Problematic company culture - Anonymous employee Dropbox Employee Review

2.0
10 Feb 2015
Anonymous employee
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

More than generous compensation and perks.

Cons

Everyone at Dropbox spends a lot of time telling themselves and each other how great it is to work there, and not enough time making it a great place to work. - Whenever Dropbox makes a public announcement, employees are encouraged to the point of cajoled into leaving positive comments and favorable reviews on public forums with personal accounts ("Don't forget to upvote the announcement on Hackernews! But don't do it on the office wifi because that can trigger a spam alert...", etc). - Troubling company value: We not I. This means that you should put Dropbox before your own personal wellbeing. Employees that make personal sacrifices for the benefit of the company are deified at the all hands meeting. - Cross-functional communication or collaboration is effectively impossible without the involvement of a manager or three, as everyone is worried only about completing their own sprint goals. The "start-up mindset" is useless for a 1000+ person corporate entity. - Interviews and hire decisions are conducted in a very haphazard and non-transparent way, with more than a few interviewees mysteriously turned away after a consensus "hire" decision. - If you're not a 22 year old, male, Stanford/MIT/Carnegie Mellon grad or a Facebook/Google alumn, prepare to feel very out of place and marginalized. - Good work goes unacknowledged unless you are a relentless self-promoter or part of the in-crowd. With respect to code, quantity counts more than quality. - Working hours regularly extend late into the night. I once tried to hold a 10:30 am meeting, and was told by a manager that this was "ridiculously early". Another time, I came into the office around 11 PM to pick up something that I had forgotten, and it was half full with people working and playing video games. - Consequently, important business decisions get made during non-standard business hours, so when you come into work at 9 AM, you'll be greeted with an inbox full of new decisions, priorities and tasks. - Heavy drinking is commonplace at most official and non-official company functions, and opting-out is seen as being "not part of the team". When many of your coworkers/managers end up at a bachelor party in Vegas, you will definitely hear about it at your next sprint planning meeting. - Gossip-y. Again, if you're not in the in-crowed, you will be at its mercy. -- This extends to HR. Do not share anything with HR that you don't want your manager and coworkers to also know. - Rampant entitlement among employees. At dinner, one can frequently overhear such gems as "I'm too good for MUNI" and "Well it's easier for women to get hired, so that's probably why she was hired and not X (male person)". Summarily, I felt that my career prospects would be limited as I was not part of the in-crowd, and unwilling to put in 60 hour weeks among less-than-desirable company. Ultimately though, Dropbox will continue to make buckets of money despite its troubling culture.

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