Dropbox plans to lay off 16% of its staff, or ~500 employees; CEO Drew Houston blames slowing growth and because “the AI era of computing has finally arrived”
Today, our cofounder and CEO Drew Houston shared the difficult news … Emma Roth / The Verge : Dropbox is laying off 500 people and pivoting to AI Rob Thubron / TechSpot : Dropbox blames AI and the economy for laying off 500 people Mercy Tukiya Mutanya / Coinspeaker : Dropbox Cuts Staff By 16% Due to Slowing Growth and ‘Era of AI’ Marvie Basilan / International Business Times : Dropbox Cuts 500 Staff; CEO Cites Slow Growth, Arrival Of ‘AI Era’ Ross Kelly / ITPro : Dropbox cuts 16% of staff, cites new AI focus Leigh Mc Gowran / Silicon Republic : Dropbox is laying off 500 employees to focus on AI Zaveria / Analytics Insight : Dropbox Layoffs 500 Employees to Build Out its AI Division Scott Budman / NBC Bay Area : Layoffs at Bay Area-Based Lyft, Gap, Dropbox TechRadar : Dropbox blames AI as it lays off hundreds of workers Annie Palmer / CNBC : Dropbox to lay off 500 employees, or about 16% of its workforce Nivedita Balu / Reuters : Dropbox to cut workforce by 16%, hire new talent for AI-powered products Katyanna Quach / The Register : Dropbox drops 16% of staff, points finger at hard-up customers and AI Marc Ferranti / Computerworld : Dropbox lays off 16% of staff to refocus on AI, as sales growth slows Dean Seal / Wall Street Journal : Dropbox to Lay Off 16% of Workforce LinkedIn: Rafael Brown : Yes Cloud AI hype is getting silly. It is sillier than the metaverse push and the hilarious ‘web3’ notion of associating Blockchain with XR, and that was off the charts silly. … Luigi La Corte : AI replacing humans is NOT a distant worry. It's already here. — Dropbox just laid of 15% of their workers. The direct reason: AI. … Tweets: Drew Houston / @drewhouston : Shared the difficult decision to reduce our workforce with the Dropbox team today. We're committed to supporting those affected, and I'm deeply grateful for their contributions. https://blog.dropbox.com/... @developerjack : Am I too cynical to see Dropbox ‘pivoting to AI’ and wondering skeptically where tf their training data will come from? https://www.theverge.com/... @yoavgo : (a) bye bye engineers. we need some prompters and product people. (b) are they going to kill dropbox with “ai”? https://twitter.com/... https://twitter.com/... Gergely Orosz / @gergelyorosz : Dropbox is laying off 16%, when their profitability is increasing, and while stating that they will hire (and invest) and in “AI and early-stage product development”. This is indicative at what is happening across tech. There is growth: in AI areas. Efficiency everywhere else. https://twitter.com/... John Scalzi / @scalzi : “Pivot to AI” is the new “Pivot to metaverse” was the new “Pivot to video,” i.e., a wild rush to capitalize on unproven tech most don't understand hoping that there is money on the other side of it, which there almost certainly is not, save for a few. https://www.theverge.com/... Theo / @tprstly : No, AI is not going to give employees superpowers and transform knowledge work, it's going to decimate it @drewhouston https://twitter.com/... https://twitter.com/... John Koetsier / @johnkoetsier : Dropbox CEO blames AI for job cuts “The AI era of computing has finally arrived ... We've believed for many years that AI will give us new superpowers and completely transform knowledge work.” Dropbox lays off 500 employees, 16% of staff https://techcrunch.com/... https://twitter.com/... William Fitzgerald / @william_fitz : from linkedin: a dropbox employee posted this an hour ago. he provided “AI strategy” to Dropbox, now he's out of a job. https://twitter.com/... Gergely Orosz / @gergelyorosz : Dropbox seems to be acting rationally, knowing that their competitors will do the same and that their investors also expect this. For mature areas: make things more efficient. Cut bets that won't bring money. For AI use cases: double down, as this is the biggest opportunity. Eize Basa / @ponchorebound : The entire history of Dropbox as a company is having a simple product everyone wants—a magic folder that syncs across computers—and then doing everything in their power to make it as needlessly complicated as possible. https://twitter.com/... Ankur / @theankurtyagi : We're family but now we need to invest our money in AI so we're sorry but we'll give you free job placement service 🤷♂️ A Gentle Reminder: a quote by Dr APJ Abdul Kalam. “Love your job but don't love your company because you may not know when your company stops loving you.” https://twitter.com/... https://twitter.com/...