Dropbox CEO 'Takes Full Accountability' as He Fires 500 People
Dropbox CEO 'Takes Full Accountability' as He Fires 500 People
CEO Drew Houston will remain in his job.
Surely that means he also took a hefty pay cut to keep on as many people as possible. Wouldn't that be what accepting accountability looks like?
Found the commie! /s
We had layoffs last year, and two of the managers opted to quit their jobs rather than fire an additional staff member.
Sadly their replacements are not as nice.
My manager just went on vacation the week they laid off his team. Didn't hear a word from that coward after the fact.
Accountability: : the quality or state of being accountable
especially : an obligation or willingness to accept responsibility or to account for one's actionsHe's literally saying "this is my fault." That doesn't mean he's willing to suffer the consequences personally. Not defending his decisions, just pointing out that people seem to be misunderstanding what "accountable" means.
This is usually (expected) followed up with... "well, the fuck are you going to do about it, then" and this fuckface decided to pussy out and fuck over 500 people.
So I mean, half right, but that's still a giant red F in my book.
CEO Drew Houston will remain in his job.
So not full accountability.
"full accountability" means moving those 500 workers' salaries into his paycheck.
Don't forget the bonus for cutting costs!
How very noble of him.
It's the sentiment that counts.
That's not what accountability means
“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,” he wrote. “This market is moving fast and investors are pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into this space. This both validates the opportunity we’ve been pursuing and underscores the need for even more urgency, even more aggressive investment, and decisive action.”
Lol
Leaders often claim that they are taking accountability when they screw up—and they should, as CEOs like Houston are the ones who mismanaged the company to the point of requiring layoffs in the first place. But rarely does “taking accountability” actually amount to much of anything. The most notable recent example is perhaps that Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella asked the company’s board to reduce his pay in light of the major Crowdstrike hack. But in that case, his overall compensation still increased for the year by $30 million. Just, a little less up.
That, right there, is something that's said right before someone learns the definition of "defenestration" the hard way
He's taking full accountability by giving himself a larger raise.
That is the opposite of taking accountability though...?
Yes, but only if you don't speak C-Suite.
But, he hasn't taken any responsibility for the years of scamming new customers with bait and switch schemes. They haven't even changed their deceptive sales tactics. They are still a shitty, deceptive mega-corp that thrives on theft and lies.
If you are looking for an alternative to a mega-corp for secure, sharable online storage, I have used sync.com for a few years now and am very happy with them.
Funny story, those guys lost ALL my data a few years ago.
These services are so sketchy. Google Drive was telling me everything was synced for months, yet was syncing nothing. I was on a paid plan. There was no customer support. I think I tried everyone at some point. They all suck. Sync hasn't fucked me over yet, but I will not be surprised when it happens.
That's not how accountability works....
Accountability would be lowering your own pay in order to keep your workers and admit you did this because others shouldn't have to suffer for your mistakes.
I'm sorry, but I don't think you have what it takes to be a CEO
No matter! He said the thing so he's absolved, that's just CEO rules ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
That seems kind of harsh. I'd totally accept falling on his own sword, maybe seppuku.
yes, this is more like that little hand wave that tennis players do to acknowledge a lucky point "sorry mate, your job is gone... moving on"
"I declare accountability!"
Some of you will lose your job, but it’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make. I take full accountability.
When COVID hit, the management team at the company I worked for, took temporarily salary hits. The rest of us were told our quarterly bonuses would be frozen. Nobody would be laid off unless it's an emergency.
Company pivoted in just a few months thanks to smart executive decisions and hard working engineers. The quarterly bonuses were paid out anyway. Nobody was laid off. We saved a bunch of our B2B customers' livelihoods by offering solutions that helped them continue operate during lockdowns (and our company's income was directly dependent on THEIR income - if they suffered, we suffered, if they prospered, we prospered). Of course, the CEO was also the founder of the company and at that point, there had been no investors or anyone involved. It was truly a family-run company that had made it big.
THAT is accountability. Doing whatever you can to keep your staff employed and your customers happy.
That company has since enshittified because of management changes and I've left for greener pastures, but if I'm ever in charge of my own company and the financials look bleak, I'll take the hit myself. It's easier to replace money than it is to replace good, hard working people. And good people will help you pivot if your business model is no longer working out.
"Full accountability", as in, they're still fired, he still have his big paycheck and assorted bonuses, and the more general "fuck them" attitude will remain.
That's not accountability, that's shitting on people and smiling about it.
It's like a YouTuber apology. "Oh I done fucked up, I am so sowwy" while sitting on a cozy couch in a multi-million-dollar home
I wish someone would keep a list of all the companies that have laid employees off in the last few years, so we can keep tabs on who to not give our business to.
Would be easier to keep a list of those that didn't.
Well, if dropbox can exist without those 500 employees, then it’s logical. You don’t judge success of a business by how many people it employs
The problem is that we judge its success by how much the wealthiest people bet on its success in a glorified casino instead of anything else, like its positive impact on society.
A plane can continue to fly without a pilot. The problem is not "continuing to exist", but continued success or a spectacular crash.
Also, I'd bet on Dropbox being able to function quite well without its CEO.
The employees are more important than the boss. So yeah, I do count those jobs and feel it means something significant. Also, what does "logical" even mean to you? If the boss cut his own pay, he could have kept the employees. That's just as logical, isn't it? So you're not talking about logic, are you.
If you want to talk about values, let's do it. Please explain why multi millionaires (and richer) matter more than everyone else. Please.
After paying $720/yr, then $840, then being told it would be over $900 this year, I wasn’t really happy about the cost of using Dropbox. But it’s been rock solid for many years and was heavily integrated into my company’s workflow, so I smiled and bent over.
Until they took away the unlimited storage. I was using 31TB, and they wanted to put me at 15TB with no option to upgrade even if I wanted to.
I already had an on-site NAS, so I bought another for $3k (with drives) and asked a family member in another state to house it. I’m using Resilio to sync everything. It’s been backing up for a couple of months and probably has a couple more to go. So far I’m happy with the decision.
I have to imagine I’m not the only one making this move. Even if they fix the problem, I’m not going back. It’s far cheaper to keep a customer than to win a new one. Hopefully they learn their lesson.
Is this for personal or professional? I have a small server (few TB) and I'm amazed the immense amounts of data some people hoard for fun. I always thought it was mad to keep movies, until I tried to get the original lion king on my native language and decent quality and it took me days to find. Won't delete that one
It’s both. My company is nearly twenty years old and I have an archive of everything I have ever done. … And a plex library.
So brave!
“This hurts me more than it hurts you”
I mean the other option would have been to keep these staff and leverage them to drive innovative solutions with your product or possibly close open feature requests and bug submissions. I mean, these 500 people could have worked towards new initiatives to grow the business as they are keenly aware of the drop box business already and would be able to execute quickly on new initiatives. There are so many interesting places that drop box could expand into and they are instead choosing to layoff staff that could get them there.
I went through a round of layoffs at my last company. They laid off around 15% and then went hiring, people who just had their teams cut in half and their workload doubled and had to say goodbye to colleagues with years of experience were then told to do 3-4 interviews a week to hire new talent.
It was all just a yank of the choke chain. Management wanted labor to know that they could replace you. Our most senior people burned out and I left after staying longer than I really should have to try to help out my teammates.
Layoffs like this are about obedience and control and showing the investors that you are willing to break people to return them a healthy profit.
As usual, it's only ever about maximizing shareholder value in the short term.
I dunno, maybe its time for Dropbox to just slowly decline and eventually exit? I don't see what they could possibly pivot into that isnt already covered by Google, Microsoft, Proton, etc. They had years of first mover advantage they could have pivoted off, but thats long behind them.
That said, if thats their plan, then the C suite needs to have their pay cut to the bone as well. CEOs get the big bucks because they make the big decisions to grow the company. If they arent growing, they should be the first cut.
wow even more meaningless than free lunch coupons, way to go
So if he's taking full accountability, who's the new CEO of Dropbox? /s
Dumbass.More and more I'm appreciating my decision to selfhost Nextcloud when I decided to start moving away from Google. All nonsense like this affects for me personally (should Dropbox crash and burn) is some redundant backups.
That means he fired himself too, right?
...... Right?
It's easy to take full accountability for no consequences.
Should there be consequences? Layoffs are a normal response to a lack of business. Exorbitant CEO pay is a separate issue, it should be reduced even before people are laid off.
In most states where unions are not overregulated like in the US, a layoff has at least the consequence of substantial severances, and the business being unable to hire back for the positions it just laid off without incurring very significant fines.
He gotta protect his bonus
I'm sure it'll be their best quarter/year of all time but the cut would be because they didn't meet prediction levels, because if you're not exceptional you're dead weight these days 🙄
I looked out of curiosity, they’re actually not doing well, revenue shrinking quarterly. Seems like other players are eating their lunch. Makes sense really, 10-15 years ago Dropbox was innovative but now? There’s like 25 other cloud drive providers. Dropbox isn’t really offering anything unique now, they’re just a commodity, and they can’t meet the package deal pricing of competitors (like Google drive being included with Google Apps, or iCloud Drive being included with Apple One).
It's not sustainable. Hooboy we're in for some interesting times.
As a CEO. His public opinion is already dogshit, might as well own it.
Sure, I'm an asshole, I did that. Sorry, it is what it is.
And this is the problem with public companies and private equity. Number must go up.
MF looks like wish.com Elon Musk, didn't think that was even possible, but I guess the Rubber Barons have a type.
yes! I am not alone with that impression.
He's scheduled a ball busting public ball kicking as punishment. He takes full accountability.