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Comment by keypusher | Hacker News Reader

> File-sharing giant Dropbox has signed the biggest lease in San Francisco history, an agreement for 736,000 square feet, the entirety of a new office complex under construction in the southwest corner of Mission Bay. [...] The space will represent an expansion for Dropbox, which occupies 182,000 square feet at 333 Brannan St., a building Kilroy also owns, as well as 115,000 square feet at 345 Brannan. Dropbox currently has about 1,500 employees and 102 job openings in San Francisco, according to its website.

So, they currently have ~300k square feet. They are expanding to a space with 736k square feet. And they have 102 job openings posted, which they were all filled would expand their workforce by less than 10%. What exactly do they need all this new space for? Even if they have huge plans to somehow expand their filesharing business, doubling their workforce at this point seems quite optimistic.

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I think the "102 job openings posted" refers to their being 102 roles listed on their jobs page. Each of those roles could be looking for more than 1 person to hire. For example, they probably want to hire more than just 1 "Senior Software Engineer" [0]

[0] https://www.dropbox.com/jobs/listing/735139

Their current location feels crowded (IMHO). I'm also suspicious of the 1500 employee number; that was the employee count nearly 2 years ago (see http://www.businessinsider.com/cost-cutting-at-dropbox-and-s... and what I was told when I last visited).

Because their current office would only be big enough for maybe 1,300 employees and they are planning to hire another 102 in the next 3 months, 300 within this year, 1,000 in the next 3 years?

They can always sublease the space. Dropbox used to sublease their space from Coverity iirc.

Servers?

There's certainly cheaper places to house servers. They were probably a big cramped already, and expecting to need that space as they hire more (they aren't limited to their current job listings).

Not to say that's Dropbox's reason, but in my experience many, many large companies host servers in places that are far from being the most cost-effective option.

Bloomberg used to have (maybe they still have it) a data center at 525 Market Street, a skyscraper in the heart of the Financial District. Sometimes cost effectiveness isn't the sole option companies use, maybe it made sense for Bloomberg to have servers close to their customers.

The financial sector isn't the best counter-example. Every little bit of latency matters in HFT, so there's probably a competitive advantage to running servers there compared with the countryside.

I doubt they'd use such expensive property for a data center.

No, you don't put servers in office space. The infrastructure requirements are drastically different.

I mean its not unheard of for a company that size to build out a hardware lab on site in what over office space they're leasing. My previous employer did that through 3 office moves (+10 racks of test gear).

Racks of test gear are far from a data center.

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