Stop saying "take responsibility" if they aren't actually.

If you knock a girl up and you "take responsibility" it means you getting married.

If you are in a car wreck and you "take responsibility" it means you are paying for repairs.

If you commit a crime and "take responsibility" you are going to jail.

So if a CEO is "taking responsibility" it should be something like that second case, dollars from their own pocket to the effected party.

Have you considered that not everyone shares your opinion and that this could explain the difference between reality and your expectations.

My insurance companies and government definitely share that opinion of responsibility. So, yes. But my answer remains "take responibility and mean it".

I'd love to hear you explain how I can get out of paying my car insurance of alimony though with this line of reasoning, though. Could be useful one day.

here is a pro tip: If you call your car insurance and cancel, the government wont make you keep paying it every month.

Much like employment, each party can cancel. You didn't sign a lifelong contract for insurance.

CEOs are responsible to the board of directors and shareholders. The BoD and shareholders are who choose and remove CEOs and you can bet both are considerably displeased when the company isn't as profitable as they expect.

That's the best part of modern tech markets in a not-recession recession. They are still profitable but will layoff because it's fashionbble or to make more money.

Absence is also part of the content.

These words mean nothing really. I expect the next CEO to not use meaningless phrases. How does "taking responsibility" works in his case? What does it even mean other than PR fluff?

It means he’s saying people should be mad at him instead of at someone else. It seems to be working.

I mean, it's him and the shareholders who probably pushed for this. There shouldn't be anyone else to be mad at.

I guess the government for not regulating this kind of thing to begin with. but that's a bit out of DBX's purview.

why would you expect the next CEO to not use weasel words? it's like they all go to the same "mom school". they all go to the same tailor to make teflon suits so nothing sticks to them, and they all learn the same "rain in spain falls on the plain" dreck.

I mean he's just stating what his job is. CEO is responsible by definition. He's saying "Hey all this is my job."

No, responsibility is not a word. Responsibility is an action.

If I'm on-call, I'm responsible to carry my laptop with me and be available immediately to fix critical issues. I don't just say "I take responsibility of being on-call", and the leave my laptop at home, get drunk and fall asleep in a bar for the weekend. That's called being irresponsible.

I see. But that's still like doing your job. I do my job for being on-call by having my laptop with me and phone on, etc. If do my job badly I get fired.

So this CEO is saying, "if I do my job poorly I understand I could get fired."

But, did he/she do their job poorly? That's the thing I can't figure out quite yet. It seems it was bad for the laid off people, but maybe not for Dropbox?

>"if I do my job poorly I understand I could get fired."

If I got a million dollar parachute when I do my job badly, I would love to "take responsibility" as well. Fuck the people, I get paid either way here.

> But, did he/she do their job poorly?

in a fiduciary sence short term, no. So shareholders are happy since that's all their care about.

Long term, who knows? I don't see them closing the gap with Google nor Microsoft so this could just accelerate that downfall.

in a spirit of, as some politician say, "creating jobs and stimulating the economy", absolutely awfully. We have 500 more workers out on an awful job market and it's not because DBX wasn't profitable. They simply dropped workers to prepare for a bad time that the US economy doesn't want to admit out loud.

A 20% layoff means either the market changed very very quickly or something went terribly wrong in the company strategy. Here it's the second scenario and I'd expect the CEO to be on shaky grounds after such bad results.

There needs to be more explanation on where the CEO screwed up that badly and the consequences for the management.

At the very very least, they should be explaining how Dropbox is suddenly a 20% smaller company, because either that means the market has contracted by 20%, or Dropbox has shit the bed as a competitive entity in said market.

Both options should directly imply that the CEO should earn less. Either you're running a smaller, simpler company, or you sucked at your job.

Eat the loss.

They aren't 20% smaller, they stopped growing. Some of those positions existed to help them continue with growth, which now isn't happening.

They reached market saturation, which isn't the same thing as failing.

If he was responsible for the conditions that led to the layoff, he could also resign.

Layoffs happen even in well run companies.

Actually they don't. Well run companies have cash reserves and expect to have periods of ups and downs. They don't pray to the alter of the next quarterly report.

They do it to suppress wages, not only because of economic instability. It’s worked - wages are down across industry. Wage suppression is one of the responsibilities of a well run business (the CEO together with HR hires consultant help for this or they hire a benefits and wages role, and it’s referred to as market positioning)

It's pretty cynical to say that wage suppression is one of the responsibilities of a CEO. But perhaps not off the mark.

If only we had the equivalent on the other side to balance the equation. Some kind of a group of individual employees, who work together to counter wage suppression efforts.

historically in tech, that group is some new competitor that "disrupts the industry" and either becomes a new power respecting talent for a while, or gets bought out by a megacorp and given that huge salary once again.

That's really the main saving grace for this industry; the scalability that a few employees can still provide a solution that makes corporations with hundreds of thousands of workers sweat. That's why they surged salaries so aggressively in the 00's and half the '10's

That's also the reason why unionization will be a hard argument among tech workers. Slowly starting to happen in the games industry, so that at least confirms there IS a breaking point somewhere for that to happen.

>companies don't exist to employ people. employees exist to help companies.

Companies in society exist to serve the customer, provide labor opportunities, and overall stimulate the economy (all of which is needed to make money).

This mentality above is exactly why the latter half of Millensials and Gen Z were demystified by the labor market and simply don't take the kind of "loyalty" narrative of the older generations. You can't talk family, layoff "family" every 2 years regardless of talent and pretend that "hard workers get rewarded". So you'll get the bare minimum, you will get no overtime when you request it (especially if you aren't paying 1.5x), and you probably won't even get the long dead 2 weeks notice when I move on.

You can't expect much more "help" when you can't give the basic modicrum of respect to your help.

> just make everyone a decent shareholder with decent liquidity and move on when the employee isn't necessary.

most jobs don't have RSUs. Not even in tech.

Well run companies laying off 20% of the global staff?

None come to my mind, do you have any examples?

> Well run companies laying off 20% of the global staff?

Well run companies laying off 20% of the global staff a year after laying off 20% of the global staff?

well run companies do not hire more employees than they can afford

I would like for there to be a next CEO

Take a pay cut. Return last year's mega bonus.

They should make whole those affected, as best as possible. The CEO, who is the responsible party by their own declaration, should distribute their personal wealth to those affected until all parties have approximately the same amount of wealth.

By letting a lower rung employee take the responsibly. This is giving CEOs a bad name and is only one step away from the board taking the heat.

With the resources that would otherwise be given to the excised one, is a good start

How about describing what exactly taking full responsibility means for them in that particular situation?

Saying e.g. what is the impact on the situation for those responsible might be nice - no bonuses for next year? A plan in place so that this doesn't happen again? Stepping down as a CEO?

I mean, if I take responsibility for e.g. wrong tax filing, I pay the fine penalty, and/or go to jail.

Saying "I take responsibility" some kind of failure while having no consequences for said failure is not taking responsibility.

Conversion to worker coop