

Dropbox Leases Giant New SF Office, Plans To Grow To 400+ Employees - aorshan
http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/27/dropbox-leases-giant-new-sf-office-plans-to-grow-to-400-employees/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29

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MikeCapone
Maybe I'm just an ignorant not-involved-in-a-startup person, but what is
Dropbox doing with these 400+ employees?

To me Dropbox seems like it's a pretty simply and mature product feature-wise.
Have they announced that they're expanding into other products? I just hope
they won't bloat Dropbox the way that some of these one-main-feature softwares
were inflated in the past (ICQ, etc).

edit: I guess what got me thinking about this is that I'm reading the book by
Google employee #59, and Google had a working search engine and they were
building their own hardware with less than 100 employees. Just not sure what
Dropbox can do with 400+ since their product is a lot simpler and they're not
dealing with datacenters, though maybe it makes sense if these people are
mostly doing marketing and sales.

~~~
qq66
Any organization at scale just needs a lot of people to deal with keeping the
wheels on the bus. There are Computer Science problems that need to be solved
every day to keep the site running, a team to handle billing problems,
fraudulent payments, a sales team to go after corporate customers, now you
have so many people in the office that you need inhouse HR... oh look, now you
need a recruiter to start keeping all these candidates coming in the door...
now you need accountants to make sure that all of these people get paid on
time...

~~~
abcd_f
> _There are Computer Science problems that need to be solved every day to
> keep the site running_

This part is beyond awesome.

~~~
qq66
From an engineering manager that helped scale Facebook:
[http://www.quora.com/LikeALittle-startup/Why-do-you-need-
gol...](http://www.quora.com/LikeALittle-startup/Why-do-you-need-gold-
medalist-programmers-in-your-team-to-build-something-like-
LikeALittle/answer/Yishan-Wong)

------
Spyro7
I know that they have taken some heat for security issues of late, but,
frankly, I love this company and their product and I am happy to see them
doing well.

The magic of Dropbox is that it strikes just the right balance between
simplicity and power.

When my mother deleted a book that she had been writing for almost a year (and
its backup), I was able to show her how to retrieve deleted documents from
Dropbox. It was incredible.

Arthur C. Clarke once said that any sufficiently advanced technology is
indistinguishable from magic. Well Dropbox is magic to most of the people that
I have introduced it to.

I know that there are other solutions out there that do similar things to what
they do, but I have never really been able to find one that just clicks with
so many people regardless of technical ability.

~~~
rednaught
It's unfortunate when most are so mesmerized by great but incomplete magic
that the magic creators are unwilling to conjure something even more magical
to include safety like client-side encryption.

Reworded for the downvotes: Don't punish users because most may not even be
aware of the lack of security in Dropbox by not using client-side encryption.
If it's too difficult to explain, then it's time to go back and address your
implementation of the product. Security through simple ignorance of a known
deficiency is just disappointing. Maybe it only affects 1 out of 10 users who
trust the safety of their stored password lists or similar documents, but
businesses hopefully are more demanding.

And just a note...I do like Dropbox and use it everyday(for non-sensitive
files).

~~~
qq66
Client-side encryption severely worsens the economics of Dropbox, and not
everyone needs it. If you want that you're perfectly entitled to go build your
own competitor, which will have higher costs.

~~~
rednaught
It's already been built such as Spideroak and Wuala. Dropbox could capture
more of the market and even concerned businesses if they make this even as
much as a simple configurable option. If the data deduplication costs higher
because of client-side encryption, then charge me the commodity price of
storage for that option. Not everyone needs it but some do...

~~~
sliverstorm
How do you propose they pay for the development? I personally doubt they will
suddenly have businesses with deep pockets knocking on their door with
fistfuls of money.

------
mtogo
In related news, Dropbox employees were surprised to find that the new
building's locks could be opened with any key and that despite the landlord's
Terms of Service, janitors and other building staff _can_ in fact open and
view private containers and documents belonging to employees.

~~~
funkah
That's a great point, Dropbox totally had a security bug that one time.

~~~
dmbass
In my estimation, if their system was decently designed, instead of granting
anyone access to everything, nobody should have been granted access to
anything if there is an authentication problem. Can you possibly imagine a
worse system than they currently use (that still attempts to provide
security)?

~~~
ceejayoz
How do you know what they "currently used"? Do you really think their
authentication really defaults to "yes" still?

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ghshephard
I find it humorous that (otherwise highly intelligent, and well informed)
members of HN are asking "What do they need all these people for" - DropBox is
getting a rumored $5B valuation - which implies, no, requires they start to
ramp up both their revenue and, eventually, profit.

That's going to require either (A) a LOT more customers, or (B) More
profitable Customers.

(A) is just going to be a huge headache in terms of legal issues, support
issues, infrastructure, etc...

(B) is going to require an entirely new model of sales - SEs, RFP writers,
Marketing, Salespeople, Finance people working in many markets, channels,
etc...

Regardless - 400 employees for a $5 Billion company is on the absolute low end
of where they will be if they actually justify that (rumored) valuation.

The challenge comes when you start charging for these services and/or take on
the corporate customers - if you run it ala CraigsList - you let the community
police itself, and just hire a core infrastructure team, call it a day.
Companies that start actively marketing their product, pick up an enormous
number of bodies, and, of course, the finance/hr/it/management/executive teams
required to support those bodies.

~~~
Sukotto

      I find it humorous that (otherwise highly intelligent, and
      well informed) members of HN are asking "What do they need 
      all these people for" 
    

I'm one of those who asked that question. The way I become better informed is
to acknowledge my ignorance, then ask questions in the hopes of reducing it.

You make some good points.

I would feel better about your answer if you didn't seem so condescending
though.

------
rada
To all those wondering about 400+ new hires, you can view and vote on the
proposed featureset at dropbox.com/votebox.

Some popular requests:

\- sync folders outside of the _My/Dropbox_ folder

\- read/write permissions for shared files/folders

\- remote destroy/purge if laptop is stolen

\- streaming audio/video

\- windows mobile support

\- reseller/branding program

\- internationalization

... and much more.

~~~
Jarred
This is just some speculation as to why I think Dropbox is going to be
something awesome (it's good right now, but not awesome). I'm not really in
any position to make these suggestions (or expect them to be followed), so I'm
going to more than likely sound crazy.

I don't really know what the vision behind Dropbox is, but (in my own opinion)
it should be the place where people's personal files are stored. From there,
people build cross-platform apps making it more useful. They are already doing
this, but they need to take the "next step", which is probably what they want
to do with their incoming 400 employees.

Generally, people store all their files on their home computer, and to solve
the problem of "I can't access my files on the go" people started using
laptops as their primary computer. That's not really a good solution because
then you have to carry a computer around. Smartphones and tablets are sort of
solving this, but they bring the same overall issue of "My stuff on here is
different from my stuff on there". What Dropbox could do is host people's
actual "computers", where computer is defined as software, files, and
settings. So when you load up your smartphone or you friends smartphone you
can access the smartphone version of your computer, and the tablet version of
your computer on tablets, and the desktop version of your computer on
desktops.

It wouldn't feel like you're using "your laptop" or "your friends tablet" or
"your iPhone" because the only difference between any kind of computer is
whose signed in right now. Dropbox is in a favorable position to do this, but
so is Apple, Google, and Microsoft.

It's a pretty crazy (and unlikely) notion, but how else will Dropbox grow?

~~~
danenania
It definitely seems to be the direction things are converging, but what you
are talking about is much more than file storage, it's a full scale cutting
edge multi-platform cloud OS. While it is definitely conceivable, if you look
at how far the various _single_ -platform client-based OSes still have to go,
it sheds some light on how monumentally complex the task truly is. Especially
considering that these OSes have companies many, many times larger and more
experienced than dropbox backing them.

File storage is certainly a critical piece of the puzzle and I could see them
making some major inroads towards standardizing the cloud, but I think the
full breadth of your vision is still pretty far off. Fun to speculate on
though for sure.

~~~
doctoboggan
Those large single-platform client-based OSes have not produced a cloud OS
because it would be too radical of a change for their current business model.

Some company with the explicit goal of developing a cloud based OS could do it
today if they wanted to. Monetizing it might be a different question though.

------
rednaught
Hiring based on plan compared to need. Does all of this crazy funding raise
anyone else's hackles? Maybe it's just that I'm not in Silicon Valley or SF.

Update: Perhaps it is just the signaling of going from 65 to 400 that bothers
me. I like Dropbox's service and agree they are doing well. Is the mention of
400 employees meant to be a signal for future investors, those interested in
working there or perhaps other competitors? A change from 65 to 400 employees
is not a single hop but requires quite a bit to fall into place according to
plan.

~~~
sabat
I don't know if this is all that crazy. Ambitious, yes, but it's tempered
compared to the '90s. Dropbox is doing very well and wants to try and do very,
very well.

------
Sukotto
Would someone break down for me what Dropbox needs all those people for?

Is Dropbox starting some big new project that can't be handled by the current
number of employees?

------
staunch
Why does Dropbox need 400 employees!? Really high headcounts are _the_
guaranteed path to eventual mediocrity. Why do almost no companies see this
and prevent it?

~~~
dagw
My guess is they're moving towards the high end corporate market, which is
where the really big bucks are. And to break into that market you need a sales
and support team on an entirely different scale than what you need for the
consumer market.

~~~
arctangent
I hope that you are right. Where I work our IT department has banned the use
of Dropbox because in theory it would allow sensitive data outside of the
organisation. However, they've not been able to provide any kind of
alternative. My team could in theory do this but the politics we'd need to
wade through would be horrendous. If Dropbox were to offer a way to run their
service entirely inside your own firewall (with support) then I am sure that
my company (and many others) would happily pay huge amounts of money for it.

------
LeafStorm
If you look at iCloud and Ubuntu One, both of those services have Dropbox-
esque file storage as one of their features, but they also store and sync
things like contacts, settings, and other pieces of data. Dropbox may be
planning on doing something like that, with the added advantage that they
aren't binding their stuff to a specific OS or platform.

------
code_duck
Dropbox has some rather tough competition ahead of them from Amazon, Google
and Microsoft at the least - they know they'll need to be rather sturdy to
stay the leading provider of convenient cloud storage for consumers. Best of
luck!

------
andrewcross
Dropbox is one of the few services I use that I would be seriously upset if I
couldn't use again.

------
dreamdu5t
Great to hear. I'm glad to know Dropbox is here to stay.

Just remember to keep the service simple. Don't fall into the feature pit!

~~~
bronson
In other words, keep 250 of those 400 employees idle!

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iradik
how many of those 400 are going to be engineer hires?

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windexh8er
Anybody still using Dropbox needs a head check. They've made too many mistakes
that showcase a broken undercarriage. Dropbox is the epitomy of succesful
failures in my book. only the unknowing masses will stick with them for lack
of understanding.

