Dropbox CEO Defends 90% Remote-Work Model, Says 'Future of Work' is Here
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Dropbox CEO Defends 90% Remote-Work Model, Says 'Future of Work' is Here
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"I'd say, 'your employees have options,'" Houston told Fortune this past week. "They're not resources to control."
While Dropbox used to work near-entirely at its Bay Area headquarters, Houston has completely warmed to a distributed model since the pandemic — and is mystified as to why other leaders haven't joined him. (Houston founded Dropbox in 2007, the year after he graduated from MIT, and has been its CEO ever since.) "From a product design perspective, customers are our employees. We've stitched together this working model based on primary research," he told Fortune at Dropbox's WIP Conference — its first in-person event since 2019 — in New York on Tuesday. "We've just been handed the keys that unlock this whole future of work, which is actually here."
In April 2021, right when most of the country became eligible for vaccines and people began reconvening again across the globe, Dropbox encouraged the opposite. It officially announced its intent to go Virtual First, which meant employees were free to work remotely 90% of the time, only commuting in for the occasional meeting or happy hour... Granted, not everyone got to appreciate the perks. In April, Dropbox laid off 500 employees — 16% of its staff — due to "slowing growth" and "the A.I. era" requiring a reallocation of resources....
Houston and his team have found, in practice, a handful of two- or three-day offsites per quarter — 10% of the year — works best for their people. Crucially, it provides that oft-referenced cultural connect and brainstorming time that pro-office zealots insist upon, without exhausting workers out with a commute grind or needless hours in drab conference rooms.
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Not all jobs can be done remotely, and not all employees prefer to work from home.
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This is something a LOT of people don't seem to get. About a quarter of the staff where I work WANT to work in the office (I am not one of them), we have a very relaxed policy of work where ever works for you as long as the work gets done. Only one really annoying guy who constantly wants everyone else to be in the office as he prefers in person meetings, but he has no authority so people just ignore him. luckily almost all our work can be done remotely, I imagine though for a lot of organisations 25%+ woul
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by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Sunday October 15, 2023 @06:16PM (#63927207)
About a quarter of the staff where I work WANT to work in the office...
I actually (generally) prefer to work in the office as it helps separate my home/work lives. As I've worked as a system admin and system programmer, often at the same time, either is of mixed benefit. Some places I've worked don't allow remote work of one or both or it's not practical. One place was 40 miles away, through a bridge-tunnel and remote work wasn't possible and that *really* allowed me to separate home and work while another was less than 5 miles, but they were more flexible about the hours doing some development work at home and a quick trip into the office wasn't really a problem. Another place was 100% development work from home and, while it did allow me to code at 3am in my jammies, it was a little isolating. I enjoy a little office interaction and often get ideas from in-person collaborations.
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You may need to allocate a dedicated home space for "work". Make sure it has a door that closes. Put your work necessities within - Keurig, music, etc, whatever you need so that aren't compelled to leave outside bathroom and lunch breaks. Give it 2 weeks - you'll probably be surprised at how much better you feel about working in that space
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I know what you mean, I know a dude who divorced his wife after 40 years of marriage after he retired because he couldn't stand her. He said going to work in the office was a breeze for him and he couldn't stand being with her all day long!
Anyway, Google's Sundar Pichai or Meta's Mark Zuckerberg would probably reply: Houston, we have a problem! Maybe Sundar Pichai and Mark Zuckerberg have more invested in real estate and concessions near their respective company workplaces.
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That's why companies have offices for those people.
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Blah blah blah blah.
We're not talking about *those* jobs here! Go somewhere where they are talking about those jobs.
For the Majority, and I do mean super majority of white collar work, working from a remote location has been shown to work, period! There is no more of this wishy-washy "Oh, we don't know what that would do" "Productivity would nosedive" "Etc." All that is Bullshit. It's all been done, and the data is all in. Work from Home is a viable method of running the economy.
You just seem to want
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The great thing about remote work is that you can work from India. Eat tandoori chicken and Biryani all day. I'd do it. Applying for an Indian visa as we speak.
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Enjoy that smell. Oh, and the heat. You will have to go outside eventually.
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Oh, it's not hot and doesn't stink? What the fuck does that have to do with race? Troll.
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Sure, but...
That's exactly what employees are for a business. (Pretty sure they taught you that at MIT.)
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The problem is everyone's trained to see it as an adversarial relationship where you can't win without making the other party lose. I really don't want to make an extra dollar by treating someone like property. Unfortunately, a business has to compete in the marketplace or cease to exist, and the business that treat people like property have an advantage.
It's not a universal advantage, though. Plenty of abusive employers fail, and you can be a decent human being and a successful boss at the same time.
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I get that, but "resources" doesn't (necessarily) mean "property".
A business has to be able to direct (or "control") all it's resources, people being one of them.Everyone has a place in an organization.
For example, I worked for a company as their lead Unix systems admin and systems programmer. Our manager moved up and I applied for his position. It went to someone else. He said he'd prefer that I stay in my current position doing actual work, that I'm very good at, and that I'd hate being in manager
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Where do you see yourself in 5 years?
It isn't a stupid question. It lets management know who is happy where they are and who gets flagged for either another role or being a potential problem if there's no room for that change.
Asked like that it's a little blunt but most managers aren't capable of getting the same information from a casual conversation over lunch.
One of my developers wanted to be a network engineer. I got him into Cisco classes and made time at work to learn and practice on real systems un
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Employees are your resources to control as long as they choose to remain employees.
Right there that obviates the control employers have over employees. The employee can always choose to work elsewhere. They are only resources as long as the *employee* agrees.
So, you agreed with the first statement, and have been proven wrong in your second statement. Sure MIT can teach that your people are your resources (i.e. that is how you get things done), but at the same time they are sadly mistaken, as many compani
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Some employees are going to be non-productive. Dragging them into offices is not going to help much.
At my work, almost everybody works remotely. I come in because I live 3 minutes away and I like having the whole place to myself. For our small team remote work is alright. It works. With the exception of a couple of team members who are in different time zones. If an entire team is in the same time zone, you can bounce ideas back and forth all day long. This is not possible with people who are sleepin
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Unless they're on the opposite side of the planet, there is usually at least some overlap in hours.
Also depending on the nature of the work, some people prefer to work at night and do other things during the day.
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by sudonim2 ( 2073156 ) on Sunday October 15, 2023 @04:53PM (#63927081)
Remote work makes social and business sense. It allows employees better social life. It reduces a business' environmental footprint. It reduces real estate costs. It increases productivity. It reduces management requirements. It allows disabled workers to access the company and allows the company to access geographically remote populations. It just makes sense.
What it doesn't do is allow for a large fiefdom of people obligated to be under the watchful eye of an executive so they can feel important. That might only be attractive to poorly socialized and emotionally stunted man-childs, but unfortunately such people make up a not-insignificant percentage of executives.
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Why the environmental footprint is not out front with the people that the environmental footprint is always out in front with is telling. The united states is reducing its carbon footprint per the worlds request, and this is the most supportive item, because there is no need to travel to a cube farm, to have team meetings floor to floor. The petrochemicals can be used for things that are constructive in lue of the way it has been.
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Established businesses will have institutional inertia and mostly try to return to what they know. Every time something goes poorly, they're going to blame the problem on the most visible suspect - WFH.
New businesses that lack physical infrastructure and may not have the capital to acquire it will have a competitive advantage and, if WFH really is that great an idea, will eventually dominate the market. It'll take time, but it's one of those cases where the invisible hand of the market will take care of it.
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The irony is that, in many cases, the companies pushing for a return to WFH are massive international corporations with offices everywhere.
Google, Facebook, Amazon/AWS, Microsoft, IBM, Apple - on down to even smaller companies like Dropbox with over a dozen+ offices - have teams spread out through the entire world. I, personally, interface primarily with three teams spread throughout the US - Texas, California, and Connecticut. My team, unlike most of the company, is "fully remote" - while some regularly go
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this is about commercial real estate values. It's important to realize that so you understand just how little you mean to them. They do not at any time think of you as a person. You are a system of inputs and outputs on a spreadsheet.
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You start somewhere at a new company. First month, you have to be there five days a week, so you can adapt and learn and meet everyone sooner or later. Second month, you can work from home one day a week. Third month, you can work from home two days a week. And so on, sixth month you can work 5 days a week from home if you want to and still pull your weight. This way you get to meet all your coworkers, the company can judge what happens and if you just slack as soon as you're not there they'll notice that
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It will be interesting to see how agreements on who owns products developed by remote working staff. I have friends who work 2 full time jobs by splitting time between them; I wonder what happens when one discovers they developed a product sold by a competitor and claim ownership under an employment agreement.
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That's why most employment agreements for FTE say you won't work for anyone else and anything you produce in their field while working for them is theirs.
What happens usually is lawsuits are filed, the person is fired, the other company decides not to use whatever it is and have someone else black box it and only the lawyers win.
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My guess is that he has to defend himself against other big corps that want to kill wfh. Dropbox will attract better talent since every day you wfh is a measurable savings on commute time as well as the associated costs. (food, gas, wear and tear on vehicle, etc....)
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