State filings show 57 Dropbox jobs and 53 at the customer-service software maker Front ending in the city, part of a wave of tech cuts that by one count has already passed last year’s total.
Two San Francisco software companies told California regulators last week that they were eliminating 110 jobs in the city, adding to a year of Bay Area tech layoffs that has already outrun 2025.
Dropbox, the file-storage company, reported 57 permanent layoffs at its headquarters at 50 Hawthorne Street in a notice dated Oct. 28, according to the state Employment Development Department’s WARN report. Frontapp Inc., which makes customer-communication software under the name Front, reported 53 permanent layoffs at One Montgomery Street in a notice dated Oct. 27.
The filings are the latest of four San Francisco notices the state processed in October, together covering 364 workers. The others came from Airtable, which reported 190 layoffs at its headquarters after its sale to Bending Spoons, and from the business-services contractor Conduent, which reported 64.
What Dropbox disclosed
The San Francisco count captures only part of the Dropbox cut. In a message to employees posted on the company blog on Oct. 28, co-chief executive Ashraf Alkarmi said about 200 roles, roughly 9 percent of the work force, were being eliminated across engineering, product, design and general and administrative teams. “For most impacted Dropboxers, today will be their last day,” he wrote.
Mr. Alkarmi framed the move as a choice, not a rescue. “Our business is profitable, and we’ve built real momentum this year,” he wrote, adding that the company was “making hard choices about where we invest, how we’re organized, and what work we simplify, scale back, or stop.” He also told employees, “we can’t take the same work and spread it across fewer people.”
The numbers back up the first part of that. Dropbox reported second-quarter revenue of $631.5 million, up less than 1 percent from a year earlier, with a non-GAAP operating margin of 39.7 percent. The company is profitable; it is not growing much.
A filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission the same day put a price on the reduction: $27 million to $33 million in cash costs, mostly severance and benefits, and $20 million to $25 million in incremental expense, most of it to be booked in the fourth quarter. Dropbox also said it expected third-quarter results “in-line with or above” its guidance for revenue and non-GAAP operating margin. It is scheduled to report those results on Thursday, Nov. 5.
The same filing disclosed that Ali Dasdan, the chief technology officer, will step down on Nov. 18, the date the San Francisco layoffs take effect in the state notice. He is to receive a prorated 2026 bonus of $515,000 and a lump-sum payment of about $1.3 million, according to the filing.
Departing employees are to receive 16 weeks of base pay plus one week for each full year of service, fourth-quarter equity vesting, a prorated bonus, six months of subsidized health coverage and immigration support, according to Mr. Alkarmi’s message.
A familiar pattern at Dropbox
This is Dropbox’s third significant reduction in four years. The company cut about 16 percent of its staff, roughly 500 people, in April 2023, and about 20 percent, or 528 people, in October 2024. It had 2,113 full-time employees at the end of 2025, The San Francisco Chronicle reported.
Front’s cuts
Front, founded in 2013, says it serves more than 9,300 businesses. Its chief executive, Dan O’Connell, who succeeded the co-founder Mathilde Collin in the role in 2024, announced the cuts on LinkedIn, calling it “an incredibly painful day,” according to The Chronicle.
“We made this decision to build a more sustainable business, focus our resources on what matters most to our customers, and invest in the next generation of Front,” Mr. O’Connell wrote, according to the newspaper. “I believe it’s the right decision for our future, but that doesn’t make it any less painful for the people leaving.”
Front has not said how many employees were affected in total, The Chronicle reported.
What the notices leave out
California’s WARN law generally requires 60 days’ notice before a mass layoff and makes employers that fall short liable for up to 60 days of pay and benefits. Neither filing follows that timeline on its face. Front’s notice lists Oct. 27 as both the notice date and the effective date, and Dropbox’s lists a Nov. 18 effective date, three weeks after notice. Companies often meet the law’s requirements by paying workers through the notice period, and the state report does not show whether either company did so. Dropbox’s announced severance runs well past 60 days of pay.
The notices also undercount. They cover only workers tied to a California site, so remote employees elsewhere and cuts below the law’s thresholds do not appear. Dropbox’s 57 San Francisco positions are fewer than a third of the roughly 200 roles it says it is eliminating.
A year of cuts
Even with those gaps, the state’s data show a steady drain. Since July 1, the start of the fiscal year, the state has processed 16 WARN notices covering 2,430 workers in San Francisco and 132 notices covering 8,926 workers across the nine Bay Area counties. Statewide, the total is 404 notices and 23,240 workers. San Francisco’s largest notice this fiscal year did not come from tech: Covenant Aviation Security reported 1,279 layoffs effective Nov. 30.
By The Chronicle’s count, Bay Area tech companies had disclosed nearly 14,500 job cuts in 2026 by late October, compared with about 10,170 in all of 2025. The paper’s tally included a surge of 1,196 cuts in early September, led by Oracle, Uber, PayPal and Intel.
For Dropbox, the next test comes Nov. 5, when investors will look for signs that a smaller company can turn its profits into growth, which is the bet Mr. Alkarmi described to employees.
Wendell Yamashiro covers business, technology, labor, trade and the Bay Area economy for Trade and Commerce. More from Wendell Yamashiro
