

TechCrunch Tours Dropbox Offices - jkincaid
http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/10/inside-the-psychobox-a-tour-of-dropboxs-bumping-office/

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guynamedloren
This was just... awkward. Don't get me wrong - it's very interesting to see
what it's like inside the office of an up-and-coming startup, but it just
wasn't what I expected. When I think of startups (or hackers in general) I
think of some geeky guys with a dose of rebelliousness - especially
Y-Combinator startups. I think of guys who want something more than Big Co has
to offer. Guys that are passionate, driven, and motivated. From the video,
this isn't the vibe I picked up at all. The employees just seemed weird, for
lack of a better word. Maybe they were acting for the camera, but nobody
seemed to be doing any _real_ work, and everybody seemed okay with that. From
the artwork to office layout, the company culture almost appeared _forced_ and
unnatural. Am I alone in thinking this?

FWIW, I haven't watched any other "TC Cribs" videos, so I don't want to
generalize. Maybe it's just Dropbox. I'm checking out other videos now.

(I may get downvoted for my slightly negative view here, but it is my opinion
and I'm sticking with it)

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jkincaid
Of course it's unnatural. There's people walking around with big cameras and
I'm sticking a microphone in their face. We could show people coding with
their head down, but that would be pretty dull. So we get some shots showing
people doing actual work, and then explore some of the things that make the
office unique, and what they do to blow off steam.

~~~
guynamedloren
Hi Jason, I appreciate the response. You're right that a video of people
coding with their head down would be pretty dull, but that's not exactly what
I was getting at. Digging deeper than that, nobody you interacted with showed
any enthusiasm or charisma. In my mind (and maybe I'm overly
optimistic/idealistic), startups are generally the most enjoyable and
satisfying jobs out there - and it's not because of arcade games in the
office. Undoubtedly it's nice (and practically essential) to have outlets for
releasing stress, but the satisfaction comes from doing real, valuable work,
and I guess I just expected some of the passion and enthusiasm to come through
in the personalities of the employees. I'm not saying they don't love what
they do - I'm just saying I didn't see it, which is slightly disappointing. At
any rate, I appreciate the perspective of the videos and look forward to
seeing more.

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rdouble
Software startups are still desk jobs. The best one can hope for is to stave
off completely becoming "Office Space" until after the acquisition or IPO.

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dmix
I swear it's the Jason's goal to create as many awkward situations while
filming these Techcrunch office tours.

He walks into people, unsuccessfully tries walking backwards while talking,
missed fist pound etc. It's amusing.

~~~
jkincaid
That's just me :)

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Dboy
Keep being awesome! :)

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TomOfTTB
Wow. I don't mean this as negative towards Dropbox at all but I never thought
I'd see that level of decadence again. I mean, the Phelan Building (where
they're located) is massively expensive (its a 105 year old historic
landmark). Custom art on the wall, band rooms, arcade games, free food and all
the amenities.

Again no slight intended. If they have the money they might as well enjoy it
(I did when I was young and in the same situation). But for a company that had
its first release what about 2 years ago they're living large.

The 90s are back after all.

~~~
rdouble
Is it really massively expensive?

When I left SF all those old buildings off Market were the cheapest options in
The City. Also, you could usually take over the lease for cheap from some
other startup wipeout.

~~~
TomOfTTB
I guess expensive is relative but last I checked it was about $1,100 for a
300sq ft office (and they clearly have a lot more than 300sq ft). That was a
few years ago when I had a friend who moved his offices out of there because
the location wasn't worth the cost to him.

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davidu
What does it cost in terms of talent and time for every block away from BART
and the Underground you decide to locate your office?

It's a more expensive than an extra $5K or $10K a month in rent, that's for
sure.

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tptacek
This is exactly the logic that our mteam used in the '99 bubble when we built
out offices on 2nd. I'm not saying Dropbox is extravagant, but this isn't a
compelling argument to me.

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davidu
That's not the logic that sank the company.

Seriously, $5 or $10K increase in monthly rent is a pittance. There are a lot
more wasteful things I could bitch about than that, and I'm a cheap-ass.

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tptacek
Is Dropbox overspending on employee perks? I highly doubt it.

Does that make every expense that can be rationalized in comparison to
headcount, revenue, or (worst of all) potential pull-through revenue valid?
No! Some are valid, some aren't.

All I am saying is, this notion of "we need the very best talent, and we need
to make it is as happy as can be" is a platitude that was used by execs to
justify a lot of excess.

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staunch
I think showing people's workspaces in some real detail would be fun. Everyone
loves a cool setup. I don't know a developer that doesn't judge a company in
part by how they equip their programmers.

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jkincaid
That's a good idea — I'll start asking about the standard setup.

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wyclif
Yes, I agree. I was more interested in Drew's setup than the sign taped to the
wall (but I get why you did that).

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jonpaul
What I want to know is how these engineers at these startups avoid visual
distractions? It seems to me that a lot startups create environments like
this. It's clear that Dropbox has the money for cubes/offices. Is it a
cultural thing? What gives?

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ivankirigin
Open works spaces are far better for collaboration. People avoid distraction
with huge monitors that take up a lot of their field of view and headphones.
Such offices are actually very quiet.

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mkramlich
somewhat agree, except: collaboration == distraction

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nickpp
Anybody else watched the whole thing hoping to see people actually working?
And how they worked? And where they worked? Desks, computers, OSs, software,
hardware, meeting rooms, etc.

No such luck.

Instead, that looked like the tour of a kindergarten: here we dance, here we
play, here we sing, here we eat, and the view is great.

~~~
jasonlotito
There are numerous sites that already cater to that sort of thing. LifeHacker
and the Unclutterer's Workspace Flickr pools are rather large. Usesthis goes
into greater detail about specific setups.

While I find that stuff interesting, that's not the show they are doing. It's
MTV Cribs for startups. And that really didn't exist before this.

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bane
Great tour video. Lots of fun.

But if I were one of the investors, I'd probably be pretty PO'd to see how my
money was being spent.

Not since the dotcom boom have I seen that kind of place. Startups seem to
want to run kinda lean these days, so they can be more agile. (That's not to
say that the folks shouldn't be well equipped, which it looks like they are,
but custom artwork and a DDR machine?) And clearly too much floor space for
their size. It'd be a far better use of their funds to operate a smaller
office, then move when they outgrew it.

It could be worse, the whole place could be full of $900 Aeron chairs.

Oh wait, it was.

~~~
davidu
The amount of money that it costs to outfit an office comfortably is minuscule
to real recruiting costs.

How about paying $20,000 for a recruiter to find a world-class engineer and
get them to leave Google to join your never-been-heard-about startup?

How about paying $50,000 to a recruiter to conduct a VP of Sales search and
run the process for you?

Aeron chairs, cool pictures and desks all make an office more enjoyable, and
are cheap by comparison.

~~~
bane
Not to completely dispute what you've said, since I agree with it for the most
part. But my takeaway from the video certainly did not leave me with the
impression that the team there was somehow so short on time that they couldn't
just do their recruiting themselves (not to mention the tons of free publicity
dropbox already gets acting as a useful recruitment tool). In fact, quite the
contrary.

I'd be PO'd to find that these guys dropped $50k recruiting a sales VP also.
I'd imagine that that custom stone conference table probably ran around $50k
(they ain't cheap). I'd probably even be able to make a safe bet that just the
"stuff" in their conference room cost somewhere between $100k to $200k.

Everything in the video just didn't give me the impression of being good ways
to spend money. I think the number of people in this thread who are acting
kinda creeped out about their office lends me _some_ support.

If anything the DB guys should be heads down figuring out their next product.
It won't take much for Microsoft or Apple to just build something like this
into their next rev of their OSs or in some patch and simply put them out of
business. They have a great product and a good revenue stream, time to start
figuring out the next step.

If that step is to sell the company? I certainly wouldn't want to think that
I'm buying all this crap along with the corporate assets for my purchase
price.

All that said, I'm really just bitching, if they are paying the bills and have
cash left over for this stuff, more power to them. It really does look like a
cool office and it's a fantastically cool company with a brilliant product.
Their continued success is something to be praised, that's for sure.

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spoiledtechie
I really dislike the fact they as the average developer doesn't get anything
like this at all. Its pretty upsetting that companies that are major software
companies spend massive amounts of money on their devs, but those companies
that aren't fully software could give two craps about their devs. Its just
disappointing that I have to work for the latter.

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tobych
Employees in the US work some of the world's longest hours. And yet there
these folks are in their office, playing games. Is that typical? I don't get
it. Why stay in the office playing games when you could go home? I guess this
is the sort of question that, as a generally-self-employed 41-year-old father
of a preschooler I'm in no position to figure out. That video weirded me out.

~~~
JabavuAdams
It's fun for a while -- like a continuation of school / residence.

Also, it can give you the technical chops, contacts, and pedigree to
eventually become a generally-self-employed 41-year-old father who works fewer
hours.

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ilamont
Would have been more interesting to see the Dropbox data center, and get some
insights into how they operate and scale it.

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grahamr
I believe they use Amazon S3 for all storage.

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frisco
In fact, they're supposedly the single largest user of S3 by data stored.

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fundible
the red-black tree reference is amazing

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JabavuAdams
Yes, that was cute. I love how it seemed to be lost on the interviewer and
editors. That makes it so much better.

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jhuckestein
IMO the recent trend of showing off pimped out startup offices is highly
indicative of a bubble. Our startup operates out of a crummy little room, and
that's how we like it

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kayoone
why bubble ? Afaik dropbox is highly profitable so what keeps them from having
a fancy office to make the work experience better for them and most
importantly their employees ?

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jhuckestein
Is the same true for Scribd? (last office on TC Cribs) What about all the
other startups that are setting up offices in lofts around SOMA?

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JacobIrwin
I dig the collaborative workspace. Ever seen the office atmosphere of those
companies that design consumer products? That is what Dropbox's space reminds
me of.

The best part is that Drew isn't enclosed in some corner office. He sits in
the open with his team. Big thumbs up.

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ahrens
As a guy with ADD, i would never be able to work at a place like that! I mean
do actual work. I would just be too distracted by all the fun things to do. I
think many more developers are the same?

Well, cool office though. I am a dropbox user myself and love the service!

~~~
JabavuAdams
Yes. I've worked in some bad open-concept setups where the mean-time-between-
distractions (MTBD) was sometimes 5 min or so. Awful.

Um. Did you just sit your sweaty ass on the corner of my desk so you can lean
over and chat to the dude sitting next to me? WTF?

Programming (and games programming, especially) seems to attract a lot of ADHD
types.

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subpixel
TechCrunch as HGTV just doesn't do much for me.

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lurchpop
yeah. i wasn't buying the MTV Cribs editing style either. Inauthentic.

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Keyframe
Why do they need so many people? Customer support?

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ivankirigin
Dropbox has lots of engineers and needs a lot more: <http://dropbox.com/jobs>

The support team is pretty solid though. They have a hard job and do it well.

~~~
Keyframe
I had no idea.. thanks!

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xeodox
Awesome office. Dropbox is doing better than ever! I wonder why they just went
1.0 though--they've been around forever.

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anhtran
haha, I like the end.

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profitbaron
It still amuses me how the view is always mentioned before entering the
startups office space. Although I have to say that Dropbox's 'Crib' is my
favourite TC Crib so far.

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alphadog
That startup looks real lean. </sarcasm>

