Dropbox

I can’t say enough good things about working at Dropbox. I worked at Dropbox for over 3 years. I had extremely supportive management who helped me through growing in and beyond my role. Leadership beyond that has proven to be extremely competent and clearly knows how to run the business well, sweating every important detail along the way. The people at Dropbox are some of the most smart and motivated individuals – though very accomplished, everyone remains a humble attitude and is open to helping others, which is a huge part of the culture here. To grow at the rate Dropbox has over the years in number of people and spotlight, yet still maintain the quality of hires and culture is truly a feat.

I would rather not leave a comment.

I worked at Dropbox for two years and really enjoyed my time there. The people at this company are what makes it great. If it weren’t for the people though, I know I would feel differently about my time spent there.

The company itself is still too small to support the functions of teams and the product. There’s little investment in team growth which leads to poor career trajectory and being overworked. The internal mobility is a mess so even if you’ve proven yourself and had great performance reviews, it’s nearly impossible to be promoted or move into another role.

Managers are often young and change several times within a year. This also makes development and team stability hard. Leadership isn’t transparent and makes quick changes which make your day to day seem thrashy and like you’re often working without a clear direction.

The pay and perks are amazing. And the work environment is great. These make the short term really fun and appealing but there’s no opportunity for a long term career at Dropbox – even for really great employees.

It’s also really hard to get stuff done at Dropbox. There are too many leaders in roles that they have little experience in and don’t have enough experience leading a team. Everything has to be validated over and over again which makes change and process evolution impossible. This is by far the most frustrating thing about working at Dropbox. Even when there’s a clear problem, you can’t fix it.

The product is amazing and I’ll forever be a user. But it’s hard to sell and the sales team environment is tough. This bleeds out into other areas of the company making it hard to see future growth in the company as a whole.

Again, the people that are there make this place great. I would work with my team and most of the office again someday in another environment, with better leadership and growth opportunity. Somewhere that provides development to its employees and invests in their future. But the overall direction of Dropbox is lacking and the morale on the inside is low.

The pay and the perks are great at Dropbox, but that certainly isn’t enough for me. The tension and turnover on my team was shocking. I had 3 managers in 3 months! The on-boarding was awful. And commitments to diversity & inclusion seem to be nothing but lip service – which is not the fault of the D&I team, but the Executive team. Overall, my time at Dropbox was a very low point in my life. I worked nonstop but it never seemed to pay off. The team was more competitive than supportive.

I don’t have a family, so it might not be appropriate for me to chime in here but, when I first started dinner was at 6:00, to-go boxes were provided, and friends and family were invited to come in anytime, including our weekly happy hours. By the time I left, dinner was pushed to 7:00, no more to-go boxes, and the amount of guests you could bring per month were limited – whether it was bringing friends in for lunch to try to recruit them or bringing your family to HH to intro to your team.

I get that it may seem bratty to complain about these things, but I honestly don’t care about perks. I’ve gone back to the true startup-life, where we’re lucky if we have a few granola bars in the cupboard at our co-working space. But I point these things out to highlight how people who are single and able to work late in-office (because you are def expected to work late no matter where you are physically) are rewarded more than people who have commitments outside of the office.

I worked in software engineering at Dropbox for a long time, and witnessed its evolution from a startup to a company. In the early days, the work culture was problematic, but improved (slowly) over time as people raised issues. In general, it’s not that the company is against equal pay, good career opportunities for all kinds of people, etc, but that in the very early days, it started from a place of relative ignorance about good management practices, unconscious bias, etc. I think the leadership is generally receptive to feedback about these kinds of things, and are generally moving in the right direction. At this point, it is large enough that there will definitely be some orgs and managers who are pockets of bad in a sea of mostly pretty good.

I was a happy-go-lucky believer in “some companies actually care about their employees” before Dropbox. Do not believe the koolaid this company will try to feed you, when push comes to shove, the company will always pick the company over any on employee.

I worked 10am-3am for this company and my manager at the time still yelled at me for not working long enough. I was severly underpaid and my life here could not have been worse. To this day I will hate Dropbox.

Perhaps this is a fun company with lots of temporary fun perks for fresh grads, but it is at the end of the day just another company with no future, no execution, and no vision.

Dropbox once told me it was going to become the next “linkedin” or “facebook.” Look at where it is today, still pretty much the same product as it was many years ago and still hasn’t gone public because they’re not going to live up to their expectations.

I will never recommend this company to anyone. It has left a bitter taste in my mouth on how selfish the world can be, but I guess at the same time it taught me a valuable lesson.

Don’t drink their kool aid. Join a public company and know your worth from day one.

Can’t say enough good stuff about Dropbox. I’ve been with the company for several years and
my career trajectory has been prioritized and supported the entire way. I’ve progressed faster here than I would have at most companies because leadership recognizes hard work and impact.

The culture is also extremely collegial, humble, supportive, and friendly. There are a number of female role models at the executive level, and diversity is important to leadership and prioritized at every level. We also do lots of stuff behind the scenes (donate to organizations, etc etc) not for PR benefit, but because we truly think it’s the right thing to do. Sometimes I think we’re too humble for our own good :-). But I’d rather be at a place like that if given the option.