Credit: Dropbox
Cloud storage vendor Dropbox is to cull 11 per cent of its global workforce in order to “create a healthy and thriving business” for 2021.
The cuts will amount to 315 employees and will include the vendor’s global chief operating officer Olivia Nottebohm, who will leave on 5 February.
Announcing the move to staff, co-founder and CEO Drew Houston said it was the “toughest decision” that he had to make in Dropbox’s 14 years of existence.
“Last spring I made a commitment to all of you to preserve job security through 2020, and it was important to me that we honored that promise,” he said. “But looking ahead at 2021 and beyond, it’s clear that we need to make changes in order to create a healthy and thriving business for the future.”
He added that the steps taken were “painful” and “necessary” but that the company was now on the right path in terms of remote working and a new leadership structure.
In October Dropbox announced that it would make remote work the default for employees beyond the end of the COVID-19 pandemic. Houston explained this will mean a more “efficient and nimble” Dropbox, meaning therefore it will need fewer people to support in-office environments.
“We’re scaling back that investment and redeploying those resources to drive our ambitious product roadmap,” Houston added.
For 2021, Dropbox will now have a “relentless focus on initiatives that align tightly with [the vendor’s] strategic priorities”.
The vendor currently has offices in Australia and Singapore alongside those in the US, Germany, UK, Ireland and Israel. Drobox's local operation has been contacted for comment by ARN.
The US-founded vendor officially launched in the Australian channel in 2016, signing a distribution agreement with Ingram Micro. Three years later, Dropbox launched an Australian-based hosting environment within the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Sydney Region.
The local launch resulted from local customer feedback, further nudging the continued growth and expansion the storage platform provider is experiencing in the market.
