
The software engineering lifecycle: How we built the new Dropbox Plus - mattgerstman
https://dropbox.tech/frontend/the-software-engineering-lifecycle--how-we-built-the-new-dropbox?hn=1
======
boromi
I wish dropbox had fewer features not more. Peak dropbox was like 5 years ago

~~~
ffpip
Yeah. It's too expensive now.

G Suite is $12 USD / user / month. It gives you unlimited storage. AND
everything else like Meet, Forms, Docs, Slides, Mail, Sheets, Apps Script,
etc.

Dropbox is $15 / user / month. For 5 TB. How does that even make sense? The
features are also lacking. SSL is apparently a feature now.

~~~
somehnguy
G Suite is an incredible value. I have an account with a single user, paying
$12+tax/month. On that account I have 20TB in Drive. Good luck getting that
kind of storage pricing elsewhere, I'm actually nervous about Google ever
deciding to kill the heaviest users or charge more because I don't know where
else I would go.

In my understanding my 20TB isn't just 20TB sitting in their datacenter, it's
de-duped across accounts. But still, amazing value.

~~~
the_svd_doctor
Isn't it <= 1TB if less than 5 users ?

~~~
somehnguy
Technically, yes. But it has never been enforced AFAIK. That could change
tomorrow of course, so I would be cautious of using it for anything that is
very important.

~~~
MiroF
I suspect that posting about this on HN is one of the fastest routes towards
getting this fixed, in terms of concentration of Google engineers likely to
see your post.

~~~
somehnguy
Ha, that would be super unfortunate. But not too worried about that happening.
It's been openly talked about online for years with no action.

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Xavdidtheshadow
> While we started as a storage company, we‘ve grown to be a hub to manage
> your digital life.

This line from the linked post is a great summary of exactly how I think
Dropbox's product direction has taken a turn for the worse.

This is no sleight against the author (who seems to be doing great work; I
enjoyed this read!) or the engineering team. Just like, the general direction
of the company. This line also stands out:

> it had been a while since we delivered new value to our personal users.

I can't speak for all paying users, but the value I derive from Dropbox is how
it syncs fast and "just works". I do _not_ find new value in popups and
notification badges about features that other companies have already perfected
(much like I don't need to go anywhere else for file syncing).

I realize I'm not representative of the userbase as a whole, I'm just
frustrated.

~~~
mattgerstman
We get it. The simple truth is we need to provide more than just storage to
succeed in the marketplace. We rewrote our sync engine recently to make things
much more performant and we're working on shipping more value to users with
fewer upsells.

[https://dropbox.tech/infrastructure/rewriting-the-heart-
of-o...](https://dropbox.tech/infrastructure/rewriting-the-heart-of-our-sync-
engine)

FWIW you can turn off all the notifications in the preference panel.

~~~
sugarpile
(this sounds snarky but is not, I'm genuinely asking)

Which notifications option do I uncheck to stop from getting the popup asking
me to upgrade to dropbox plus that I got this morning?

~~~
mattgerstman
Click the dropbox icon, click your avatar, preferences, notifications for most
in app notifications.

TBH the whole point of Basic is to be a trial sku so I don't know if you can
turn those off. We do want you to become a paying customer :D

~~~
ProAm
Call it Dropbox Trial edition then, not Basic.

------
civilized
The only change I've noticed in Dropbox is it's getting less and less
convenient to simply open the Dropbox folder in Finder. They really, really
want me to use their fake file browser app thingy, which I loathe

------
mattgerstman
Author here, happy to answer any questions about how we build products at
Dropbox.

~~~
gustavomd
Very well written and amazing job. I really trust Dropbox engineering teams.
My only wish would be the return of the simple desktop app for those of us
that just need ultra reliable synced folders (I use macOS). The app today is
bloated and upon boot takes 600MB of RAM. Would you guys ever consider a
streamlined version of the app for desktop?

~~~
mattgerstman
This is definitely something we're talking about. We're aware there are a set
of users who want just sync and we're figuring out how to ship that while
making our other features discoverable.

~~~
infogulch
HN is a tough crowd to sell everyman software to. Compared to your moderately
tech literate person off the street, many here fiercely stand their ground on
the computing solutions that they choose. Maybe this is a consequence of
knowing how the sausage is made.

I admire your goal to try to deliver value to _both_ groups. I think this
strategy is broadly underappreciated, and I expect it improves the product
faster than focusing on either group exclusively.

~~~
mattgerstman
Thanks so much. We love to share how we build things with the tech community
and we know the tradeoffs when we post them.

We're just a bunch of people doing our best to do right by our users.

------
huma
I wish Dropbox had a lite version which could just sync my files without
having to install over 100 MB of useless bloat

~~~
yyx
It's called syncthing.

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surlyadopter
I have been a long-time Dropbox+ (and now Dropbox Family) user. I don't mind
so much that it is more expensive than the paid personal G/M offerings. It
(usually) just works for me, however over the last year annoyances have crept
in. Specifically the new File Explorer interface. It is incredibly slow and
inefficient and I curse myself every time I open it instead of through the
native Windows File Explorer. Hope that gets fixed soon. That annoyance alone
is probably not enough to drive me to another service, assuming other features
don't get degraded. Paying 200$ for a product that fights you is not something
i plan on doing for a long time...

~~~
eslaught
What stops you from using the normal Windows File Explorer? As far as I know
the Dropbox replacement for Explorer is optional.

~~~
surlyadopter
Yes it is, but launching it from the system tray icon forces you to use their
interface and it is a pain. Like I said, this specific issue is not a deal
breaker, but if their other features take a turn for the worse the way this
has then it would be time for a change.

------
herf
I've been disappointed with CPU/battery usage recently. When adding a lot of
photos, I have to plug in my laptop--otherwise the battery dies.

When uploading a 100MB file on a gen8 Thinkpad:

\- Dropbox uses 6 minutes of CPU time, basically maxing out a core for the
entire upload

\- offsite scp uses <1 second of CPU, so scp is >100x more efficient than
Dropbox

\- In wall clock time, Dropbox is 4x slower.

I imagine their sync problem is very very hard, but but pushing bits up for a
large file should be much more efficient.

------
news_to_me
Seeing a lot of negativity here re: "Dropbox should just sync files."
Personally I'm stoked about Dropbox branching out to help with more aspects of
digital organization, and I think they're well-positioned to do it. All that
remains is whether or not they can execute that well.

Good luck, Dropbox!

~~~
mattgerstman
Thanks so much! We're very excited about our roadmap.

------
trilinearnz
I struggled to understand the relevance of Dropbox as soon as the alternatives
of Google Drive and OneDrive came on the market with vastly more storage
capacity.

Is there a sizable market for people who require locally-stored content
synchronised to the cloud (e.g. video editors?) Beyond that, the only people I
encounter day-to-day who mention Dropbox are those not sufficiently tech-savvy
to have known about the free alternatives mentioned above, and are still
coasting on Dropbox's first mover awareness advantage.

~~~
rv-de
I don't want to use Google and onedrive doesn't work seamlessly on Linux and
Android.

~~~
sz4kerto
What's your issue with OneDrive on Android? It has been working perfectly for
me and for everyone around me for many years. Really fast sync, tight
integration with the OS, and so on.

~~~
rv-de
and on Ubuntu?

------
vertis
I love some of the Dropbox features, but the thing that annoys me EVERY time I
log into their website is that it wants to try and shove team plans in front
of me.

I actually logged in just before posting to check if it was still there and
yep. Giant popup in the corner of the window[1].

I have dismissed these types of notices multiple times. What I don't
understand is WHY. Surely it can't be a good idea to harass every one of your
individual users to become a business user.

[1]:
[https://www.dropbox.com/s/hibz1zkohjnc2ly/Screen%20Shot%2020...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/hibz1zkohjnc2ly/Screen%20Shot%202020-09-17%20at%207.36.50%20am.png?dl=0)
(yes it did just sync that screenshot to Dropbox).

~~~
daveoc64
I posted something similar a few months back[1] - since then, I have ditched
Dropbox.

I felt like they really weren't interested in me as a consumer.

I have switched to OneDrive. I already had a subscription to Office 365
(Home), so I've not spent any extra. I can't complain so far. It actually
feels like a consumer product.

[1]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23797065](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23797065)

------
kakuri
What are the cases where Dropbox works well for people? Years ago I used to
regularly have people tell me "my computer is slow, how do I fix it?" I look
at their running programs, uninstall Dropbox, and their computer is no longer
slow. I hoped maybe a combination of better resource usage by Dropbox and
increasing computing power had alleviated that issue, but just the other day
another person called me with slowdown issues and sure enough the culprit was
Dropbox, which they had just installed.

~~~
mattgerstman
This should be substantially better since we shipped our new sync engine

[https://dropbox.tech/infrastructure/rewriting-the-heart-
of-o...](https://dropbox.tech/infrastructure/rewriting-the-heart-of-our-sync-
engine)

~~~
gerardvivancos
You might want to know that Dropbox Passwords hogs the CPU On windows if the
browser is running but the Passwords native app is not. You will see high CPU
usage from the Windows Delivery Optimization service, but the culprit is DBP
whose extension is trying to contact with the host app in a loop, constantly
spawning processes that die.

~~~
heeringa
Thanks so much--nsm alerted us and we have a fix in the works--an update
should be available presently.

------
princevegeta89
Why doesn't Dropbox have a middle ground solution between free and $15/month
for 5TB?!

I've been asking myself this question for a long time. Every other cloud
storage provider has something like 100GB or 500GB for a nominal 3$ or 5$ per
month. Dropbox works really great, but it's painstakingly frustrating that
they their barrier to entry is too high that makes non-business users almost
give up.

~~~
toyg
Likely because profit-per-user falls off a cliff very rapidly under $10, due
to increased support and admin costs and ballooning storage requirement. They
would rather make $12.50 from 1 user than $0.50 from 25 users. Other players
have different requirements (most of the value they get is into keeping people
locked in their ecosystems).

------
ghego1
My two cents, thanks for the developers, Dropbox works perfectly and it's
hands down the best place to store one's digital life.

I am a paying gsuite user, and nevertheless I pay for Dropbox because Google
is not even close to where Dropbox is in this area. How to verify this: try to
resync every couple of minutes a file of 500mb or more with only few changes
on Drive with the sync client, then do the same with Dropbox. Delta syncing in
Dropbox is still unbeaten, even by those that claim they have it (Google
doesn't to my best knowledge, I think Microsoft introduced it a while ago, but
doesn't work as good, try the same test).

------
Dirlewanger
Ditch Dropbox, use something like Syncthing
[https://syncthing.net/](https://syncthing.net/)

------
password4321
If this is the place to share feature requests, I would like to be able to
find the largest files in my Dropbox using the web interface.

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mirrormaster
Which user asked for a password manager!? When will these companies do real
market research

~~~
solarkraft
> Which user asked for a password manager!?

Likely not many, but that's likely at least partly due to a lack of exposure:
The market is still severely under-saturated - Everyone should have one, but
not that many non-techies do. Thus if you're in a position to make someone try
your password manager that may be a serious advantage.

------
tomc1985
Are there any other sync services that can handle large git repos without
choking?

It's been a few years since I last checked but when I did Dropbox was the only
one that didn't choke

~~~
mattgerstman
Honestly just use GitHub. My (high level) understanding of sync is file system
issues file event for every file change, we receive it, determine if its
relevant, and then make the appropriate delta. You can imagine with thousands
(or millions) of small files this becomes nearly impossible to manage with an
OS integrated sync engine.

~~~
tomc1985
Indeed, and I do/did, but I was in an environment where I would switch quickly
between a laptop and a desktop, and Dropbox sync worked extremely well for
quickly switching between the same codebase on multiple computers, even with
our large, half-a-decade git repo

~~~
Zippogriff
You can put the .git directory outside the working directory. Might be
helpful. Sync the working dir with a sync service, but the .git dir with...
git.

