Probably on the order of a few to ~10 billion a month directly via apartments. Not counting secondary effects due to costs on business rent and wages to pay personal rent, nor tertiary effects like increased tax burden spent on homeless, subsidies for 'affordable housing', etc.
est 1-3 million renters @ avg $1,000 /month excess rent over fair value due to government enforced shortages. Personally it boggles my mind how this isn't the single issue among the relevant voting bloc.
a lot lol. When I relocated temporarily from Berlin to the Bay Area a few years ago I thought the pay raise was crazy. Then I saw that I'd almost pay 2k more in rent per month. And then I learned what friends with kids pay for schools and childcare.
They successfully built their core product and got it to the point where it only had long-tail improvements and maintenance left to do, but even if it didn’t have the complication of being VC funded you can’t really lay off half the company and declare yourself in maintenance mode once you’ve scaled up.
Basically every big corp implemented their own cloud storage, so they had to compete by adding extra features I would guess? I’m still happy customer for personal needs since I’ve had it for ages and too lazy to switch. But when it comes to work needs, it would be a hard sell. If you’re a corp you probably have everything integrated with Microsoft or Google. If all of your devices are Apple, you can just go with iCloud and not deal with 3rd party integrations. At the end of the day, you’re left off with less number of potential customers, and even then you have to fight with Box for customers.
Might have been around the time they stopped focusing on users and tried to embed themselves in the National security state. I guess around 2014 when Condoleezza Rice joined the board of directors.
Their product teams really dont know what they are doing. I dont think ive seen company that was trying to do so many thing over the years just failing with everything.
I dont even mean Dropbox Paper - thats actualy useful (acquired company).
* Paper documents after years of trying are still separate service and wont show up in you dropbox. Only new accounts have this.
* At some point they started to be universal API/backend for third party apps. Something they years later started to kill off.
* Vault their e2e part of dropbox got suddenly killed (was probably gimmick anyway but you were 100% that these files wont get accidentaly shared).
* They have half baked password manager that probably nobody uses because they might kill it on a whim.
* Bloated but somewhat ok screencapture tool that creates normal videos which is limited by recording 120 minutes at time. So you are already paying them but get this lol limit. You either have to delete old videos or pay more. Actually you can move the video to your dropbox but dropbox still counts it in their limit because the file has some metadata (which you can probably delete).
* The last nail is they started to play ball with Apple moving their client to some Apple API loosing bunch of features (including stuff like not being able to sync/backup projects from Final Cut) https://help.dropbox.com/installs/macos-support-for-expected...
If their product/management knew anything about their product they would make the invisible features and be the “pro” solution. Instead they compete with google drive on bloatedness.
I think it's largely that they discovered the real money is in B2B. And once you go down that route, all you care about is checking feature-boxes, not whether anyone actually uses it willingly.
Pretty much every company that does that starts hemorrhaging users at some point. And there's not really any going back either, because they definitely won't shut down features to improve the core.
The first dinner I ever ate after arriving in SF was at their original HQ's cafe/restaurant, thanks to some friends who worked there. It was so good! I regret not having gone as a guest more often.
I've been wondering if Dropbox is struggling financially. I stopped using Dropbox a couple of years ago because Google Drive is a better deal, and now some weeks ago they started emailing me. I think I've gotten like 3-5 emails touting how great Dropbox is and that I should really be using it again.
KKR will lose quite a bit of money on that property when they offload it, perhaps unless they can lobby the govt to do some kind of residential conversion.
Apparently it is incredibly expensive to convert office to living and meet most housing standards (windows, bathrooms, HVAC, etc.)
I recall a story about a month ago that a firm said they would be willing to have undertaken that cost for a tower in downtown San Francisco but the city, and it's wisdom, had passed an ordinance that required a certain percentage of new housing to go for low income people and thus for low rent and when that was baked in it made absolutely no sense (or cents).
So not only do you have the trouble of the cost of conversion, you also have the trouble of meddling do-gooders messing things up (because one of the easiest ways to reduce rent for everybody is to slam a lot of supply into the market)
From my experience going through a lot of offices in SF, they are really good at flexibly up and downsizing workspaces. This space will open to smaller companies or will be sliced and diced into sizes appropriate for anyone willing to buy for commercial purposes. Granted my experience comes from before work from home, so maybe things have changed, but I doubt it will change to residential unless the location was already mixed use.
An airbnb for hotdesk coworking is one possibility for space monetization, but I would probably want to limit it to people with Fortune 1000 email addresses and certain designated floors/areas for security reasons. One key enabler would be integration with corporate building security systems.
> we’ve taken steps to de-cost our real estate portfolio
> remote work is the primary experience for our employees,
Why do they talk like that? Like inventing new stupid words and torturing existing ones, instead of just straight forward saying what they want to say?
I figure it's because they're trying to sound corporate, because that's just how people imagine "official" communications have to sound. Clear, simple writing would be too casual!
It's possible to write corporate communications in a straightforward and effective style, but it requires a level of writing skill and a level of confidence that employees might not have, especially when the writing has to go through several levels of internal review by managers and subject to internal politics. The result is writing by committee that intentionally avoids even the semblance of personal voice.
"Americans have trouble facing the truth," [George] Carlin said. "So they invent a kind of a soft language to protect themselves from it" (Parental Advisory, 1990). [1]
But instead of it being americans in general, it's corporates.
I always imagine that it's an intense statistical overview of the release by speech-writers.
"Reducing costs and saving money polls negatively, people relate it to dwindling cash reserves and that may affect share price, open up the book and find an as-of-now untested phrase that means the same thing, let's try that! 'de-cost' ? Might as well!"
Maybe a rhetorical question but I think there are a few answers. One is that some people think that's what professional sounds like, this sort of dated, verbose corporate "believe us, we're big and competent" messaging strategy.
I think it just lands as inauthentic and cold to modern audiences.
But it's been a popular strategy for generations, and people tend to market/message the way they've been marketed to.
Definitely notable that Dropbox doesn't seem to be thinking about brand strategy when writing these sorts of releases.
The truth (plain English) hurts.
Obfuscation works.
God only knows on who, though. I just treat press-releases as puzzles, if only to work out the doublespeak.
Layoffs aside, I still hope that the office space doesn't get left behind as a project. The real interactions really matter.
For example, if there was a world were education was entirely digital, I would still want a place for students to interact in real life, not just online.
If (one poll) shows a 6% [1] preference for in office work, and employers can cut down on their costs, I fear that it might just not exist for the future.
Really, everyone should have places to meet and work in person, not just people employed by corporations. I wonder how these spaces could be configured to help clubs, hobby groups, support groups, political organizations, volunteer groups, part-time workers, and other people who may have difficulty finding a space to meet.
> For example, if there was a world were education was entirely digital, I would still want a place for students to interact in real life, not just online
You don't need an office or a school for that. However, we as a society somehow made all the activities outside office and school awkward, inconvenient or expensive.
[+] [-] davidw|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fshbbdssbbgdd|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] callalex|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thereisnospork|2 years ago|reply
est 1-3 million renters @ avg $1,000 /month excess rent over fair value due to government enforced shortages. Personally it boggles my mind how this isn't the single issue among the relevant voting bloc.
[+] [-] Barrin92|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 3seashells|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pizzafeelsright|2 years ago|reply
Then something happened. Weird features were added. It felt very forced.
[+] [-] plorkyeran|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kredd|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sottol|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nextstep|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nbar|2 years ago|reply
Of course they then added “productivity” tools and removed the actually productive features like sharing HTML.
I’ve moved to Google too but still prefer the Dropbox GUI.
*ten year user of Dropbox
[+] [-] omnimus|2 years ago|reply
I dont even mean Dropbox Paper - thats actualy useful (acquired company).
* Paper documents after years of trying are still separate service and wont show up in you dropbox. Only new accounts have this.
* At some point they started to be universal API/backend for third party apps. Something they years later started to kill off.
* Vault their e2e part of dropbox got suddenly killed (was probably gimmick anyway but you were 100% that these files wont get accidentaly shared).
* They have half baked password manager that probably nobody uses because they might kill it on a whim.
* Bloated but somewhat ok screencapture tool that creates normal videos which is limited by recording 120 minutes at time. So you are already paying them but get this lol limit. You either have to delete old videos or pay more. Actually you can move the video to your dropbox but dropbox still counts it in their limit because the file has some metadata (which you can probably delete).
* The last nail is they started to play ball with Apple moving their client to some Apple API loosing bunch of features (including stuff like not being able to sync/backup projects from Final Cut) https://help.dropbox.com/installs/macos-support-for-expected...
If their product/management knew anything about their product they would make the invisible features and be the “pro” solution. Instead they compete with google drive on bloatedness.
[+] [-] Groxx|2 years ago|reply
I think it's largely that they discovered the real money is in B2B. And once you go down that route, all you care about is checking feature-boxes, not whether anyone actually uses it willingly.
Pretty much every company that does that starts hemorrhaging users at some point. And there's not really any going back either, because they definitely won't shut down features to improve the core.
[+] [-] saddd|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] syspec|2 years ago|reply
https://cdn.geckoandfly.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/ancie...
[+] [-] L_Rahman|2 years ago|reply
important piece of hacker news history: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863
[+] [-] keepamovin|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Hamuko|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ChatGTP|2 years ago|reply
I was a pretty happy user for a few years but I couldn’t justify it anymore.
[+] [-] kristianp|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] quickthrower2|2 years ago|reply
Nimby-proof housing increase?
[+] [-] readthenotes1|2 years ago|reply
I recall a story about a month ago that a firm said they would be willing to have undertaken that cost for a tower in downtown San Francisco but the city, and it's wisdom, had passed an ordinance that required a certain percentage of new housing to go for low income people and thus for low rent and when that was baked in it made absolutely no sense (or cents).
So not only do you have the trouble of the cost of conversion, you also have the trouble of meddling do-gooders messing things up (because one of the easiest ways to reduce rent for everybody is to slam a lot of supply into the market)
[+] [-] codezero|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] oldbbsnickname|2 years ago|reply
An airbnb for hotdesk coworking is one possibility for space monetization, but I would probably want to limit it to people with Fortune 1000 email addresses and certain designated floors/areas for security reasons. One key enabler would be integration with corporate building security systems.
[+] [-] mvncleaninst|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sfjailbird|2 years ago|reply
> remote work is the primary experience for our employees,
Why do they talk like that? Like inventing new stupid words and torturing existing ones, instead of just straight forward saying what they want to say?
[+] [-] tikhonj|2 years ago|reply
It's possible to write corporate communications in a straightforward and effective style, but it requires a level of writing skill and a level of confidence that employees might not have, especially when the writing has to go through several levels of internal review by managers and subject to internal politics. The result is writing by committee that intentionally avoids even the semblance of personal voice.
[+] [-] chii|2 years ago|reply
But instead of it being americans in general, it's corporates.
[1] https://www.thoughtco.com/soft-language-euphemism-1692111
[+] [-] serf|2 years ago|reply
"Reducing costs and saving money polls negatively, people relate it to dwindling cash reserves and that may affect share price, open up the book and find an as-of-now untested phrase that means the same thing, let's try that! 'de-cost' ? Might as well!"
[+] [-] whateveracct|2 years ago|reply
"What's the solve" etc
[+] [-] saym|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] post_below|2 years ago|reply
I think it just lands as inauthentic and cold to modern audiences.
But it's been a popular strategy for generations, and people tend to market/message the way they've been marketed to.
Definitely notable that Dropbox doesn't seem to be thinking about brand strategy when writing these sorts of releases.
[+] [-] Ylpertnodi|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] atleastoptimal|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nathanaldensr|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] soVeryTired|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] onetokeoverthe|2 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] Racing0461|2 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] jessenaser|2 years ago|reply
For example, if there was a world were education was entirely digital, I would still want a place for students to interact in real life, not just online.
If (one poll) shows a 6% [1] preference for in office work, and employers can cut down on their costs, I fear that it might just not exist for the future.
[1] https://www.gallup.com/workplace/397751/returning-office-cur...
[+] [-] panic|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] troupo|2 years ago|reply
You don't need an office or a school for that. However, we as a society somehow made all the activities outside office and school awkward, inconvenient or expensive.
[+] [-] surgical_fire|2 years ago|reply
It wouldn't disappear, it would only be severely reduced.
You can have real life interactions outside of office life. It might even be more meaningful.