut a
| significant percentage of your workforce in order to "drive
| growth", with some BS platitude (the details of which vary a
| bit but they all read pretty much the same).
|
| It's not venom, it's an appropriate response by workers to the
| "shareholder-value-at-all-cost" race that the industry finds
| itself in; an industry that has prided itself, and often built
| companies on, values that are the opposite.
|
| That, and the fact that CEOs have no accountability for these
| decisions.
| butz wrote:
| Any 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.
| stonethrowaway wrote:
| Next 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.
| jedberg wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| At 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.
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