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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.

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 declare accountability!"

That means he fired himself too, right?

...... Right?

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

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.

"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.

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?

CEO Drew Houston will remain in his job.

So not full accountability.

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.

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

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

That's not what accountability means

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.

“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

think they mean he took the full accounts

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.

So brave!

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

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.