Executive Editorial Director Tiffani Jones Brown shares the story behind the Dropbox values

As new tech companies pop up every day, and as more people plan careers in tech, it can be difficult to choose between so many companies — especially when cool perks, unique experiences, and great benefits are commonplace offerings. But one thing that helps potential team members make their decision, because it truly shows what an organization is really all about, is company values.

At Dropbox, our values are absolutely integral to everything we do. Every team member, past and present, has played a part in helping us define what really matters to us — and how these foundational beliefs and behaviors help us, in turn, design a more enlightened way of working. And since the world is always changing, we keep a close eye on our values to make sure that they reflect what is important to our people, and adjust them as needed.

At the end of 2019, we updated some of our values — and after a year that no one could have predicted our values are even more important than ever before. We chatted with Executive Editorial Director Tiffani Jones Brown, who co-wrote the updates, about the process of developing our values, why they matter, and more.

What are Dropbox’s values?

Our values at Dropbox are:

Why did we decide to refresh our company values?

We were at a pivotal moment in the company and needed our shared behaviors to reflect and support those shifts. Feedback from across the company suggested that Dropboxers were eager to:

• Make more efficient decisions, and cut down on consensus-building
• Reduce unnecessary complexity in our processes and product
• Be laser-focused on our customers’ needs, not just our business priorities
• Encourage Dropboxers to feel a sense of autonomy ownership over their work
• … All while preserving the trustworthiness and humanity that Dropbox is known for.

Why do you think our values are important?

When implemented well, values help us maintain our integrity and act in alignment with deeply held beliefs — regardless of how big we become, or how dramatically we shift our operating model. If you’ve ever met a person with well-developed values, you may have noticed that they have an easier time making decisions, even tough ones, because they know what they stand for. I think great company values are like that, too. They feel “true” and offer an inspiring direction or North Star to guide our actions.

What was the biggest challenge while developing our values?

Values only work if your whole company can truly stand behind them — so we needed to bring in stakeholders from across the company as part of our process, which was very complex from a production standpoint.

One ongoing challenge we still face is to help all Dropboxers internalize and remember our values — particularly as we move to a Virtual First model. In our new Virtual First environment, remote work (outside an office) will be the primary experience for all Dropboxers, so that they have more control over how they balance their lives and do their best work. So keeping an emphasis on these values from afar will require a lot of repetition and reinforcement, as well as modeling from leadership.

How do you hope people apply our values to their work?

It’s a great question. If I had to summarize:

• Be worthy of trust: Try to do the right thing, and practice radical candor (care personally, challenge directly.)
• They win, we win: Always start with the customer or user. Always put their experience first — ahead of business results and your own priorities.
• Keep it simple: Cut those docs and emails in half!
• Own it: See something that could be better? Help make it better!
• Make work human: Err in the direction of kindness, and follow our DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) principles.

As a writer, “keep It simple” is the most applicable value to my work here at Dropbox. Users shouldn’t have to scratch their heads or read a list of instructions to navigate our products. Making Dropbox feel effortless, fun to use, and easy to understand (whether it’s in our marketing or UI) is motivating to me.

Want to learn more about what it means to work at Dropbox? You can start the journey by visiting our jobs page.