Why do people understand this phrase "taking responsibility" as some kind of admitting of fault? Maybe I'm missing something, but it seems neutral and could even be referring to positive future outcomes for the company.

Because the context is that 20% of their employees are now unemployed. The tone of the letter is also "this is a hard but necessary choice" and not "this is great news for dropbox!"

> As CEO, I take full responsibility for this decision and the circumstances that led to it, and I’m truly sorry to those impacted by this change.

Because that's what it means to take responsibility. You're saying "I did this, and to the extent that it's a bad thing you can blame me".

I think Houston being a cofounder means the financial picture looks different. Last year he made $1.5M in total comp. Which is a lot in absolute terms, but cutting his pay to zero would only allow keeping ~6 of those laid off. OTOH, he owns 25% of a $9B company. His salary is a rounding error compared to the performance of the stock.

Not to be an apologist, but I bet Drew really does feel responsible. He’s not professional management, and he always acted like Dropbox was his kid, at least from what I saw working there. I’m sure this feels shitty to him, though it’s obviously worse for the people laid off.

True - it means he could transfer, say, a billion dollars worth of stock to the affected employees and still be a billionaire. If he actually felt all that bad about it, of course.