this post was submitted on 03 Nov 2024
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[–] [email protected] 172 points 1 month ago (4 children)

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?

[–] FenrirIII 20 points 1 month ago

Found the commie! /s

[–] Semi_Hemi_Demigod 9 points 1 month ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] AbidanYre 132 points 1 month ago (2 children)

CEO Drew Houston will remain in his job.

So not full accountability.

[–] [email protected] 61 points 1 month ago (2 children)

"full accountability" means moving those 500 workers' salaries into his paycheck.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago

Don't forget the bonus for cutting costs!

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

How very noble of him.

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[–] citrusface 100 points 1 month ago
[–] [email protected] 71 points 1 month ago (1 children)

That's not what accountability means

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago (3 children)
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[–] [email protected] 50 points 1 month ago

He's taking full accountability by giving himself a larger raise.

[–] [email protected] 50 points 1 month ago (2 children)

“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

[–] tb_ 39 points 1 month ago

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.

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[–] JustARaccoon 42 points 1 month ago (1 children)

That is the opposite of taking accountability though...?

[–] FlyingSquid 11 points 1 month ago

Yes, but only if you don't speak C-Suite.

[–] Burn_The_Right 40 points 1 month ago (1 children)

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.

[–] crozilla 8 points 1 month ago (5 children)

Funny story, those guys lost ALL my data a few years ago.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago (1 children)

The dropbox guys or the sync guys?

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[–] barsquid 39 points 1 month ago

"I declare accountability!"

[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 month ago (4 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 month ago

Some of you will lose your job, but it’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make. I take full accountability.

[–] cley_faye 27 points 1 month ago (1 children)

"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.

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 month ago

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.

[–] EnderMB 25 points 1 month ago (14 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 month ago

Would be easier to keep a list of those that didn't.

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[–] 418_im_a_teapot 25 points 1 month ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago (3 children)
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[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 month ago (1 children)
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[–] assembly 20 points 1 month ago (3 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 month ago

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.

[–] FlyingSquid 14 points 1 month ago

As usual, it's only ever about maximizing shareholder value in the short term.

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[–] iAvicenna 16 points 1 month ago

wow even more meaningless than free lunch coupons, way to go

[–] InverseParallax 14 points 1 month ago

But, no, I'm keeping my bonus.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago

That means he fired himself too, right?

...... Right?

[–] Sam_Bass 13 points 1 month ago

think they mean he took the full accounts

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago

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.

[–] AshMan85 12 points 1 month ago

He gotta protect his bonus

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago

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.

[–] finkrat 10 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

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 🙄

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago

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).

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago

And this is the problem with public companies and private equity. Number must go up.

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