Arash is alive and leaving Dropbox, for those who miss the single sentence distinguishing which is the case halfway down the page.

I could not see it even after reading your comment...

This type of corporate writing is not serving anyone...

"But now, it’s time for me to share that my close friend and co-founder is leaving Dropbox."

Exactly, that should be the first statement of the whole thing...

Quite refreshing note than so many exec "Thank you" emails.

PS: Interestingly, Arash has Mac and Drew has Thinkpad in first picture :).

Dropbox was great way back then but now it seems like they are trying to compete with Microsoft Sharepoint and my Office 365 already comes with a 1TB storage plan.

Perhaps Jobs was right ... it is a feature not a product.

But they do it really well. OneDrive, Google Drive and iCloud Drive lack the polish and reliability of Dropbox for me.

All said, I stopped paying for Dropbox about 6 months back as I couldn’t convince myself paying $9.99 for something I was already getting with Office 365.

All I needed from them was like a $2.99 plan for 200GB and I would have continued to be a paying customer.

Apple runs iCloud on the Google Cloud, the right decision for Jobs at the time was to buy Dropbox.

Not everyone wants to be locked into the MSFT || GOOG || AAPL ecosystem.

OT but every time I visit this site I wonder how such smart people got duped by their designer. It used to be a joy to visit, but now it physically hurts me just to look at it. It's ok, great even... heck sometimes crucial, to be contrarian when you're creating art. But a UI isn't supposed to be art.

Really nice story about some of the personal history behind Dropbox. It's all news to me. I had never heard of Arash until today.

Anyone know what he's going off to do that he's leaving Dropbox?

I don't know what he's been up to. But I'm certain he has inspired many Iranian-American tech entrepreneurs indirectly.

Dropbox writes good farewell letters; the one to Guido was a real treat.

May be it is just me, but there should have been a tldr summary or better title (Arash, co-founder of dropbox leaving) or first paragraph. I was reading it half scared wondering if someone died (due to the recent Corona related news).

While yes, that would have been a better title in terms of telling us what the post was about, but then you get a different tone for the post.

I think the post is first and foremost for thanking Arash for his work on Dropbox and about the partnership he had with Drew, and telling us about it comes second.

I don't disagree with you but at this moment in time it just seems a bit prudent to add something like this at the top:

"Arash – our co-founder and great friend – is leaving Dropbox for new adventures."

Just one simple sentence like that at the top lets us know the rest of the post isn't a eulogy, or at least not the kind where someone passed away.

Any other point in time when there isn't a global pandemic you can leave that out, but right now times are weird and confusing.

I think the “thank you, first name” format is common when a well known company founder or elder statesman is leaving. Here is Guido’s from last year. https://blog.dropbox.com/topics/company/thank-you--guido

And Arash is well known at Dropbox (and also here.)

Maybe you're right, I can't say that resonates with me but I may well be in the minority. I do find it interesting though that the post you link to has this as it's first sentence:

"After six and a half years, Guido van Rossum, the creator of Python, is leaving Dropbox and heading into retirement."

No ambiguities regarding the reasons for the post then.

(Also, for what it's worth, I had no idea who Arash was prior to reading this post.)

yes. changing the title is prudent at this time. I thought other way too!

Yes I also didn't get if he had died or had left Dropbox until the end.

Yes, I wish that the title included "(Dropbox co-founder leaving Dropbox)" or something like that.

It’s 7 short paragraphs. It’s fine.

Agree, the title could be improved to convey the message more clearly and directly