
Two Years Working at Dropbox - slyall
https://chadaustin.me/2019/11/two-years-at-dropbox/
======
ianai
Seven managers in two years. I can’t accept that as some great thing which
works and makes sense in any combination of letters and numbers.

------
jl6
I’ve been a happy Dropbox customer for years and I was happy to pay the recent
price increase in return for more space... but I can’t help feel that the
company has been burning a lot of investment doing random stuff that I don’t
care about, while core features go neglected. My pet peeve example being: why
does Camera Uploads not upload Live Photos from my iPhone? Google Photos
manages to do it.

------
gravitas
> So I was shocked to find that running an empty Python unit test at Dropbox
> took tens of seconds. Worse, when you fixed a bug and landed it, depending
> on how the daily push went, it might make it to production within a day?
> Two? Maybe more?

Is it just me, or does this seem like an extremely aggressive release
mentality and set of expectations? Most places I'm aware of might do 2 or less
a week, sometimes once a month. This engineer is complaining it took a day to
release some sort of bugfix? Are most engineers and companies in 2019
operating like this, where is their time for a dev and QA cycle first? A unit
test is only as good as what you wrote it to catch, real life bugs slip
through unit tests all the time.

~~~
idunno246
Every Bay Area company I’ve worked for(except 1) does not have QA. It’s
expected by the time the dev merges it it’s been appropriately tested and can
go straight to prod, so no need to wait. Fewer, smaller releases is generally
better when something does go wrong as well, it’s more obvious which change is
the problem.

The one that did have qa, the devs were incredibly lazy about testing, relying
entirely on someone else to make sure it worked. I’d say the overall product
was better with qa but the point at which a developer called it done was way
worse.

------
fyp
I wonder if the IPO related issues mentioned are common.

Specifically having half the senior engineers quit because they are now rich
while some others become "underleveled" due to stock price falling 50%.

~~~
jiveturkey
it's a sign of a poorly run company, not a symptom of the IPO per se.

------
willis936
An interesting read, for sure. I can’t shake the feeling that it is sanitized.
Like every criticism is minor enough and outweighed with positives that I feel
like it isn’t 100% honest. I don’t know if it’s a legal thing or a cultural
thing or a “tell-all-isn’t-worth-risking-my-future” thing or some other thing.
I am very sensitive to these kinds of things though. I have a critical East
Coast mentality and I’m not a fan of West Coast yesism.

~~~
capableweb
> a critical East Coast mentality and I’m not a fan of West Coast yesism

As someone who have no idea what this refers to (I'm not from the US [I'm
assuming East/West coast here refer to the coast's of USA]), could you expand
on what this means in reality?

~~~
jefflombardjr
I'll bite - I'm from the east and the business culture here drives me nuts.
I've lived on the west coast as well, there are parts of the culture out there
that drive me nuts but I much prefer to work with west coast/mid west
companies.

East coasters believe themselves to be more realistic and pragmatic than west
coasters, I often hear things like "oh yeah that's just a pipe dream that's
not how real business is done", or "They're not thinking it through, I have x
years of experience, and can tell you it can't be done". The worst part is
that it has morphed into a bit of a superiority complex that dismisses
innovation. There's just a lack of interest in trying to improve/change
procedures because people feel so caught up in putting out fires and being
busy in an attempt to look productive. It's absurd. And extends all the way to
benign things like dress code. People are afraid to wear jeans at work because
it might look "unprofessional" or like they're not working as hard as people
who wear 'business' attire.

Yes I said dress code... I just left a job because of this exact old school
east coast culture. The tipping point for me was that I received an email that
was titled "Jeans in Jeopardy". Unless 90% of people or something donated to
the cause we were going to loose our month of permission to wear jeans. I
found that email patronizing and down right insulting and decided right then
and there that I was leaving. If you trust me to write software that is
handling business critical procedures... why don't you trust me to dress
appropriately in the office? You can have you're dress code, I'm going to
spend my time thinking about software instead of dry cleaning my shirt and
pants every day.

~~~
cvhashim
Dress code is a weird one for me. I wish society, and businesses in general
wouldn't make such a big deal about how you show up to work. Honestly as long
as its appropriate wear, it should be fine. My manager wears slacks and tucks
in his shirt, and I'm walking around in a hoodie or t-shirts.

~~~
Terretta
As long as that’s not _why_ he’s the manager.

------
ggambetta
> Dropbox only onboarded new employees every other Tuesday. This left me
> without health insurance coverage for a week between jobs. Fortunately, none
> of the kids got hurt that week.

This is just insane. I suppose people in the US are so used to this being "the
way it is" they're desensitized, but from the outside perspective of the
civilized, developed world, this is insane.

~~~
Waterluvian
It is absolutely beyond the pale for the healthcare access of someone and
their family to be linked to their employment. It perverts the freedom of
movement between jobs that people have a fundamental right to.

I'd love to hear from Americans on the matter. Have you ever made career
choices based on the effects it would have on healthcare coverage? Have you
ever tolerated a bad job or bad employer because of access to healthcare
coverage? Have you ever decided _not_ to take a risk starting your own small
business because of loss of healthcare coverage? Have you ever had a family
crisis and through it been forced to continue working in order to keep
healthcare coverage?

I'm sure there are an assortment of remedies, but the fact that access to
healthcare _EVER_ factors in to your career is manifestly wrong.

~~~
paulddraper
> but the fact that access to healthcare _EVER_ factors in to your career is
> manifestly wrong.

ABSOLUTELY. I should be able to independently choose my healthcare coverage. I
purchase my home/renters insurance, my car insurance, my liability insurance,
my life insurance, etc. separately from my employer. Why not health
insurance???

Employer-tied health insurance is literally _federal law_ in the U.S.

It still boggles my mind how widely supported the ACA employer mandate
("Obamacare") was by my fellow Americans.

And disappoints me that the mandate wasn't repealed in 2017-2018 when it
appeared the right politicians were in place.

~~~
maxerickson
The widely supported aspects of the ACA were guaranteed issue and the
elimination of low quality plans (which really were pretty useless as
insurance). Those things cost a lot of money and forcing employers to pay into
the system (think of the mandate as a tax) is one of the ways they were paid
for.

It's fine to not like it, but it was probably one of the less disruptive
options for collecting more health care dollars.

As far as I can figure, there's really only 2 paths forward for the US system.
Dump more money into it or train lots more providers. People don't seem to
think we are short on doctors, but the market looks sort of exactly supply
constrained, where everyone is busy and prices go up up up. Of course, because
we are stupid, some of the most significant healthcare regulations...limit
supply.

~~~
paulddraper
> think of the mandate as a tax

 _It 's not a tax though._ It's finding, choosing, paying for a particular
insurance plan for their employees.

Thus, insurance being tied to employment.

~~~
maxerickson
Okay, I didn't really address that. I would argue that it didn't change the
situation that much, because the situation prior to the ACA was that being in
a group plan (employer coverage) was the best way for people with significant
medical needs to maintain insurance.

For many people, "A good job" has long been one that came with health coverage
(and given the expense of insurance, this continues to be the case).

It would be excellent for us to have a situation where people bought their
health insurance individually. I think requiring more employers to provide
insurance probably was an incremental step in that direction, as counter
intuitive as it is, because it addressed the situation that existed in an
achievable way.

------
rb808
> Including paternity leave, I took months of paid time off. And when my
> father passed, my manager gave me all the time I needed to help my mother
> get her estate in order, and then gradually ease back into a work mindset.

Wow a month time off. Isn't that just normal?

~~~
marsrover
“Months” not “month”

~~~
rb808
yup my bad.

