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Comment by nobleach | Hacker News Reader

I was JUST seeing job opportunities in my LinkedIn from these folks. That's just careless.

Lot's of companies have to make cuts in some areas while continuing to hire in another. Especially a company the size of Dropbox where there are many products and teams. However I agree that its a bad look and often tough to hire when you are in the news about layoffs.

Right, it's all about the optics. It smacks of desperation.

What were you seeing them for? The article quotes them saying that this cut is partially to allow them to expand some roles. That's not really careless if that's what they're doing.

Specifically they say they're cutting back some kinds of support staff due to office closures, and growing some product roles.

I was seeing them for engineering positions. (Front end if I recall correctly). As I've mentioned elsewhere though, the release of a significant portion of their workforce as "deadwood" speaks of a company that'll drop you too. These current times are not the best times to say, "hey, come give us a shot, we'll lay you off if things aren't looking so good". People are looking for a bit more stability. I get that Dropbox can't just keep a bunch of people around if it's doing nothing but costing them money. It just looks bad to let people go while still hiring.

I don't understand why you think cutting some jobs means they can't possibly also need to hire for other jobs?

For the reasons stated in other places. Seeing a company that's cutting a large portion of their workforce is just bad optics. Yes, YOU may perceive it as wise business, but those who are looking to have a job in a year might not feel good about hiring on with a company that just had a layoff of a significant part of their workforce. What's to stop them from laying you off when their new plan doesn't work out as well? Companies that are doing well do not do large sweeping cuts.They tend to do smaller more precise cuts. This one seems like desperation.

If you need to make people redundant for business reasons then you need to do it.

It's not careless to do something that needs to be done. What should they do instead? Try to conceal the layoffs? I think that's illegal in most jurisdictions.

And they also cannot stop hiring.

All the actions here are rational and as carefully done as they could be.

I too was planning on applying to them in the next few days. But I will first find out who exactly is being cut out. This article says that its some support staff (I assume these are mainly non-technical people), but it does raise some concerns.

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